127. Christ is coming, let creation
John R. Macduff, 1818-95
A Scottish hymn setting forth the glowing hope and expectation of the coming of Christ in glory. It is based on Rev. 22:20: “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely, I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
John R. Macduff was minister of the Sandyford Parish, Glasgow. He is the author of several books of devotions and wrote numerous hymns. His ministry at Sandyford was singularly fruitful. George Mattheson, blind Scottish preacher, then a boy in Macduff’s congregation, afterwards said of him: “Dr. Macduff gave me my first real conviction of the beauty of Christianity.” Macduff held strongly to the premillennial view of the coming of Christ.
MUSIC. NEANDER. This famous tune has been associated with various words. The composer first published it in 1680 set to the hymn, “Unser Herrscher, unser König.” It is also used with Schmolk’s “Open now the gates of beauty” ([505]), and in England it is almost invariably associated with “Come, ye saints, and raise an anthem,” by J. Hupton and others.
Joachim Neander, 1650-80, whose real name was Neumann, was born at Bremen, where he spent most of his life. As a youth he was somewhat wild but in time became converted and associated himself with the Pietists of Germany. He was a friend of Spener, the leader of the Pietists. His unconventional zeal brought him into conflict with the authorities of the Reformed Church of which he was a member, and he was dismissed for a time from his office as teacher in the Düsseldorf schools. Being obliged to leave town, he lived for some months in a cave in the region of the Rhine, where he composed many of his hymns. He is the foremost hymn writer of the German Reformed Church and is called “the Paul Gerhardt of the Calvinists.” Neander, like Luther, was a man of scholarship and accomplishment in poetry and music, as well as theology. He wrote more than 60 hymns and composed tunes for them.