Handbook to the Mennonite Hymnary

by Lester Hostetler

238. Life of all that lives below

Charles Wesley, 1707-88

Samuel Longfellow, 1819-92

This hymn, a prayer for a fuller life nurtured by Christ, the living Bread, is of composite authorship, but no information is at hand concerning the part which Wesley and Longfellow, respectively, had in it. It is not listed in Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology.

For comments on Charles Wesley see [Hymn 6].

For comments on Longfellow see [Hymn 28].

MUSIC. PLEYEL is taken from the Andante movement of the composer’s Fourth String Quartet, Op. 7. It appeared as a long-meter tune in Arnold and Callcott’s Psalms, 1791, set to Addison’s hymn, “The spacious firmament on high.”

Ignace Josef Pleyel, 1757-1831, 24th child of an Austrian schoolmaster, was a favorite pupil of Haydn and gained fame as a composer and conductor. Mozart spoke highly of his quartets. Later in life he engaged in business, publishing and selling music, and manufacturing pianos of high quality. The manufacturing house of Pleyel and Company is still well and favorably known in Europe.