93. O Master Workman of the race
Jay T. Stocking, 1870-1936
A hymn entitled, “The Carpenter of Nazareth,” written for young people while the author was watching some carpenters at work in an Adirondack Camp. It is one of a number of excellent modern hymns concerned with the earthly life of Jesus and connecting Him with our daily life and labor. Others are “O Master let me walk with Thee” ([223]), “Where cross the crowded ways” ([222]), and “O Son of Man, Thou madest known” ([373]).
Jay T. Stocking was educated at Amherst, Yale Divinity School, and at the University of Berlin. He was ordained in 1901, held a number of prominent pastorates in the Congregational Church, and was made moderator of the Congregational Council in 1934. He is the author of several books and was a member of the Commission on International Justice and Good Will of the Federal Council of Churches.
MUSIC. ST. MICHEL’S appeared in a collection of Psalms and Hymns, compiled by William Gawler, and published in London around 1784 to 1789, for use of the children of an orphan asylum at Lambeth. It was set to “Creator Spirit, by whose aid,” a long-meter hymn. Later the tune was changed to common meter double. It is also known by the names “St. Maria,” “Beulah,” and “Woolrich Common.” The composer of the tune is not known. The Hymnary of the United Church of Canada attributes it to Haydn. At No. 125 of the Hymnary it appears as “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” where it is erroneously attributed, in the earlier editions, to Thomas Hastings—an error carried over from the Gesangbuch mit Noten. Hastings was born at about the same time the tune was already in print! It is possible, of course, that he made an arrangement of the tune, and thereby getting his name associated, inadvertently, with its composition.
Wm. Gawler, c. 1750-1809, was a London musician and music publisher. In 1785, while organist at the Lambeth “Asylum,” a home, the first of its kind in England, for fatherless girls, he published the book Psalms and Hymns, referred to, later adding a supplement. Gawler made other compilations of music books and also did some composing.