“Now Thank We All Our God”
I quote from The Christian Advocate:
“At the dedication of the British War memorial at the Menin Gate of Ypres, where its arch spans the main street, three great hymns were sung: ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past,’ by Isaac Watts; ‘For All the Saints Who From Their Labors Rest,’ by Bishop How, and ‘Now Thank We All Our God,’ which is a translation by Catherine Winkworth from the German of Martin Rinkart! Time heals wounds. Who would have believed it, had he been told soon after the Armistice that this hymn—noble and beautiful as it is—would be selected and sung by British soldiers at the dedication of a monument erected to the memory of those who fell in a war against Germans? Yet no one raised a word of protest or remarked upon any incongruity, for the instincts of the human heart are deeper than the traditional and conventional differences which separate nations.”
The New York Times for August 18, 1929, had an article, “Georgia Lower House Opens Day with Song.”[32] It is interesting to note this reference to