If we live a life of prayer,
God is present everywhere.”
After a long and useful life, it, too, has practically disappeared from our hymnals.
IV. COLLECTIONS OF AMERICAN HYMNS
By 1824 the evangelistic movement, partly a heritage from the Great Awakening, partly due to the Methodist aggressiveness, and partly to the religious needs of a widely scattered and pioneer population, made it evident that the hymns of Watts and his school, with minds set on worship in more or less formal services for the edification of the elect, and ignoring the needs of an urgent discipling, were not fitted for revival work. Rev. Asahel Nettleton, an evangelistic minister greatly interested in foreign missions, issued his Village Hymns, containing six hundred hymns, only fifty of which were by Watts. Some of Charles Wesley’s hymns were included, but most of these were credited to other authors. While other English sources were drawn upon, the book was noteworthy for the American hymns that appeared in it. Hymns by Davies, Occom, Alline, Strong, and Dwight were used. An eager quest for new American hymnists was rewarded by contributions from William B. Tappan (“’Tis midnight; and on Olive’s brow” and “The ransomed spirit to her home”); from Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (“I love to steal awhile away”); and from Abby B. Hyde (“Dear Saviour, if these lambs should stray”).
William B. Tappan (1794-1849) was a largely self-educated man, having attended school but six months. His hymn “There is an hour of peaceful rest” was widely published in America and England, and on the Continent, and used to be inevitable in the hymnbooks of sixty years ago. His “’Tis midnight; and on Olive’s brow” still holds its place, though largely descriptive, but none the less impressive and useful.
Mrs. Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (1783-1861) still is represented in most of our hymnals by her “I love to steal awhile away,” with its pathetic story of her misunderstood habit of prayer among the scenes of nature. Greater than the hymn, valuable as it has been, is her contribution to the progress of Christ’s Kingdom in the work of her missionary son, Rev. Samuel R. Brown, in China and Japan and that of her grandsons in the latter country.
But the revival took on an intenser form under the preaching and praying of Charles G. Finney and, bright as was the spirit of the Village Hymns, it called for something more vigorous and with a greater appeal to the unsaved people who were to be won, especially in the music. Rev. Joshua Leavitt, a Congregational minister, a militant reformer, enemy of intemperance and slavery (a dangerous attitude in those days), and an ardent believer in the revival work of Finney, issued his The Christian Lyre in 1830, which created quite a sensation. Its hymns did not differ much from those of Village Hymns, but it was more practical in that it supplied the music on the page opposite to each hymn, no small advance on the ponderous tune book that had to be held in one hand and the hymnbook in the other. Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings had been editing these tune books filled with dull and stupid music, in whose abundant chaff an occasional grain of gold occurred, which the Christian Church has been glad to cherish. The music in The Christian Lyre was bright and popular, being secular melodies the people were singing. Leavitt had taken a leaf out of the book of the old mass-writers, who used popular melodies for their descants, and of Luther and Bourgeois, in taking popular tunes to reach the people. It was an anticipation of Horace Waters’ policy in his Sabbath School Bell in 1859. It was also an anticipation of Moody and Sankey’s Gospel Hymns, except that Leavitt had no Fanny Crosby or Lydia Baxter to supply new texts, and no reserve of popular music by Lowry, Doane, Bliss, and others to draw upon.
As Horace Waters stimulated Bradbury into developing the popular Sunday school music, one of whose by-products was the Gospel song, so Leavitt stirred up Mason and Hastings to begin the issue in 1832 of Spiritual Songs for Social Worship, in twelve parts, more nearly the archetype of the future Gospel Hymns. The Christian Lyre left no residuum for future generations, but Spiritual Songs, edited by men of wide experience, in touch with the most cultivated clerical circle of the day, one of them a hymnist of both facility and felicity, made important permanent contributions not only to American but to universal Christian hymnody.
In this collection appeared Thomas Hastings’ “Hail to the brightness of Zion’s glad morning,” “Gently, Lord, O gently lead us,” “How calm and beautiful the morn,” “Child of sin and sorrow.” Here also appeared his enlargement of Thomas Moore’s “Come, ye disconsolate.” Add to these his tunes “Ortonville,” “Retreat,” “Zion,” “Toplady,” and others and his other hymns, “Return, O wanderer, to my home,” “Delay not, delay not, O sinner, draw near,” “The Saviour bids thee watch and pray,” and it will be seen that Thomas Hastings, even if he is not in the first rank as hymnist or composer, deserves well of the Christian Church.