Skyward and seaward, high and wide;
The sun, that lights its shining folds,
The cross, on which the Saviour died.”
Francis S. Key, the well-known writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” to whom Baltimore has erected an elaborate statue, furnished a fine hymn of praise, “Lord, with glowing heart I’d praise Thee.”
VI. UNITARIAN HYMNODY
The production of original hymns in New England took a peculiar course. After Samuel F. Smith, the spirit of praise left the Orthodox churches and took refuge with the ostensible Unitarians. The reaction against the rigid and harsh Calvinism was not so much against the doctrine of the deity of Christ, as against the false corollaries drawn metaphysically from the noble doctrine of the Sovereignty of God, as well as the crass, materialistically conceived, conception of the state of the impenitent dead, that was painted so luridly and offensively in song as well as in sermon.
Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843), was the son of Professor Henry Ware, who held the chair of Divinity in Harvard College for thirty-five years. He himself became professor of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastoral Care in the same institution in 1830. The pastor for thirteen years of a prominent Unitarian church in Boston, he never wavered in his faith in the deity of Jesus Christ. How otherwise could he have written that triumphant Easter hymn:
“Lift your glad voices in triumph on high,
For Jesus hath risen, and man cannot die;
Vain were the terrors that gathered around him,