Feeble is the love of mother,
Father’s blessings are as naught,
When compared, my King and Brother,
With the wonders Thou hast wrought;
Thus it pleased Thy heavenly meekness;
Pleasing also be my praise,
Till my songs of earthly weakness
Burst into celestial lays.
Hiller was a prolific writer, his hymns numbering no less than 1,075 in all. Most of these were written for his devotional book, “Geistliches Liederkästlein,” a work that holds an honored place beside the Bible in many pious homes in southern Germany. Indeed, it has been carried by German emigrants to all parts of the world. It is related that when a Germany colony in the Caucasus was attacked by a fierce Circassian tribe about a hundred years ago, the parents cut up their copies of the “Liederkästlein” and distributed its leaves among their children who were being carried off into slavery. Hiller’s hymns, though simple in form and artless in expression, have retained a strong hold on the people of Württemberg and are extensively used to this day. Among the more popular are “O boundless joy, there is salvation,” “Jesus Christ as King is reigning,” and “O Son of God, we wait for Thee.”
Hiller’s rule for hymn-writing, as set forth in one of his prefaces, could be followed with profit by many modern writers of sentimental tendencies. He says: “I have always striven for simplicity. Bombastic expressions of a soaring imagination, a commonplace and too familiar manner of speaking of Christ as a brother, of kisses and embraces, of individual souls as the particular Bride of Christ, of naive and pet images for the Christ-child,—all these I have scrupulously avoided, and serious-minded men will not blame me if, in this respect, I have revered the majesty of our Lord.”