George N. Anderson, a missionary in Tanganyika Province, British East Africa, tells how he once heard an assembly of 2,000 natives sing Luther’s great hymn. “I never heard it sung with more spirit; the effect was almost overwhelming,” he testifies.
A West African missionary, Christaller, relates how he once sang “Ein feste Burg” to his native interpreter. “That man, Luther,” said the African, “must have been a powerful man, one can feel it in his hymns.”
Thomas Carlyle’s estimate of “Ein feste Burg” seems to accord with that of the African native. “It jars upon our ears,” he says, “yet there is something in it like the sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmur of earthquakes, in the very vastness of which dissonance a higher unison is revealed to us.”
Carlyle, who refers to Luther as “perhaps the most inspired of all teachers since the Apostles,” has given us the most rugged of all translations of the Reformer’s great hymn. There are said to be no less than eighty English translations, but only a few have met with popular favor. In England the version by Carlyle is in general use, while in America various composite translations are found in hymn-books. Carlyle’s first stanza reads
A sure stronghold our God is He,
A trusty Shield and Weapon;
Our help He’ll be, and set us free
From every ill can happen.
That old malicious foe
Intends us deadly woe;