Harris, Florence, (Mrs. Robert G. Hooke) (1891-1933) wrote in 1907, for the tenth anniversary of Unity Church (Unitarian), Montclair, New Jersey, of which she was a member a hymn entitled “The Founders,” beginning,
Like pilgrims sailing through the night,
which was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937.
H.W.F.
Harris, Rev. Thaddeus Mason, D.D. (1768-1842). He graduated from Harvard in 1787, entered the ministry and served the First Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts (Unitarian) from 1793 until his resignation in 1836. Librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 1801 he printed a leaflet with a few hymns, which formed the basis for a larger collection of Hymns for the Lord’s Supper, original and selected, [edited] by Thaddeus Mason Harris. D.D. Boston; printed by Sewall Phelps, No. 5 Court Street, 1820. A second edition was printed in 1821. This booklet contains original hymns by [Rev. John Pierpont], q.v., [Rev. Samuel Gilman], q.v., and others, none of them in use today.
H.W.F.
Hedge, Rev. Frederic Henry, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 12, 1805—August 21, 1890, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Son of Professor Levi Hedge of Harvard, he was a very precocious child, ready to enter college at 12 years of age, but his father wisely sent him to Germany, with a tutor, George Bancroft, later a noted historian, where he studied in German schools for 5 years. He then returned to Harvard College, graduating in 1825, followed by a period of study in Harvard Divinity School, where he became an intimate friend of R. W. Emerson. He was ordained minister of the First Congregational Parish (Unitarian) in West Cambridge (now Arlington) Massachusetts in 1829. In 1835 he moved to Bangor, Maine, where he served the Independent Congregational Society until 1850, then serving the Westminster Congregational Church, Providence, Rhode Island, 1850-1856. In the latter year he was called to the First Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts, which he served until 1872. His removal to Brookline enabled him to serve as a nonresident professor of ecclesiastical history in the Harvard Divinity School. He retired from the ministry in 1872 and moved to Cambridge, where he was appointed professor of German language and literature, retiring in 1882. He was a man of extraordinary intellectual ability, one of the most learned of his time, and a pioneer in bringing to this country an acquaintance with German literature and metaphysics. Harvard gave him the degree of D.D. in 1852, and that of LL.D. in 1886. He was one of the editors of the Christian Examiner, author of The Prose Writers of Germany, 1848, of Reason in Religion, 1865, of a volume of Metrical Translations and Poems in 1888, and of a large number of essays and sermons. He was president of the American Unitarian Association 1860-1863. He collaborated with [Dr. F. D. Huntington], q.v., in editing Hymns for the Church of Christ, Boston, 1853, to which he contributed three translations from the German:
1. A mighty fortress is our God, (Ein’ feste Burg)
2. Christ hath arisen! (Goethe’s Faust)
3. The sun is still forever sounding (Goethe’s Faust)
The Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book for Church and Home, 1868, includes his translation from the Latin,
4. Holy Spirit, Fire Divine, (Veni, Sancte Spiritus)
Translated 1862.
His original hymns included in Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, are,
5. Beneath thine hammer, Lord, I lie,
Undated but “Written at a time of severe trial and deep depression.”
6. Sovereign and Transforming Grace,
Written for the ordination of H. D. Barlow at Lynn, Massachusetts, December 9, 1829. This fine hymn is appropriate to a service of worship and, with the omission of one stanza, has been widely used.
7. ’Twas in the East, the mystic East,
A Christmas hymn, written about 1853.
8. ’Twas the day when God’s anointed,
Written for a service in Bangor, Maine, held on Good Friday, 1843, in six stanzas, the last three of which, beginning
It is finished, Man of sorrows!
had considerable use in Great Britain and this country. The whole six stanzas were included in Longfellow and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1846, as “Anonymous.” The last three stanzas are in Martineau’s Hymns and in many other collections.
He also wrote a hymn beginning
9. Lo! another offering,
To Thy courts this day we bring,
for his own ordination at West Cambridge in 1829, which was also used at the ordination of F. A. Whitney, at Brighton, Massachusetts, on February 24, 1844, but which passed into no collections.