All these hymns, and two other religious poems, are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith. Most of them had gone out of use by the end of the 19th century, but nos. 1, 6 and 8 (beginning It is finished, Man of sorrows,) are in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937.
By far the best known of Hedge’s hymns is his fine and accurate translation of Luther’s great chorale Ein’ feste Burg (no. 1). This is the version accepted by almost all the Protestant denominations in this country, whereas in Great Britain Thomas Carlyle’s earlier translation (1831) is generally used, although James Martineau included Hedge’s version in his Hymns of Praise and Prayer, 1873, mistakenly attributing it to Samuel Longfellow. Putnam, op. cit., 214, says that it was first printed in W. H. Furness’s Gems of German Verse, which appeared in Philadelphia, without date but undoubtedly in the latter part of 1853, a second edition following in 1859. That Hedge should have sent his translation of the chorale to Furness without delay was natural, because the two men were close friends with a common interest in German literature, and Putnam was the younger contemporary of both, in a position to know that Furness’s little book had appeared on the market a few days, or weeks, ahead of the collection of hymns which Hedge and F. D. Huntington were editing and which they published late in 1853 as Hymns for the Church of Christ.
The earliest record of the hymn, however, is to be found in the autograph letter (now in the Harvard University Library) which Hedge wrote to Rev. Joseph H. Allen, his successor in the pulpit at Bangor, Maine, asking him to recommend hymns for inclusion in the book on which he and Huntington were working. This letter is dated “Providence, March 27th, 1853.” In the course of it Hedge wrote, “I have made a new translation of Luther’s splendid psalm ‘Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott’ Carlyle’s translation not being available.” This statement is followed by the four stanzas of his translation. That book contained no printed tunes, only citing the metre at the head of each hymn as a guide to the organist, but in his letter Hedge goes on with the surprizing statement, “The original is much sung in Germany and therefore I suppose that it will not be difficult to find a tune for it.” Since he must have become familiar with both the words and the music of the famous chorale when he was a youthful student in Germany this remark indicates that the tune was still unknown in America, and that he took little interest in introducing it.
J. 504, 1647 Revised by H.W.F.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 12, 1822—May 9, 1911, Cambridge. He graduated from Harvard College in 1841 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1847. Entering the Unitarian ministry he served churches in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1847-1850, and in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1852-1858. He was an ardent Abolitionist and when the Civil War came he entered the Union Army, in which he rose to the command of a Negro regiment. After the war he became a man of letters and published several books and numerous essays. While still a student in the Divinity School he contributed to the Book of Hymns, 1846, which his friends Longfellow and Johnson were preparing, four hymns, which they marked with an asterisk, viz:
1. No human eyes Thy face may see (God known through love)
2. The land our fathers left to us (American Slavery)
3. The past is dark with sin and shame, (Hope)
4. To thine eternal arms, O God, (Lent)
The last two have had considerable use. Both express the pessimistic mood with which the young man viewed the evils of the time.
One of his later poems of social justice has also had some use as a hymn,
5. From street and square, from hill and glen,
Of this vast world beyond my door.