When I soar to worlds unknown,
—getting rid of the unpoetic word, and bettering the elocution, but missing the writer's thought 174 / 142 (of the unknown path,—instead of going to many “worlds”). The Unitarians have their version, with substitutes for the “atonement lines.”
But the Christian lyric maintains its life and inspiration through the vicissitudes of age and use, as all intrinsically superior things can and will,—and as in the twentieth line,—
When my eyestrings break in death;
—modernized to—
When my eyelids close in death,
—the hymn will ever adapt itself to the new exigencies of common speech, without losing its vitality and power.
THE TUNE.
A happy inspiration of [Dr. Thomas Hastings] made the hymn and music inevitably one. Almost anywhere to call for the tune of “Toplady” (namesake of the pious poet) is as unintelligible to the multitude as “Key” would be to designate the “Star-spangled Banner.” The common people—thanks to Dr. Hastings—have learned “Rock of Ages” by sound.
Thomas Hastings was born in Washington, Ct., 1784. For eight years he was editor of the Western Recorder, but he gave his life to church music, and besides being a talented tone-poet he wrote as many as six hundred hymns. In 1832, by invitation from twelve New York churches, he went 177 / 143 to that city, and did the main work of his life there, dying, in 1872, at the good old age of eighty-nine. His musical collections number fifty-three. He wrote his famous tune in 1830.