“Old Hundred” has often lent the notes of its great plain-song to the sonorous lines, and “Duke Street,” with superior melody and scarcely inferior grandeur, has given them wings; but the choice of many for music that articulates the life of the hymn would be the tune of “Samson,” from Handel's Oratorio so named. It appears as No. 469 in the Evangelical Hymnal.
Handel had no peer in the art or instinct of making a note speak a word.
“JOY TO THE WORLD! THE LORD IS COME!”
This hymn, also by Watts, is often sung as a Christmas song; but “The Saviour Reigns” and “He Rules the World” are bursts of prophetic triumph always apt and stimulating in missionary meetings.
Here, again, the great Handel lends appropriate aid, for “Antioch,” the popular tone-consort of the hymn, is an adaptation from his “Messiah.” The arrangement has been credited to Lowell Mason, but he seems to have taken it from an English collection by Clark of Canterbury.
“O'ER THE GLOOMY HILLS OF DARKNESS.”
Dros y brinian tywyl niwliog.
This notable hymn was written, probably about 1750, by the Rev. William Williams, a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist, born at Cefnycoed, Jan. 203 / 167 7, 1717, near Llandovery. He began the study of medicine, but took deacon's orders, and was for a time an itinerant preacher, having left the established Church. Died at Pantycelyn, Jan. 1, 1781.
His hymn, like the two preceding, antedates the great Missionary Movement by many years.
O'er the gloomy hills of darkness