Let them with songs adoring
Their artless homage bring
To Christ the Lord, and crown Him
The children's Guide and King.
The Dexter version is set to Monk's slow harmony of “St. Ambrose” in the Plymouth Hymnal (Ed. Dr. Lyman Abbott, 1894) without the writer's name—which is curious, inasmuch as the hymn was published in the Congregationalist in 1849, in Hedge and Huntington's (Unitarian) Hymn-book in 1853, in the Hymnal of the Presbyterian Church in 1866, and in Dr. Schaff's Christ in Song in 1869.
Clement died about A.D. 220.
Rev. Henry Martyn Dexter, D.D., for twenty-three years the editor of the Congregationalist, was born in Plymouth, Mass., Aug. 13, 1821. He was a graduate of Yale (1840) and Andover Divinity School (1844), a well-known antiquarian writer and church historian. Died Nov. 13, 1890.
“HOW HAPPY IS THE CHILD WHO HEARS.”
This hymn was quite commonly heard in Sunday-schools during the eighteen-thirties and forties, and, though retained in few modern collections, its Sabbath echo lingers in the memory of the living generation. It was written by Michael Bruce, born at Kinneswood, Kinross-shire, Scotland, March 27, 1746. He was the son of a weaver, but obtained a good education, taught school, and studied for the ministry. He died, however, while in preparation for his expected work, July 5, 1767, at the age of twenty-one years, three months and eight days.
Young Bruce wrote hymns, and several poems, but another person wore the honors of his work. John Logan, who was his literary executor, appropriated the youthful poet's Mss. verses, and the hymn above indicated—as well as the beautiful poem, “To the Cuckoo,”* still a classic in English literature,—bore the name of Logan for more than a hundred years. In Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology is told at length the story of the inquiry and discussion which finally exposed the long fraud upon the fame of the rising genius who sank, like Henry Kirke White, in his morning of promise.