And harvest now in Jesus’ name
What ye have sown
With tears unknown
Mid angels’ glad acclaim.
Lift up your voice, wave high your palm,
Compass the heavens with your psalm:
All glory be
Eternally
To God and to the Lamb.
Brorson’s hymns were received with immediate favor. The Rare Clenod of Faith passed through six editions before the death of its author, and a new church hymnal published in 1740 contained ninety of his hymns. Pietism swept the country and adopted Brorson as its poet. But its reign was surprisingly short. King Christian VI died in 1746, and the new king, a luxury-loving worldling, showed little interest in religion and none at all in Pietism. Under his influence the movement quickly waned. During the latter part of the eighteenth century it was overpowered by a wave of religious rationalism which engulfed the greater part of the intellectual classes and the younger clergy. The intelligentsia adopted Voltaire and Rousseau as their prophets and talked endlessly of the new age of enlightenment in which religion was to be shorn of its mysteries and people were to be delivered from the bonds of superstition.