These songs constitute his whole contribution to hymnody from 1810 to 1825. But the latter year brought a signal increase. In the midst of his fierce battle with the Rationalists he published the first of his really great hymns, a song of comfort to the daughters of Zion, sitting disconsolately at the sickbed of their mother, the church. Her present state may appear so hopeless that her children fear to remember her former glory:
Dares the anxious heart envision
Still its morning dream,
View, despite the world’s derision,
Zion’s sunlit height and stream?
Wields still anyone the power
To repeat her anthems strong,
And with joyful heart embower,
Zion with triumphant song.
Her condition is not hopeless, however, if her children will gather about her.