A nearness to my God.
None of the hymns of Alline or Cleveland, however, attained a world-wide popularity. The first Canadian to write a hymn that has become not only world-famous but also has been translated into several ‘heathen tongues’ as well as civilized languages was Joseph Scriven, author of the simple spiritual song, What a Friend We Have in Jesus. The man and the hymn have a remarkable history, which is recounted by Rev. James Clelland in his biographical sketch in a tiny thirty-page booklet entitled: What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and Other Hymns by Joseph Scriven. It was published at Port Hope, Ontario, in 1895.
For many years the hymn had been attributed, without authentication, to Dr. Horatius Bonar. But in 1893 a letter appeared in the New York Observer, in which it was stated that the hymn had been found amongst some papers belonging to Joseph Scriven, who had ended his life by suicide. Scriven was a local preacher but he was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and was, therefore, a man of respectable culture. Like Cowper, Scriven suffered from melancholia; and it is natural to suppose that he had written the hymn after recovery from one of his fits of melancholia. He was a shy man, and after writing the hymn gave a copy of it to his mother, from whom he extracted a promise that she would not reveal its existence or show it to anyone else. But whether the mother’s pride in her son’s accomplishment overcame her, or whether due to some sort of accident, the hymn reached a certain Mr. Converse, a musician, and he at once set it to music of the more popular kind. Soon the hymn attained a popular vogue in the United States and from there gained equally popular vogue in Canada. Some are inclined to believe that it was not the hymn itself but the musical setting that created its popularity. No doubt the musical setting to Lyte’s Abide With Me, or to Newman’s Lead Kindly Light, has considerable to do with the appeal of those hymns. Newman expressly attributes the popularity of his hymn to the musical setting and not to the spiritual beauty of the text. But the musical setting to Scriven’s What a Friend We Have In Jesus is so poor in melodic invention and so lacking in cantante quality and rhythmic flow that as a tune or melody it is not singable or infectious and could not be a compelling ‘sacred folksong.’ We must, therefore, charge its popularity to the appeal of the text of the hymn to some elemental want or need of humble human hearts.
But whatever the cause of the popularity of this hymn, whether the words or the musical setting or both, the fact remains that it is the most widely known hymn in Christian hymnology. It has been translated into many of the civilized and the barbaric languages of the world, and more than a hundred million impressions of the hymn have been printed. Searching for a psychological explanation of its appeal to the universal human heart, we know that as a matter of fact it has solaced, as one writer puts it, ‘millions and millions of souls, from the criminal on his way to the scaffold to the ocean traveller in his last moment aboard a sinking ship; from the negro in his wretched plantation cabin to the highest dignitary of the evangelical churches; from the unclad heathen denizen of the cannibalistic South Sea Islands or in wildest Africa to the most learned savant of the most civilized land.’ The obvious explanation of its appeal is that Scriven’s hymn expresses, both for the humble and for the highest, the elemental and inevitable sense of dependence for life and happiness on some spiritual power that is mighty to comfort, solace, sustain, and save. When that sense of dependence comes over any human being, and when such a human being feels that there is an ever-ready invisible hand to sustain or succor, in that moment the sense of dependence and of ever-ready aid, and of joy or comfort or hope thus awakened, are expressed in emotionalized rhythm, which is religious song.
Scriven lacked lyrical or rhythmical sensibility, and his famous hymn possesses no aesthetic or artistic appeal. But in times of need, aesthetics are the poorest support and solace. In spite, then, of the lyrical and aesthetic defects of Scriven’s simple hymn, it has remained, by virtue of its elemental appeal to people of all estates and by its solacing and sustaining power, one of the world’s perduring sacred songs.
From a strictly Canadian point of view and with reference to aesthetic qualities which give a hymn a dignity of poetry, the most notable and significant hymn composed by a native-born Canadian is Robert Murray’s From Ocean Unto Ocean. The author was born and educated in Nova Scotia. From early childhood he disclosed a Keltic gift of imagination and fondness for expressing his emotions in verse. Dr. Murray was a religious journalist, and, as editor of The Presbyterian Witness, did much to raise ordinary journalism to the dignity of literature.
It was his custom to write hymns and to publish them anonymously in the religious press. Those who had an eye for the revision of church hymnals were struck by the aesthetic beauty and dignity as well as religious fervor of Dr. Murray’s hymns. They are indeed extraordinary, and the substance of them is so universalized that they fit the hymnals or Books of Praise of any Christian communion, Protestant or Catholic. His hymns are included in the Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church of Canada; in the Book of Common Praise of the Church of England in Canada; and in The Hymnary of the Scottish Churches. Rev. A. W. Mahon observes in his readable brochure, Canadian Hymns and Hymn Writers (1908): ‘Thirteen Canadians contribute to the New Church of England Book of Common Praise, including Canon Welsh of Toronto and the late Dean Partridge of Fredericton, but Dr. Murray’s contributions exceed all other in number and in intrinsic merit.’
To appreciate Murray’s From Ocean Unto Ocean—its intrinsic merits, as well as its special qualities and fervor which embody and express the Canadian national spirit—the whole poem must be read and felt both as a hymn for devotional and for national occasions. Following is the full text of Dr. Murray’s hymn:—
From ocean unto ocean
Our land shall own Thee Lord,