222. Where cross the crowded ways of life
Frank Mason North, 1850-1935
An unexcelled “Hymn for the City.” The following account of it is given in The Churchman, July, 1938, in an article by Eloise R. Griffith, on “Our Great Hymns”:
Frank Mason North, D.D., a well-known clergyman of the Methodist Church, is the author of this well-loved hymn. It is sometimes called “A Prayer for the City,” or “A Prayer for the Multitudes,” and has the distinction of appearing in more standard hymnals today than any other hymn written in this century. To those of us who are concerned about “how the other half lives,” and who know either from our own experiences or those of friends about the darker side of life in a great city and particularly in our own country during the last nine years,—this beautiful hymn never fails to find a heartfelt response. It paints a picture with which many city dwellers are all too familiar.
In 1903, Dr. North was editor of The Christian City, the organ of the Methodist City Missionary Society. His office was in the Fifth Avenue building of the Methodist Book Concern. One day one of the professors of Wesleyan University (who was on the committee to prepare and revise the new Methodist hymnal, and who knew North’s ability to write hymns), met him in one of the halls. “Why don’t you write a missionary hymn for us, Dr. North?” asked the professor. “We need more missionary hymns in our new hymnal.” Dr. North modestly answered that he did not feel he would be able to write a hymn worthy of the proposed new hymnal, but that he would try.
Soon after this incident occurred, Dr. North was preaching a sermon from the text in St. Matthew 22:9: “Go ye therefore into the highways,” etc. During his preparation for this sermon, he was again especially impressed by the rendering of the Greek text in the Revised Version, which reads “Go ye therefore into the partings of the highways.” Dr. North thought of and described in his sermon the appealing challenge made by great crowds of people thronging the crossroads of the city—places like Madison Square and Union Square in the New York of 1903. Dr. North knew New York City very thoroughly, and his heart yearned over the sick, the lonely, the destitute, the troubled. So, while he preached, the first line of this great hymn came to him—“Where cross the crowded ways of life.” It did not take him long to compose the words which followed, and after the publication of the hymn in The Christian City, it was at once accepted for the new Methodist hymnal of 1905. The hymn is widely used in Canada and throughout Great Britain, and has been translated into several foreign languages, including some of the Far East ones.
MUSIC. GERMANY is a fine long-meter tune found in a book, Sacred Melodies, in which the compiler, William Gardiner, 1770-1853, an English stocking manufacturer interested in music, collected compositions by the best foreign composers, adapting them to English words. The tune is also known by the name “Walton,” especially in England. As to its origin, Gardiner says in his book, Music and Friends, that it “is somewhere in the works of Beethoven, but where I cannot now point out.” This may be a mistake, for no one else has ever found it in a Beethoven collection.
223. O Master, let me walk with Thee
Washington Gladden, 1836-1918
A greatly loved service hymn which the author entitled, “Walking with God.” In a note dated June 15, 1907, Gladden says:
This hymn was written in 1879 for a magazine, Sunday Afternoon, which I was then editing. There were three eight-line stanzas. Dr. Charles H. Richards found the poem, which was not intended for a hymn, and made a hymn of it by omitting the second stanza, which was not suitable for devotional purposes.
The omitted stanza reads as follows: