Based on Psalm 137:5, 6: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.” It is rated high among all the hymns on the church and is probably the earliest American hymn in use today.
Timothy Dwight, the great president of Yale, was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards and shared in a large measure the intellectual brilliance of the Edwards family. A precocious youth, he entered Yale College at 13 and graduated at 17. An outstanding personality of his time, he was honored for his sound scholarship, elected a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and served as minister of the Congregational Church at Greenfield, Conn. From 1795 until his death in 1817, he was President of Yale, simultaneously holding the Chair of Theology. His presence at Yale changed the whole moral and religious attitude of the campus, there having been only four or five professed Christians at the college, according to Prof. W. W. Sweet, when he became president. At the request of the General Association of Congregational Churches in Connecticut and with the concurrence of the Presbyterian General Assembly, he revised The Psalms of David, by I. Watts, a work which was used in the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of Connecticut for over 30 years.
Dwight did a prodigious amount of work in spite of a serious physical handicap. His eyesight, for the greater part of forty years, was so poor that his reading was done only with the greatest of difficulty and with frequent and agonizing pain behind the eyeballs.
MUSIC. STATE STREET. For comments on this tune see [Hymn 246].
276. O where are kings and empires now
Arthur C. Coxe, 1818-96
From a larger poem by Coxe, entitled “Chelsea,” containing ten stanzas of eight lines each. It is a hymn of confidence that the church, built on a solid foundation, will survive all earthly kings and empires and will be able to withstand every earthly foe.
Arthur Cleveland Coxe was born at Clifton Springs, N. Y.; graduated from the University of New York and General Theological Seminary; and then became the rector successively of St. John’s Church, Hartford, Conn.; Grace Church, Baltimore; and Calvary Church, New York City. In 1865, he was elected Bishop of Western New York. He was a member of the Hymnal Commission for the Protestant Episcopal Church, which compiled the Hymnal of 1872, but refused, out of modesty, permission to include in that work any of his own hymns.
MUSIC. ST. ANNE. For comments on this tune see [Hymn 61].