A Song of Comfort. God will care for and help every one in His own time. Cast thy burden on the Lord and He shall sustain thee. Psalm 55:22.
The hymn arose out of the author’s personal need and suffering. On his way to Königsberg, to attend the University at that place, Neumark was robbed of his money and stripped of all his possessions except his prayer book and a small amount of cash which, he had sewn into his clothing. He was therefore destitute and in despair, with no prospect of going to school or making a living. After many privations, he at last received an appointment as private tutor in the family of a judge at Kiel, “which good fortune, coming suddenly and as if fallen from heaven,” he wrote, “greatly rejoiced me, and on that very day I composed to the honour of my beloved Lord the hymn, well known here and there, ‘Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten,’ and had certainly cause enough to thank the Divine compassion for such unlooked-for grace shown to me.”
Neumark was now able to enter the University and became a student of law and poetry. After years of hardship, he finally had the good fortune of being appointed court poet, librarian, and registrar to Duke Wilhelm II of Saxe-Weimar, and custodian of the ducal archives. Shortly before his death in 1681 he became blind. The hymns he wrote during his prosperous years were markedly inferior to those written during his earlier years of hardship and privation.
The translation was made by Rev. J. J. Voth, North Newton, Kansas, then a member of the Bethel College staff, and pastor of the Gnadenberg Mennonite Church near Whitewater, Kansas. There is also a fine translation of this hymn, by Catherine Winkworth.
MUSIC. WER NUR DEN LIEBEN GOTT is wrongly attributed in the Hymnary to the author of the words. Neumark wrote an extraordinarily fine tune, in the minor mode, for these words, used in many collections, including the Canadian Mennonite Gesangbuch, 1942. The present tune is simpler and more popular than Neumark’s. The composer is not known.
572. Our Lord, His passion ended
Francis C. Burkitt, 1864—
A hymn for Whitsuntide.
Francis Crawford Burkitt, born in London, is a scholar of wide repute in England, the author of many linguistic and theological works. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Edinburgh, Dublin, St. Andrews, and Oxford. Burkitt was, for many years, Professor of Divinity in Cambridge University.
The meter of the hymn is unique in that the second quatrain of each stanza changes from the common lambic (- —) to the Trochaic (— -).