Written as a Christmas carol but sings also of the later life of Jesus in Nazareth, Galilee, and at Calvary. It was contributed to The School Hymnal (Presbyterian), edited by Dr. Benson in 1899.
Louis Fitzgerald Benson was born in Philadelphia and educated for the bar. After seven years of practice, he gave up law to enter Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained a Presbyterian minister. He became minister of the Church of the Redeemer, Germantown, Pa., but resigned his charge after six years, to begin his great work as editor of hymn books and writer and lecturer on hymnology. His book, The English Hymn, unfortunately out of print, has no rival as a source of accurate information about the development and use of English and American hymns. His Studies in Familiar Hymns (2 vols.) is unexcelled. For forty years Dr. Benson rendered outstanding service to all students of hymnology through his writings and lectures on the subject. He composed 32 original hymns and made 16 translations from the Latin which were published as Hymns, Original and Translated, Philadelphia, 1925, in which the present hymn appears.
MUSIC. BETHLEHEM, also called “Evangel,” was composed by Gottfried W. Fink, 1783-1846, German minister, musician, music critic, and editor, who was appointed in 1842 to a Professorship of Music at Leipzig. It is a joyful tune in popular style, especially suitable for large choruses or congregations.
93. O Master Workman of the race
Jay T. Stocking, 1870-1936
A hymn entitled, “The Carpenter of Nazareth,” written for young people while the author was watching some carpenters at work in an Adirondack Camp. It is one of a number of excellent modern hymns concerned with the earthly life of Jesus and connecting Him with our daily life and labor. Others are “O Master let me walk with Thee” ([223]), “Where cross the crowded ways” ([222]), and “O Son of Man, Thou madest known” ([373]).
Jay T. Stocking was educated at Amherst, Yale Divinity School, and at the University of Berlin. He was ordained in 1901, held a number of prominent pastorates in the Congregational Church, and was made moderator of the Congregational Council in 1934. He is the author of several books and was a member of the Commission on International Justice and Good Will of the Federal Council of Churches.
MUSIC. ST. MICHEL’S appeared in a collection of Psalms and Hymns, compiled by William Gawler, and published in London around 1784 to 1789, for use of the children of an orphan asylum at Lambeth. It was set to “Creator Spirit, by whose aid,” a long-meter hymn. Later the tune was changed to common meter double. It is also known by the names “St. Maria,” “Beulah,” and “Woolrich Common.” The composer of the tune is not known. The Hymnary of the United Church of Canada attributes it to Haydn. At No. 125 of the Hymnary it appears as “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” where it is erroneously attributed, in the earlier editions, to Thomas Hastings—an error carried over from the Gesangbuch mit Noten. Hastings was born at about the same time the tune was already in print! It is possible, of course, that he made an arrangement of the tune, and thereby getting his name associated, inadvertently, with its composition.
Wm. Gawler, c. 1750-1809, was a London musician and music publisher. In 1785, while organist at the Lambeth “Asylum,” a home, the first of its kind in England, for fatherless girls, he published the book Psalms and Hymns, referred to, later adding a supplement. Gawler made other compilations of music books and also did some composing.