/ -^ V THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINEE. No. CCXXI. SEPTEMBER, 18G0 7 Porro hi eapientia Deus est, verus philosophus est amator Dei." —St. Acuustine. u. 7 ^' ? / J si i? u /'c J c BOSTON: BY THE PROPRIETOR, At WALKF.K, WISE, & C.O.'S, 245 Washington Street, LONDON : EDWAUD T. WHITFIELD, 178 Strand. •rdhig to Act of 1 the year 1860, by T. B. Fox, in the Clerk's Office of the District Cou^t of the District of Massachusetts. C{h Cjrnsiitut (faxmrnntx. The Examiner is published on the first of January, March, May, July, September, and November, by the Proprietor, at Walker, Wise, & Co.'s Bookstore, 245 Washington Street, Boston, in numbers of at least 156 octavo pages each, at four dollars a year, payable in advance. The Examiner will be sent, by mail, to any part of the United States, free of postage, on the remittance of a year's subscription in advance. Clergymen and others obtaining four subscribers, and re- mitting payment for one year in advance, shall receive a fifth copy gratis. Those who order from Booksellers must look to them for their numbers. g®* Single numbers seventy-five cents each. Volumes of the Examiner, neatly bound in cloth, will be given in exchange for numbers, at twenty-five cents a volume. A few complete sets of the Christian Examiner, from the commencement of the work to the present time, can be obtained on application to the Proprietor. University Press, Cambridge : Printed by Welcb, Bigelow, and Company. THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINEE. SEPTEMBER, 18 GO, matic ; Murray's shop and Sterne's Calais hotel had attractions for him almost equal to a picture-gallery. His ideal of Art and life was modified by the English standard of respectability. He loved the beautiful in minute and casual, rather than in grand and abstract forms; and the single flower he delighted to put in a glass every morning to brighten his studio, his fas- tidious taste in companionship, his habit of noting his social experience, his provident, harmonious, and well-ordered life, are in striking contrast witli the vagaries of German and the ardor of Italian painters. His patient, unimpassioncd tem- perament and well-balanced mind suggest altogether a differ- ent being from those Vasari has chronicled, or such as are met at an Ostia picnic or sketching on the Rhine ; and equally diverse from theirs are his productions, — refined expression, finish, and taste far exceeding creative and ideal power or profound sentiment. 20 FEB 7 1933 * 234 \^ Genayfl Hymns. [Sept. Art. V. — GERMAN HYMNS. 1. Evangelischer Liederschatz fur Kirche, Schule und Hans. (Treas- ury of Evangelic Song, for the Church, School, and Home.) Yon M. Albert Knapp. Stuttgart und Tubingen. 1850. 2. Ausivahl Altchristlicher Lieder. (Selection of Early Christian Hymns.) Yon Ferdinand Bassler. Berlin. 1858. 3. Evangelische Liederfreude. (Joy of Evangelic Song.) Yon Ferdi- nand Bassler. Berlin. 1853. 4. In der Stille. (In the Stillness.) Yon Karl Sudhoff. Breslau. 1853. 5. Deutsches Gesanghuch. (German Hymn-Book.) Yon Philipp Schaff. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston. 1859. 6. Sacred Lyrics. From the German. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication. Many of our readers may be glad to be made acquainted with the titles of German hymn-books which we have given above. We might, indeed, have added many more, but these are of such as we ourselves have examined. Knapp's volume contains three thousand and sixty-seven pieces. The two by Bassler comprise a copious and choice assortment of hymns, first, from the second to the fifteenth century, and then from Luther down to our own times. Sudhoff's beautiful collec- tion — a pearl of typographical beauty, and full of pearls of beautiful thought, sentiment, and expression, which might be entitled in English (like a recent little book on prayer) " The Still Hour" — is divided into five parts, headed respec- tively, " Stillness before God," " Holy Times," " Faith's Con- flict and Victory," " Life in Christ," and « The Last Things." Dr. Schaff' s neat volume contains a remarkably tasteful selec- tion of pieces, and is enriched with valuable historical notices of hymns and their authors. And, finally, the elegant volume issued by the Presbyterian Board, for the combined fidelity, fervor, and grace with which its translations are executed, deserves the highest praise. We have here indicated but a few of the best reservoirs of German sacred song. We shall try to give our readers a taste of some of the streams from which they have been filled. 18G0.] Gi rman Hymns. 286 How many hymns there may be, at this day, in the German language, is known, probably, to some of the all-knowing Germans, but not to us. The enormous abundance of the materia] for the historian of this branch of Literature may be imagined (or rather, its unimaginableness may be guessed) by the l'art that an enthusiastic amateur and antiquarian, about the middle of the last century, who had collected two hundred and fifty hymn-books, numbered, in his register of first lines, sixty thousand. To such a sea of sacred song had the few rills that gushed up in Luther's day already swelled a hundred years ago ; and when one thinks what a singing race our German brethren are, and that the hymnological catalogues omit multitudes of religious lyrics, not written by Church poets, or for Church purposes, — when one considers that almost every German poet has written a hymn, and (what it is hardly extravagant to say) that almost every German author has, at least in form, written poetry, — the very conception of what may be, by this time, the volume of that ocean of German Hymnology, (to say nothing of an actual sight of it, and then a plunge into it,) is almost enough to overwhelm the mind. Even if we confined ourselves to the popularly or ecclesias- tically acknowledged hymn-writers, there are twenty or fifty men, any one of whom would supply study for an article, not to say a volume. Luther, with his sword-and-trumpct songs of the Spirit, a handful and yet a host ; Gerhardt, the flower of German Hymnology ; Klopstock, the classic, the pious, and the patriotic, who would fain have built and occupied three tabernacles at once, on Zion, Parnassus, and the sides of his native North ; Schcfiler and Terstecgcn, the sweet and soul- sat inlying spokesmen of the mystic Church ; Zinzcndorf, the leader of the most musical Moravian ; Matthias Claudius, who had all the sweetness and simplicity of Luther, but only the sunny, and not the stormy side of his character; Arndt, the veteran hymnist of the Liberation War, who u shows the Church how one may be a Maccabce and yet a Christian ;" — any one of these, (and how many another name!) might alone fill our allotted space with pleasant and instructive study. With all this embarrassment of riches, our plan will be, while 236 German Hymns. [Sept. not neglecting the chronological, biographical, and analytical aspects of our subject, to depend most on letting the grand, simple, sweet old singers of the Fatherland (so far as they can in our English tongue, or at least by our English phrase) speak and sing for themselves. And thus, if we do not steer our readers very scientifically towards any port over the great deep that has been spoken of, we may at least let them hear across the waters some genuine tones from the rich German harp. Most of the pieces we present will probably be new to most of our readers. In a few cases we have retranslated what had been rendered before ; for we have an action against the translators, too generally, that, by substituting paraphrase for translation, by smoothing and softening, by turning homely expressions into handsome ones, and direct speech into sonorous circumlocution, they have sacrificed the nerve and grit and fire of their original, and failed to represent that simplicity which gives to lyric poetry, and to German song in particular, its most peculiar charm. We take this occasion to protest against the way in which the German Muse has been despoiled and discredited, and by men, too, who could have afforded to be generous. Holmes says: — " Unblest by any save the goat-herd's lines, Mont Blanc rose soaring through his ' sea of pines.' In vain the Arve and Arveiron dash, No hymn salutes them but the Ranz des Yaches, Till lazy Coleridge, by the morning's light, Gazed for a moment on the fields of white, And lo ! the glaciers found at length a tongue, Mont Blanc was vocal, and Chamouni sung ! " But the truth is, they had found a tongue before, in a German piece, to which " lazy Coleridge " was too lazy, perhaps, to own his obligation, though he took it, not only in spirit, but bodily, as his own, — the massive and majestic hymn of Frede- rika Brunn. We will try to give an idea at once of the metre and meaning of the original. " Up from the fir-grove's shadowy silentness, Trembling I look to thee, broAv of eternity, Dazzling peak, from whose lofty summit, Yearning, my soul to the Infinite soareth ! 18G0.] Ot rman Hymns. 237 •■ Who planted the pillar deep Id the lap of earth, Firmly upholding thy mass these ages Long? Who Lifted high in the vaulted ether, Mighty and bold, thy beaming countenance? '•Who poured you down from old Winter's eternal realm, () jagged torrents, with rumbling thunder's roar? And who commanded loud, with voice almighty, ' Here shall be Btayed the stiffening billows ' ' J . •• Whose Ginger points yon star of the morning his path? "Who crowns with blossoms the rim of eternal frost? Whose name sounds out in terrible harmonies, Through the din of thy waters, O wild Arveiron? ut Jehovah! Jehovah!' crashes the bursting ice; Avalanche thunders roll it down through the gorge. 'Jehovah!' sighs in the rustling tree-tops, — Whispers in murmuring silver-brooklets." Few of our readers, perhaps, are fully aware how much our English hymn-books owe to the German Muse. Not to speak of our indebtedness to the Moravian genius for Montgomery's sweet, solemn, and stirring strains, and to Germany for the pieces which the Wesleys translated, we may say that many of the pithiest and most pregnant lines or phrases in the Meth- odist Collection, those which are best remembered for com- bining meaning and melody, are of German extraction. There is a piece accredited to Bowring in Greenwood's Col- lection, beginning, "The heavenly spheres to thee, O God, Attune their evening hymn," which is really a translation, in a slightly changed metre, some- what more llowing, but hardly more majestic, from the German of Matthison. It runs thus : — " To Thee, Almighty One, ascends the spheral hymn ! To Thee, All-merciful, the song of seraphim ! The whole creation joins in praise sublime and tender, Where planets roll, and Buns pour forth eternal splendor. "Thy temple Nature is; how full, heavenly King! Of thy mild majesty! The flowery dress of Spring, The Summer's billowing fields, and Autumn's golden hour, And Winter's silver heights, reflect thy glorious power. 238 German Hymns. [Sept. " Before Thee what am I ? Scarce have I drawn a breath ; And but a span divides my trembling flesh from death. Yet joy and praise ! The soul, its peaceful slumber breaking, In Thy paternal arms shall know a blessed waking ! " But our chief indebtedness to German Hymnology is not so much for the individual pieces with which it has enriched, and is yet to enrich, our sacred treasury, as for the energy with which it has made the Christian lyre and the Gospel trumpet quicken that devotion to faith and freedom, that sense of the soul's immediate relation to God and his kingdom, which, long struggling in scattered souls through ages of ecclesiastical de- generacy, found its warmest and widest welcome at last on German ground and in the German heart. The pioneer (if he is no longer the prince) of popular psal- mody was Martin Luther. But a very small part of Luther's poetry is in the form of verse ; almost all the poetry he ever wrote remains in those picturesque and pungent letters of his, in his commentaries and controversies, in his sermons and speeches and pithy sayings. In these you see Luther the poet, reminding one alternately of Burns, of Quarles, and of Bunyan. Even Luther the theologian is a poet, so full is his faith of heartiness and imagination. And then how much of his poetry never was written at all ! The action of his life was epic poetry transcending all speech ; and how beautiful a pastoral poetry did he make out with his flute, his fancy, and his faith, in those charming home festivals, and in his garden walks and talks with his children ! What little verse, however, he wrote, may well be proudly prized by his countrymen, and revered by every Protestant and every Christian, not only for its intrinsic energy, majesty, and harmony, (qualities especially remarkable when one considers that Luther was breaking ground here in several respects at once, that this spiritual Hermann had to conquer a language for himself as well as a faith,) but also for the in- calculable impulse and inspiration it gave, and still gives, to faith and freedom, even where the peculiarities of his creed are rejected. It was many years before Shakespeare wrote the famous pas- sage about " the man that hath no music in himself," when Luther said : " There is no doubt that many seeds of splendid 1800.] German Hymns. virtues arc to be found in such souls as are stirred by music : and tlieni who have no feeling for it I hold no better than stocks and stones. If any man despises music, as all fanatics do, for him 1 have no liking. For music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it expels the Devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, sycophancy, and other vices. Next to theology," — that was, with Luther, the music of the spheres, — "1 give music the highest and most honorable place ; and every one knows how David and all saints have put their divine thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song." We may say that there were three reasons that set Luther to writing hymns: first, his native fondness for music ; secondly, the example of that Psalmist to whose writings similarity in inward trial, and sympathy of nature, directed him for solace ; and thirdly, his sense of the necessity of sacred song to bind his unchurched followers into a free church of the spirit. This was one of the few things he envied the Ilomish Church, — its majestic minstrelsy. A number of the grand old Latin hymns he translated (not without some natural dissatis- faction with the result, for he missed the Roman majesty of utterance) ; but the new experience, the new events, of the age, required that men should " sing unto the Lord a new song." Often he took the popular melodies of the day and furnished them with new words, as when we sing " There is a land of pure delight" to " Auld Lang Syne," or Kirk White's " Star of Bethlehem " to " Bonnie Doon." Sometimes he parodied, or " Christianly altered," the text of the old song itself. Thus the old ditty — " O thou naughty Judas ! What hast thou done, To betray our Master, < lod'a only Son ! Therefore must thou saner Hell's agony, Lucifer's companion Must forever be. Kyrie eleison ! " — suggested to Luther the following : — 240 German Hymns. [Sept. " 'T was our great transgression And our sore misdeed Made the Lord our Saviour On the cross to bleed. Not then, on thee, poor Judas, Nor on that Jewish crew, Our vengeance dare we visit, — We are to blame, not you. Kyrie eleison ! " All hail to thee, Christ Jesus, Who hungest on the tree, And bor'st for our transgressions Both shame and agony. Now beside thy Father, Reignest thou on high ; — Bless us all our lifetime, Take us when we die ! Kyrie eleison ! " But the greatest service Luther did in this department was where he furnished both the hymn and the tune, as, indeed, it was a favorite theory among the Reformers, that the poet and composer should be one and the same person. When the Holy Spirit gives any one a song, they said, it is to be expected that he will give the melody, too. In some cases, for instance "Old Hundred" and ".Monmouth," Luther's music outlived his words. We have in all only thirty-eight hymns by Luther, — a small number compared with Wesley's thousands ; they are to be weighed, however, not counted, and weighed too in the scales of an historian's and a Christian believer's living sympathy. These are the words of Spangcnberg, in his Preface to the " Cithara Lutheri " : — " One must certainly," he says, " let this be true and remain true, that, among all Meister-singers, from the days of the Apostles until now, Lutherus is and always will be the best and most accomplished ; in whose hymns and songs one does not find a vain or needless word. All flows and falls in the sweetest and neatest manner, full of spirit and doctrine, so that his every word gives outright a sermon of its own, or, at least, a singular reminiscence. There is nothing forced, nothing foisted in or patched up, nothing fragmentary. The rhymes are easy and good, the words choice and proper, the meaning clear and intelli- I860.] German Hymns. 241 gible, the melodies lovely and hearty, and. in tumma, all is bo rare and majestic, >o full of pith and power, bo cheering and comforting, that, in sooth, you will not find his equal, much Less his master." This was written in 1545. And in 1845 the editor of Luther's Hymn- Hook ends his Preface : " And now go forth, thou fine little book, and show the German people how their greatest hymnist believed, prayed, and sang." To this Ilymn-Book Luther himself gave a " Preface for all good Ilymn-Books," as he calls it, headed " Frau Musica" (hardly a translatable phrase, which we may paraphrase the Goddess of Music'), in whose name it was to be supposed spoken. It runs thus, and we give it in full, because we be- lieve it has never been before Englished : — " Far before all earthly pleasures You will find these heavenly measures, Which 1 give you with my singing, And instruments harmonious ringing. No evil mind can there intrude, \ here men sing in cheerful mood; No envy, hate, nor wrath can stay, — Sorrow must rise and haste away ; No flinty greed, nor wrinkled care, Nor sullenness can tarry there. And every one is sure of this, Such pleasure nothing sinful is, But pleases God himself tenfold More than earth's other joys all told. It interrupts the Devil's work, When in the heart foul murders lurk: And this King David well can prove, "Whose good, sweet harping olttimes drove The evil spirit out of Saul "When he on murderous thoughts would fall. It makes the heart composed and still » To entertain God's word and will. So Eliseus found it too, "Whose harp to him the Spirit drew. It is the year's best time to me When all the birds make melody : They Beam to (ill all heaven and earth With sounds of music and of mirth; And chief of all. the Nightingale, "With her enchanting Bong, I hail, VOL. LXIX. — 5th S. VOL. VII. NO. II. 21 242 German Hymns. [Sept. Who breathes o'er all her joy and bliss ; Thanks must she ever have for this, And He, the dear Lord God, much more, Who made her so that she, before All other songstresses, should be A mistress of sweet minstrelsy. To Him, all day and all night long She sits and sings with tireless song. Him, too, my song shall ever praise And bless and thank through endless days ! " One does not readily imagine now what a hold Luther's little army of hymns must have taken on the people's heart. The new faith was not only a new doctrine, but a new song. God, says Luther, is calling on all the earth to sing a new song, and whoso will not join therein shows that he believes not into the new, joyous Testament, but under the old, lazy, unsocial Testament of the Jews and the Pope. Hardly any of Luther's hymns are much known in English, except the one suggested by the 46th Psalm, the famous " Mar- seillaise of the Reformation," as Heine called it, — " A tower of refuge is our God," — which has again and again been translated. We have room for only a specimen or two of the style, structure, and spirit of this class of his compositions. Almost every one is familiar with those majestic stanzas, quoted in D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation, and often before, beginning, — " Flung to the heedless winds, Or on the waters cast, Their ashes shall be watched And gathered at the last." They profess to be a translation from a hymn written by Luther on the burning of two martyrs at Brussels, in 1523. They form, indeed, in themselves and by themselves, though only a fragment, a sweet and soul-stirring poem. They speak to the heart like a trumpet. But it is not just the trumpet Luther blew. It is a little more silvery than that was. To change the figure, these lines (which are rather a transfusion than a translation) represent their original somewhat as do I860.] German Hymns. 243 those ideal pictures of places painted after a lapse of time by artists of genius, and called memories. We can only hope to give, ourselves, a hint of the picture and the music ; indeed, it seems impossible to combine in our modern speech the strong, antique simplicity of the original, with its singular melody and harmony. It was in the very autumn when Hans Sachs, who sat heat- ing time on his lapstone to the music of the blessed revival, came forth with his "Nightingale," — who, soaring above the clouds, announces the return of day to a world so long slum- bering in darkness, or walking in a dim, dubious, malignant lunar light, — that Luther, hearing of the good confession the two Augustinian monks had witnessed at Brussels, sent forth his hymn with a letter to the churches in those parts, in the beginning of which he says that the word is fulfilled again: " The flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." The hymn, consisting of over a hundred lines, begins : — " A brave new song aloud we sing, To tell the wondrous story. What God hath done, our Lord and King, And sound his praise and glory. At Brussels, down in Netherland, The Lord of gifts and graces Hath well revealed his mighty hand, By two young boys, whose faces Now shine in heavenly placi Then, after detailing, in precisely this measure, the particu- lar- of the trial, condemnation, and execution, it concludes with the stanzas which we referred to as having been so freely paraphrased, and which somewhat literally run as follows : — " Their ashes will not rest; world-wide They fly through every nation. No cave nor grave, no tain nor tide, Can hide the abomination. They whom the t'oe with murderous flame Had burnt to death, — upspringing, Lol in his ears they shout his shame. Till every land is ringing With their triumphant singing. 244 German Hymns. [Sept. " Let Satan's lie go round, — 't is vain ; Soon all his arts shall fail him ; God, in His Word, hath come again, — With thankful hearts we '11 hail Him. Hard by stands Summer at the door ; Grim Winter's chain is broken ; The tender flowers put forth once more : These things His hand betoken Who '11 do what he hath spoken." With one more specimen we shall pass on : — "A HYMN FOR THE CHILDREN, WHEREWITH THEY CAST OUT THE POPE IN MID-LENT. " We drive the Pope with iron rod From church of Christ and house of God, Where he has murderously ruled, And many precious souls befooled. " Pack off, begone, apostate son ! Thou scarlet bride of Babylon ! Thou art the Beast and Antichrist, Whose lies have many a soul enticed. « Thy Bulls and thy Decretals lie All sealed and hid from every eye, That robbed the world in God's own name And put Christ's blood to open shame. " The Romish Dagon 's lost his head, The rightful Pope we take instead : *T is Christ, the Rock, God's only Son, Whom His true Church is built upon. " High Priest o'er all is he, Lord Christ, Who on the cross was sacrificed ; His blood flowed freely for our sin, His wounds the true indulgence win. " The Church obeys his Word's behest, Him God the Father doth invest ; The Head of Christendom is he : Praised be his name eternally. " Now summer time will soon appear ; Christ send us all a peaceful year ! Lord, save us from the Pope and Turk, And finish all thy blessed work ! " 1800.] German Hymns. 245 There are, of course, some among these holy songs of the R brmers, both of Luther and of his followers, which cannot, in any proper sense, he called hymns, being simple versifica- tions of creed and commandment. Even these, however, are not without a certain poetic interest and inspiration, to one who considers what news even the old truths of Scripture were to a newly awakened people, whose tongue was just being loosed, as well as it> ears unstopped. Far otherwise was it when, as the -lowing faith cooled and crystallized into creed, and Prot- estantism had organized itself and grew to a church and state affair, and hymn-writing became a technical business; then ill-- substitution of rhymed homilies, or versified controversial sermons, or doggerel anathemas, for the true hymn — the voice of praise, the breathing after rest, the sinking of the soul into God — became a grievous impertinence and a gross imposition. Of this work there was more than enough in Germany during the century following Luther. No wonder that it provoked a reaction in the direction of that mysticism and quietism, which at length found a local habitation and a name in the Moravian communion. John Schefiler of Silesia (self-styled Angelus Silesius, " a Papal angel," says an old writer, " but a good one ") lived from 1(3^4-77. His parents were Lutheran, but weariness of the word-warfare and the sword-warfare of the times, — of dryness in the fold to which he belonged, and distraction and distress in the world without (it was the time of the Thirty Years' War), — impelled him to take refuge in mysticism and finally in Cathol- icism, where, as Gcrvinus suggests, his mystical theosophy could find more comfort than among the argus-eyed Lutheran theo- logucs of his time. He, too, was one of the class of whom Jean Paul says : " They were educated to be physicians, but the Spirit said, ' There are deeper wounds than those of the body,' and so they became authors." lie wrote six books of rhymed epigrams, entitled, " The Cherubic Pilgrim of John Angelus Silesius, or Spiritual Sentences and Aphorisms in Verse, a Guide to Divine Contemplation." lie also wrote " Spiritual Songs of the Psyche in Love with her Jesus," of which these verses may serve as a sample : — 21* 246 German Hymns. [Sept. " Nothing fair on earth I see, But it straightway shows to me Jesus Christ, my fairest star, Source of all fair things that are. " Sweetly m the garden-beds Stately lilies lift their heads ; But than they far higher-priced Is my Lily, Jesus Christ. " When I to the fountain go, When I watch the brooklet's flow : Of that purest fount I think, In his tide of love I sink. " When I see the flocks go by, Inwardly my heart doth sigh : Ah ! God's Lamb, how mild is he, Who, as Bridegroom, weddeth me. " Sweetly sings the nightingale, Sweet the flute-tones down the vale ; But of tones the sweetest one Is the title, Mary's Son ! " There is one hymn of Scheffler's, — suggested apparently by that touching passage in Augustine's Confessions, " Too late have I come to love thee, thou beauty, so ancient and yet so new, too late have I come to love thee!" — which is in the very finest vein of the mystic piety and poesy. He sings : — " Alas that I not earlier knew Thee, Whom no man ever fully knows ! That I not earlier clave unto Thee, Thou highest bliss and true repose ! how my heart with sorrow burns, That it so late to love Thee learns ! " I went astray in passion's mazes, 1 sought, but found Thee not ; — my sight Was dazed with earthly glory's blazes, Enamored of created light. But now at length, all praise to Thee ! Through faith Thy beauteous face I see. I860.] G< man Hymns. 247 " True Sun, I tliank thee, that hast given The glorious lighl of truth to me ; I thank thee, holy joy <>t' Heaven, That thou hast made me glad and free; I thank thee. () thou Power Divine, That kindlest this new life of mine There was, indeed, a noble band of holy singers, even in this troublous time, who lived above the world and vet in it, — whose spirits were so finely tempered in the furnace of affliction, that their expression was only chastened into a calm serenity, and all their strains expressed the feeling and taught the lesson that faith and piety towards God are most truly proved by the quiet enjoyment of his daily gifts, and devotion to daily duty ; and the chief of these, and a name justly dearer to the German heart than that of any other save Luther, in the crowded annals of Ilynmology, was Paul Gerhardt. He lived from 1606-76. The zeal with which, in the pulpit, he plunged into the theo- logical contest between Lutheran and Calvinist, and the perse- cution he suffered, had no power to embitter the hopeful flow of his daily inner or outer life. Gerhardt's hymns are pervaded by a spirit of the most cheer- ful and healthy piety, — a piety which shows itself not merely in direct devotion to God and to Christ, but in a pure and childlike love of nature, and good-will towards men. They exemplify Coleridge's lines : — " He prayeth best who lovcth best All things both great and small ; For the dear God "who loveth us, He made and loveth all." They have the homely simplicity of Luther's, and a strength like his, if not quite equal to it, with a versatility, smoothness, and literary finish not to be found in Luther's, and unsurpassed in any period of German Ilynmology. Gerhardt has been well described as one of a class in whom Christianity appears, not in contradistinction to humanity, but as humanity itself, in its most genuine form. The critic who says this contrasts Gerhardt's unpreoccupied enjoyment and celebration of God's natural world with Luther's way of using in psalmody these familiar things, lie says, " Even when Luther 248 German Hymns. [Sept. composes a child's hymn, it rings out from the mighty man's breast like a trumpet-toned choral." There are only two of Gerhardt's pieces that have become domesticated among us. The one is the ardent apostrophe to Jesus, beginning, " O head, so gashed and bleeding, With scorn and shame bowed down ! O head for sinners pleading Beneath that thorny crown ! O head, erewhile adorned With grace and majesty, Now mocked, reviled, and scorned, My greetings rise to thee ! " — being a paraphrase of a Latin hymn of St. Bernard's, which forms the conclusion of a series of seven, addressed successively to the feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face of the dying Christ. The other, which has also been several times translated, is the one on submission, beginning, " Commit to him thy trouble," and has this quaintness in its structure, that it is a sort of acrostic, consisting of just as many stanzas as there are words, in the German, of the text, " Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass," — each word beginning a stanza. We give a hymn which shows his piety in a more familiar play, and which, whatever may be said of it as a lyric, is cer- tainly a noble compend of life- wisdom : — " Thou know'st full well thou art a man ; Then wherefore shouldst thou strive For things which only God's wise plan Both can and will contrive V With purblind wit and stubborn will Through thousand cares thou gropest still, Forever wondering, What will to-morrow bring ? " Lift up thy head, see everywhere, Around thee and above, The tokens of thy Father's care, His all-providing love. I860.] German Hymns. 249 Thy bread, bed, clothes, irere ready here Before thou didsl on earth appear; The milk awaited thee That nursed thy infancy. "And yet, forsooth, thy feeble Bight Must be life's guide for thee ! Thou hast no faith in higher liirlit Than what thine eye- can see. Whatever thou purposed to do, Thy blear-eyed sense must carry through ; What that directs is wil All else thou dost despise. For wilful passion's Bake, Because thy vain and foolish thought Did death for lite mistake ! And had, then, God hut let be done What thou hadst purposed and begun, Thy folly long ago Had wrought thy overthrow. 11 But God clears up what we perplex, His love makes plain the way ; He cheers us when our souls we vex, And guides us when we stray. For He is faithful, good, and kind, And bears a Father's heart and mind, And us poor silly sheep From ruin's brink will keep. " How oft He hides himself, and still In silence works our good, While we, with wayward heart and will, Go on in sullen mood, Seek here and there, and nothing find, Because our pride has made us blind, And vainly strive to tear Our feet from out the snare ! " But God all-wise makes straight his ways, More sure if not so short ; The storm he lulls, the wind he lays, And brings us safe to port. And then, when all is done and past, Then feeble man can Bee at last, How wise the Father's thought, How kindly God hath wrought. 250 German Hymns. [Sept. " Then, heart, take courage, hope the best ! Let care and fretting be : God has a heart that will not rest In planning good for thee. He cannot hate thee, — no, nor yet, Believe me, can thy God forget ! Let this quell every fear, — To God each child is dear. " Do like a child, and lean and rest Upon thy Father's arm ; Pour out thy troubles on his breast, And thou shalt know no harm ; Then shalt thou by his hand be brought On ways which now thou knowest not, Up through a well-fought fight, To heavenly peace and light." The first half of the eighteenth century was marked by a revival of emotional religion from the old formalism into which Lutheranism had degenerated, corresponding to the little later Methodist movement in England, creating the so-called pietistic period, and bringing forward a new school of hymn-writers. The foremost of these, chronologically, and one who stands as a middle point between the Mystic and the Moravian periods, is Benjamin Schmolke, who lived from 1672-1737, " a truly pious, much-tried shepherd of souls, of eminent poetic gifts, with which he edified and blessed many. He wrote more than a thousand hymns ; — hence many less successful ones came from his pen. But not a few of them have a quite peculiar depth and warmth and an imperishable worth. " So says my Evangelical authority. Gervinus, the historian of German poetry, who is a little of what the Germans call a Philistine, speaks of Schmolke somewhat contemptuously, — with what justice we leave to be inferred from two specimens which we shall presently give. He seems to be fond of pithy, proverbial verses. One of his hymns begins : — " My life is where my love is ; I am, where I am not ; My home in heaven above is, There dwells my every thought." Another runs : — I860.] Gi rman Hymns. 251 '•Mr to-day, to-morrow thee I This i> what the bells arc ringing, When the dead, in Borrow, we To the field of God are bringing. Graves ! ye murmur solemnly, Me to-day, — to-morrow the '" Montgomery's hymn, beginning, " Goto dark Gethsemane," would seem to have been suggested by one of Schmolke's, of which this is the first stanza : — " Go, in thought, to Golgotha, Christian ! whore thy Saviour bleedeth I Take to heart each pang that, there, With thy cruel coldness pleadeth. Hard as rock thy heart must be, It' thou this unmoved canst see." In the two specimens of his hymns which we present entire, we cannot presume to preserve the neat finish and flow of the original, but only the exact thought, a good degree of the spirit, and a fac-simile of the structure of the verse. "AT LAST! "Yes. at last, our God shall make Blessed end of pain and sorrow; Time's hard yoke, at last, shall break; Dawn, at last, that endless morrow, "When the angel-reapers come Bringing Heaven's bright harvest home. 11 Canaan's fields shall smile at last, Egypt's bondage left behind us ; When »>'er OUvet we 've passed, Tabor's heights, at last, shall find us ; Sorrow's midnight shades withdrawn, Freedom's day at last shall dawn. " Precious words I at last ! at last ! All our crosses J e can sweeten : Life's tree si reams shall llow full Past, When His rod the rock hath smitten. Courage, heart ! thy doubts be dumb! For ' at lasl ' shall surely come ! " 252 German Hymns. [Sept. « HOLD ON ! HOLD IX ! HOLD OUT ! " Hold o??, my heart, in thy believing ! The steadfast only, wins the crown. He who, when stormy waves are heaving, Parts with his anchor, shall go down ; But he who Jesus holds through all Shall stand, though earth and heaven should fall. " Hold in thy murmurs, Heaven arraigning ! The patient sees God's loving face ; Who bear their burdens uncomplaining, 'T is they that win the Father's grace ; He wounds himself who braves the rod, And sets himself to fight with God. " Hold out ! There comes an end to sorrow : Hope, from the dust, shall conquering rise ; The storm foretells a sunnier morrow ; The cross points on to Paradise. The Father reigneth ; cease all doubt ; Hold on, my heart, hold in, hold out ! " The sweetest singer of this school or period, in whom it may- be said to have culminated, is one whom we have already mentioned in the early part of our paper, Gerhardt Terstee- gen, — familiarly known, in his day at least, as " Father Ter- steegen," — a Westphalian ribbon-weaver, who lived from 1697 to 1769. He is the author of a beautiful hymn, which has been several times translated, but not so as to represent the liveliness of the thought and of the song : — " Come, children, let 's be going ; The night steals on apace, 'T is dangerous longer staying Here in this lonely place. Come, gird your loins around ; From strength to strength ascending, Courageously contending, To life eternal bound. " The way shall not appall us, Though narrow, rough, and steep ; For heavenly voices call us The upward path to keep. Arise and follow them ! Trustful, all else forgetting, His face each pilgrim setting Full toward Jerusalem. 18G0.] G( rman IL/mns. 258 " Conic, children ! lei us onward ; The Father with as goea ; His arms >hall guard the vanward osl our fiercest With him to guide and cheer, Hia love like sunshine o'er us, His truth a >hield before us, O what have we to tear ! " Move on, serene and solemn, To the Commander's word : Behold the fiery column, The presence of the Lord ! 15c linn each step and eye. Who follows Him, unshrinking, Shall find, in death when sinking. Escape and triumph nigh. " Come, each one eheer his brother ! As pilgrims, hand in hand, Rejoicing in each other, We tread this foreign land. Come, show a childlike love, All wayside >t riti-s forbearing ! Angels unseen are sharing Our march toward realms above. " And if, by foes surrounded, A feeble brother fall, Lift up the weak and wounded, Ye strong ! — then rally all, Close up your ranks for God ! Strive each to be the lowliest, And yet to be the holiest, In this our pilgrim road. " It will not last much longer, — Wait, brothers, patiently ! It will not be much longer, Ere we our home shall see. There will be endless rest, When witli the saints we gather At home around the Father; — How blest the hour, — how blest ! " Before taking leave of the hymns of Germany in the sev- enteenth century with these few, meagre glimpses, we would vol. lxix. — 5th s. vol. VII. NO. II. 22 254 German Hymns. [Sept. say a word of a sweet hymn of the widest popularity, which undoubtedly comes to us from that century, and probably, in part at least, from that country. We mean the one beginning, in our common version, " Jerusalem, iny happy home." It is not unlikely that this, like so many other hymns of the mystics, was inspired by the musical meditations of St. Augus- tine, who says, in prose that has not only rhythm, but even rhyme, in the original, " holy city, beauteous city, from afar I salute thee, I cry to thee, I long for thee. For I desire to see thee and to rest in thee, but I am not suffered to, being detained by the flesh." We have not, however, succeeded in tracing the hymn any farther back than to the German of Meyfart, who was born in 1590, and in whose version it runs somewhat as follows : — " Jerusalem, thou high-built, fair abode ! "Would God I were in thee ! My yearning heart grows weary of this road, And is no more with me. On wings of faith it cleaveth The cloudless upper air, And far behind it leaveth This world of toil and care. " O beauteous day ! and hour more beauteous still ! When wilt thou come and shine ? And I, while joy and praise my bosom fill, This yearning soul of mine, A chosen pledge, deliver Into God's faithful hand, That it may dwell forever In Heaven, its native land ? " O honored seat ! my spirit greeteth thee ! Unbar the gate of grace ! How long my soul hath yearned thy walls to see, And find in thee a place, To quit this world's vexation And all its vanity, And hail the great salvation My God hath kept for me ! " What countless tribes, what troops of shining ones. Pour forth from out thy streets ! I860.] German Hymns, -5o All that from earth went up, God'fl choseD sons, To take their heavenly Beats, Come with the crown, to meet me, And take me by the hand, Anil on my journey greet me II tine from that tearful Land. •• Prophets august, Apostles throned on high, Mart} rs, a countless host. And all that bore tin- cross in agony, Mocked by the tyrant's boast, I see, above there, shining In freedom's glorious light, While round each brow is twining A garland starry bright. " O when I reach at length that Paradise, And climb that heavenly hill, "What sights of beauty then shall meet my eyes, What praise my mouth shall fill ! What loud hosannas blending Shall fire my ravished soul! Through ages never ending What hallelujahs roll!" When we speak of the Moravian Ilymnology, we use the word with some latitude, signifying by it, not merely the hymns which have been written by professed Moravians, but that large class which the Moravian faith and feeling, manifested in so many quarters long before their brotherhood was organized, inspired. At the same time the Moravians have a prolific h\ 'innist of their own, — no less a man than the founder of their order, Count Zinzcndorf himself. Born in 1700, he was god- son of the famous old mystic, Spener, and early a pupil of the hardly less celebrated " hero of the faith," Franke. Though some of his numerous hymns are, with all their fluency and fervor, neat in expression and pure in taste, many of them are disfigured by a childish fondling of sacred images, by that extreme of sensuous mysticism, which finds in the Song of Solomon the hints and materials of its inspiration. Here is a favorable specimen of his style: — •• I [earl to heart in love united, Rest ye in the heart divine ; 256 German Hymns. [Sept. Let your zeal, by Jesus lighted, To his glory burn and shine ! He the head and we the members, We the light, the fountain he, He the master, we the brethren, He is ours, and his are we. " Come, ye children, mercy sharing, And your covenant renew ! To our conquering Captain swearing, From the heart, allegiance true ! When you feel your love-chain failing, In temptation's mighty strain, Seek the Lord in prayer prevailing, Till he temper it again. " Ah, thou gracious Friend, united Keep henceforth thy chosen flock, That, by thy last words incited, They in heart-felt love may walk ! Thou, who art the uncreated Word of truth and life, unite All that are illuminated By the clearness of thy light ! " Make our bond still wider, stronger, With each other and with thee, Till, on earth's whole round, no longer We one severed member see. When our love, a pure flame, blazes, That from thee its brightness drew, Then the world shall own, with praises, We are thy disciples true." In no Liturgy does so much of the expression take the hymn form as in the Moravian. The very name Moravian seems almost to convey, of itself, the twin ideas of mysticism and music. Very beautiful and wholesome, when rightly regulated, is that union of elements. But there was a period, of about ten years, in the middle of the eighteenth century, which showed the danger of letting anything but sober reason hold the reins, even (if we should not say especially') in religion. It has been called by the brethren themselves the period of " child's play," and seems to have led Zinzcndorf to retract several of his hymns. In a Moravian Service-Book of 1823, under the head of Hymns for the Passion, we find a long 1800.] German Hymns. 257 prayer in alternate verses, addressed entirely to the side of the crucified .Jesus, perhaps a translation of one of those by St. Bernard already referred to. It begins: — " (-1//.) Be thy name called glorious, Lamb of I rod, thai died for us ! We hail the opening of thy side : Let all thy wounds he glorified. Angels desire to look upon What, for us mortals, there was done; (Sisters.) But angels veil their shrinking sight, Awe-struck with that mysterious light : (.1//.) Only the Church of Christ, the Bride, (Mi/tister.) Which he has built from out his side, (All.) She sees his wounds in glorious light, "With open and unveiled sight, (ilory and thanks to thee Through all eternity, Heart that for us did break, Transpierced for our sake ! (Minister.) Look up, and see the rocky cleft, And in the cleft the fountain-reft "Whence you, ye saints, God's chosen race, Were digged and hewed of his free grace ! Amen!" But, with all its dangers, the idea in which the Moravian communion originated is too true to a want of the human heart to be ever abandoned ; for it rests upon that word of the Master, " He that doeth the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother ; " and the predominance of the musical element in their worship may well stand as a pre- sentiment of the higher harmonies of the perfect Church. 22 258 St. Augustine at Hippo. [Sept. Art. VI — ST. AUGUSTINE AT HIPPO. 1. The Confessions of Augustine, edited, with an Introduction, by William G. T. Shedd. Andover : Warren F. Draper. 1860. 2. Bohringer's Kirchengeschichte in Biographien. Band I. Abth. 3. 3. Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, by St. Au- gustine, Bishop of Hippo. Oxford: John Henry Parker. 1844. The handsome edition of the Confessions of Augustine just published, under the supervision of Prof. Shedd, cannot fail to be most acceptable to a large religious public. The work is a reprint of the old English translation, already republished in Boston in 1843, and which has seemed to us, on a somewhat careful comparison with the original text, remarkably true to the author's meaning : but the present edition is far superior, in elegance and convenience, both to its predecessor in this country and to the Oxford translation under Pusey's super- vision. The preliminary essay by the editor, if longer than need be, contains much that is valuable, and is well adapted to the class of readers among whom the book will chiefly go. Its characterization of the most remarkable features of the Confessions, however superfluous for those already familiar with them, is just and clear, and may lead fresh students into this wonderful work, which exhibits the consciousness of a great soul>, so clarified by intense religious experience that the reader sees, as in a forest pool, at once the sediment which has been deposited below, and the blue heaven reflected from above. Aurelius Augustinus was born in the little Numidian town of Tagaste, November 13, A. D. 354. His father, Patricius, was a pagan ; his mother, Monica, one of the saintliest Christian women that ever taught a child to pray. From his birth, he tells us, he was " sealed with the mark of His cross, and salted with His salt." In all his wanderings through error and sin, this mother's love was ever drawing his heart toward the heav- enly peace in which she abode perpetually. She yearned over him through those long years when he filled himself with the A FEW COMPLETE SETS OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER MAKING SIXTY-EIGHT VOLUMES, may be obtained of the Proprietor, at WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S, 245 Washington Street, # BOSTON. NUMBERS WANTED. A liberal price will be paid for Nos. 1 to 12, inclusive, of the Christian Examiner. Also, for copies of the Examiner for January and March, 1860. CONTENTS, Art - Page I. Paul's Argument for the Abolition or the Law . .157 II. The Women of Thackeray 167 HI. Dr. Huntington's Introduction to Bickersteth . .191 IY. Leslie 218 V. German Hymns 234 VI. St. Augustine at Hippo ....... 258 VII. Review of Current Literature 280 New Publications Received 310