rise above mediocrity. His style, if less refined, is also less
subjective and more simple than that of most of his contemporaries.
Among his best and most attractive works, which
indeed, it would be difficult to praise too highly, are the
“Hosianna David’s Sohn,” for Palm Sunday—much resembling
a shorter hymn by Jeremy Taylor; and the Ascension, Whitsuntide
and Sabbath hymns—“Heavenward doth our journey
tend,” “Come deck our feast to-day,” and “Light of light,
Dessler.
Hiller.
enlighten me.” Dessler was a greater poet than
Schmolke. Few hymns, of the subjective kind, are
better than his “I will not let Thee go, Thou Help in time of
need,” “O Friend of souls, how well is me,” and “Now, the
pearly gates unfold.” Hiller (1699–1769), was a pastor
in Württemberg who, falling into ill-health during the
latter part of his ministry, published a Geistliche Liederhöstlein in a
didactic vein, with more taste than power, but (as Miss Winkworth
says) in a tone of “deep, thoughtful, practical piety.” They
were so well adapted to the wants of his people that to this day
Hiller’s Casket is prized, next to their Bibles, by the peasantry of
Württemberg; and the numerous emigrants from that part of
Germany to America and other foreign countries generally
Arnold.
take it with them wherever they go. Arnold, a
professor at Giessen, and afterwards a pastor in
Brandenburg, was a man of strong will, uncompromising
character and austere views of life, intolerant and controversial
towards those whose doctrine or practice he disapproved, and
more indifferent to separatism and sectarianism than the
“orthodox” generally thought right. His hymns, like those
of Augustus M. Toplady, whom in these respects he resembled,
unite with considerable strength more gentleness and breadth
of sympathy than might be expected from a man of such a
Tersteegen.
character. Tersteegen (1697–1769), who never formally
separated himself from the “Reformed” communion,
in which he was brought up, but whose sympathies
were with the Moravians and with Zinzendorf, was, of all the more
copious German hymn-writers after Luther, perhaps the most
remarkable man. Pietist, mystic and missionary, he was also a
great religious poet. His 111 hymns were published in 1731, in
a volume called Geistlicher Blumengärtlein inniger Seelen.
They are intensely individual, meditative and subjective.
Wesley’s adaptations of two—“Lo! God is here; let us adore,”
and “Thou hidden Love of God, whose source”—are well known.
Among those translated by Miss Winkworth, “O God, O Spirit,
Light of all that live,” and “Come, brethren, let us go,” are
specimens which exhibit favourably his manner and power.
Miss Cox speaks of him as “a gentle heaven-inspired soul,
whose hymns are the reflection of a heavenly, happy life, his mind
being full of a child-like simplicity”; and his own poem on
the child-character, which Miss Winkworth has appropriately
connected with Innocents’ day (“Dear Soul, couldst thou
become a child”)—one of his best compositions, exquisitely
conceived and expressed—shows that this was in truth the
ideal which he sought to realize. The hymns of Zinzendorf
Zinzendorf.
are often disfigured by excess in the application of the
language and imagery of human affections to divine
objects; and this blemish is also found in many
later Moravian hymns. But one hymn, at least, of Zinzendorf
may be mentioned with unqualified praise, as uniting the merits
of force, simplicity and brevity—“Jesu, geh voran” (“Jesus,
lead the way”), which is taught to most children of religious
parents in Germany. Wesley’s “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness”
is a translation from Zinzendorf.
The transition from Tersteegen and Zinzendorf to Gellert and Klopstock marks strongly the reaction against Pietism which took place towards the middle of the 18th century. The Geistlichen Oden und Lieder of Christian F. Gellert were published in 1757, and are said to have been Gellert. received with an enthusiasm almost like that which “greeted Luther’s hymns on their first appearance.” It is a proof of the moderation both of the author and of his times that they were largely used, not only by Protestant congregations, but in those German Roman Catholic churches in which vernacular services had been established through the influence of the emperor Joseph II. They became the model which was followed by most succeeding hymn-writers, and exceeded all others in popularity till the close of the century, when a new wave of thought was generated by the movement which produced the French Revolution. Since that time they have been, perhaps, too much depreciated. They are, indeed, cold and didactic, as compared with Scheffler or Tersteegen; but there is nevertheless in them a spirit of genuine practical piety; and, if not marked by genius, they are pure in taste, and often terse, vigorous and graceful.
Klopstock, the author of the Messiah, cannot be considered great as a hymn-writer, though his “Sabbath Hymn” (of which there is a version in Hymns from the Land of Luther) is simple and good. Generally his hymns (ten of which are translated in Klopstock.Sheppard’s Foreign Sacred Lyre) are artificial and much too elaborate.
Of the “romantic” school, which came in with the French Revolution, the two leading writers are Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg, called “Novalis,” and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, the celebrated author of Undine and Sintram—both romance-writers, as well as poets. The genius of Novalis was early lost to the world; he died in 1801, not thirty years old. Some of his hymns are very beautiful; but even in such works as “Though all to Thee were faithless,” and “If only He is mine,” there is a feeling of insulation and of despondency as to good in the actual world, which was perhaps inseparable from his Fouqué. ecclesiastical idealism. Fouqué survived till 1843. In his hymns there is the same deep flow of feeling, richness of imagery and charm of expression which distinguishes his prose works. The two missionary hymns—“Thou, solemn Ocean, rollest to the strand,” and “In our sails all soft and sweetly”—and the exquisite composition which finds its motive in the gospel narrative of blind Bartimeus, “Was du vor tausend Jahren” (finely translated both by Miss Winkworth and by Miss Cox), are among the best examples.
The later German hymn-writers of the 19th century belong, generally, to the revived “Pietistic” school. Some of the best, Johann Baptist von Albertini, Friedrich Adolf Krummacher, and especially Karl Johann Philipp Spitta (1801–1859) have produced works not unworthy of the fame of Spitta. their nation. Mr Massie, the able translator of Spitta’s Psalter und Harfe (Leipzig, 1833), speaks of it as having “obtained for him in Germany a popularity only second to that of Paul Gerhardt.” In Spitta’s poems (for such they generally are, rather than hymns) the subjective and meditative tone is tempered, not ungracefully, with a didactic element; and they are not disfigured by exaggerated sentiment, or by a too florid and rhetorical style.
6. British Hymnody.—After the Reformation, the development of hymnody was retarded, in both parts of Great Britain, by the example and influence of Geneva. Archbishop Cranmer appears at one time to have been disposed to follow Luther’s course, and to present to the people, in an English dress, some at least of the hymns of the ancient church. In a letter to King Henry VIII. (October 7, 1544), among some new “processions” which he had himself translated, into English, he mentions the Easter hymn, “Salve, festa dies, toto memorabilis aevo” (“Hail, glad day, to be joyfully kept through all generations”), of Fortunatus. In the “Primer” of 1535 (by Marshall) and the one of 1539 (by Bishop Hilsey of Rochester, published by order of the vicar-general Cromwell) there had been several rude English hymns, none of them taken from ancient sources. King Henry’s “Primer” of 1545 (commanded by his injunction of the 6th of May 1545 to be used throughout his dominions) was formed on the model of the daily offices of the Breviary; and it contains English metrical translations from some of the best-known Ambrosian and other early hymns. But in the succeeding reign different views prevailed. A new direction had been given to the taste of the “Reformed” congregations in France and Switzerland by the French metrical translation of the Old Testament Psalms, which appeared about 1540. This was the joint work of Clement
