Page:Our Hymns.djvu/125

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THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 105

Besides other poetical productions, Tersteegen wrote more than one hundred hymns. Those in the " New Congregational Hymn Book" show the spiritual and God-seeking character of his mind.

" Thou hidden love of God, whose height." (No. 561). " Lo ! God is here; let us adore." (No. 773).

" Gotfc ist gegenwartig, lasset uns aubeten."

These are parts of John Wesley s translations given in his " Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739 " of two of Tersteegen s best-known hymns. +

" In his " Plain Account of Christian Perfection," Mr. Wesley says he translated hymn 561 while at Savannah, Georgia, in the year 1736, finding verse 3 in particular expressive of his feelings at that time.

NICHOLAS LOUIS ZINZENDOBF. 17001760.

NOT the least in the noble army of hymn-writers was Count Zinzendorf, the founder of Herrnhut, and the champion of the United Moravian Brethren. He was born in Dresden on the 26th of May, 1700, and was the son of Count Zinzendorf, who held high office under the Elector of Saxony. His father died when he was only six weeks old, and his mother, who was a woman of great piety and talent, and for whom he had great reverence, having married again, his education was entrusted to his maternal grandmother, the widow of Baron Gersdorf, a pious and learned lady, and a writer of hymns and religious books. Her chief friend was the celebrated Jacob Spener, the founder of the " Pietists," and himself the author of some hymns.

No doubt these early associations helped to make Zinzendorf what he became as a hymn-writer and religious reformer. He had been taught also to hold in honourable remembrance the count, his grandfather, who had become a voluntary exile rather

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