THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 5
DAVID DICK SON.
" Jerusalem my happy home." No. 743.
THIS hymn of hymns is not, (in the form in which it appears in the " New Congregational Hymn Book)," the work of the Rev. David Dickson (1583 1G62), to whom it is erroneously attri buted. He is but one of the numerous poets who have found in the ancient Latin hymn, probably of the eighth century, a fount of Christian song. This form of the poem has not been traced back farther than the collection of Dr. Williams and Mr. Boden, 1801. It is there stated to be from " Eckinton Collection." The author s name and the original text of this rendering have not yet been discovered.
The early Latin hymn, as given by Daniel in his " Thesaurus Hymnologicus," consists of forty-eight lines, and begins
" Urbs beata Hierusalem, Dicta pacis visio."
The Latin writer, whose date and name have not been dis covered, favoured by the language in which he wrote, has written with a compression and a force which we miss in the more diffuse productions of later times. Dr. Mason Neale, referring to the Latin form this hymn had taken in the beginning of the seven teenth century, says, " This grand hymn of the eighth century was modernised in the reform of Pope Urban VIII. into the Crelestis urbs Jerusalem, and lost half of its beauty in the process."
Archbishop Trench, in his " Sacred Latin Poetry," at page 313, says of the original Latin hymn, "It is most truly a hymn of degrees, ascending from things earthly to things heavenly, and making the first to be interpreters of the last. The prevailing intention in the building and the dedication of a church, with the rites thereto appertaining, was to carry up men s thoughts from that temple built with hands which they saw, to that other built of living stones in heaven, of which this was but a weak shadow."
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