2Q4 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
Hymn 4.80. Commit thou all tliy griefs.
GERHARDT (163) ; translated by JOHN WESLEY (36).
Befiehl du deine Wegc appeared in Criiger s Praxis, 1656, Frankfurt edition.
Wesley s translation is given in Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739 ; Works, i. 125.
Lauxmann calls it the most comforting of all the hymns that have resounded on Paulus Gerhardt s golden lyre, sweeter to many souls than honey and the honey-comb. It soon spread over Germany. It was sung in 1743, when the foundation-stones were laid of the first Lutheran church in Philadelphia, and again at the opening service. When Napoleon was bent on crushing Germany, Queen Louise of Prussia wrote in her diary at Ortelsburg, on December 5, 1806, Goethe s lines from Wilhelm Meister, which Carlyle renders
Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours,
Weeping and watching for the morrow, He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.
To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go, Then leave repentance fierce to wring us :
A moment s guilt, an age of woe !
Then drying her tears, she went to her harpsichord and played and sang this hymn. Lauxmann writes, Truly a hymn which, as Luther s " Ein feste Burg," is surrounded by a cloud of witnesses.
The Dictionary of Hymnology says of Wesley s translation, Though free, it has in far greater measure than any other caught the ring and spirit of Gerhardt.
A German peasant called Dobyr, living in a village near Warsaw, was to be turned out next day, with his family, into the snow, because he could not pay his rent. He prayed and sang this hymn with his family. As they reached the last verse, a raven, which his grandfather had tamed and set at liberty, tapped at the window. In its bill was a ring set with precious stones. The peasant took it to his minister. It belonged to King Stanislaus. When the minister told him the story he sent
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