William J. Hart

“ Great crowds gathered to witness the passing of the train which bore the body toward Washington. They were reverent and tearful. A rather striking incident occurred at Charlotte, N. C., where the train moved slowly through the station without stopping. Street intersections were thronged for blocks with mourners. The silence was broken as the train passed by a troop of assembled Boy Scouts who started to sing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and “the crowd took up the hymn in a ringing chorus.” ”

“ After relating how much of his time had been devoted to the task of arranging and composing Negro spirituals he sat at the piano and thrilled his audience as he sang these beautiful songs: “Weeping Mary,” “Go Down in the Lonesome Valley to Meet Your Saviour There,” “I’m Seeking for a City, Hallelujah!” “Lord, I Want to be a Christian.” ”

“ The rector of the parish and the several ministers of the town united in conducting a carefully prepared service of hymns, responsive 24 readings, prayers and addresses. Thus they that day remembered those who had fallen in World War II. Then, in closing, those men, women and youth, which packed the great building, led by a worthy choir, stood and sang the hymn of our American author:
“Rise up, O men of God!
The Church for you doth wait,
Her strength unequal to her task;
Rise up, and make her great!” ”

“ This hymn has always been popular in British Methodism, and in the latest edition of their hymn-book (1933) it is set to the tune of Harwich. Telford characterized it as “a hymn with an extraordinary history of blessing ever since it was written.” One can easily imagine, therefore, with what delight the young convert could henceforth sing the second verse:
“True pleasures abound
In the rapturous sound;
And whoever hath found it hath paradise found.
My Jesus to know,
And to feel His blood flow,
’Tis life everlasting, ’tis heaven below.” ”

“ The second hymn which the Wheel Chair Singers led the congregation in singing on that pleasant April day was one which is peculiarly impressive:
“Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.”
This hymn by Katharina von Schlegel appeared in 1752, and very little is known of the writer. It was “adequately translated” by Jane Laurie Bothwick (1813-1897) of Edinburgh. ”

“ The most important musical feature of any service of worship is the singing of hymns by the congregation. When voices are united in Christian song, hearts may readily be joined in common worship. Then it becomes much more than a musical feature. It becomes an act of worship. ”

“ At the foot of that little hill there was a grocery store. The light of that revolving cross, when it turned west, flashed through the front windows of that grocery 125 store. The proprietor of the store, Robert Mobbs, as he waited on his customers at evening time, could look up and see the flash of that white cross and it always gave him a comfortable feeling. He liked that cross, he liked to have it flash its message into his store when the twilight fell across the sand dunes looking toward the Golden Gate. ”

“ Speaking of what the hymn had meant to him through the years of his pulpit and pastoral experience, he said: “I believed then, I am far surer now, that this is the attitude for every Christian, and everyone who would do his best for the common good. You cannot afford to neglect the church.” ”

“ The location of Trinity Church, whence came the eventide music, deepened the interest in the hymn. Said Dr. Hutton: “I was hearing the Lord’s song just where the Lord’s song stands in most need of being heard, and just where the Lord’s song sounds most sweetly. I was hearing the Lord’s song in a strange land.” Down opposite Wall street, “Where Mammon holds the throne, dwarfed and almost overshadowed by immense business and financial houses, rises the spire of Trinity.” Hence, “where men were engrossed in the things of time and sense, there fell upon the ear a song that spoke of heaven.” ”

“ Thus the national anthem was played at the hour of the formal surrender of Japan on the Missouri and also when General MacArthur set up power in Tokio, “and the same historic flag was flown on both occasions.” The Star-Spangled Banner always has a special appeal when it is rendered in the presence of the Stars and Stripes. Our national anthem had gone with the nation from peace to war and from war to peace. ”

“ The day of his ordination is a sacred one in the life of a minister. It marks the time when he is definitely set apart for a very sacred task for the balance of his life. Therefore the events of that day are deeply embedded in the life of the individual who is henceforth to proclaim the gospel.
Reference was made by Dr. William Pierson Merrill, then pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, on October 26, 1930, when the fortieth anniversary of his own ordination was observed, to the special hymn which was sung on that occasion. ”

“ Rushing to the bedside, the child gazed at the bright, beloved face of her mother. She was smiling. Her lips began to move. Beatrice Plumb, who once told this story about her mother and herself, said that even before she put her ear close to her mother, she knew that the latter was singing their eventide hymn.
Opening her eyes, the mother faintly whispered, “Sing, 134 Kitten!” Once more, the last time together, mother and little daughter were singing their old sunset song:
“Forever with the Lord!
Amen so let it be;
Life from the dead is in that word,
’Tis immortality.” ”

“ The evening was still, and the voices of the men playing football not far away were heard, as well as the sound of guns. Yet as the men sang the birds were also singing in some neighboring trees. Chaplain Tiplady makes this observation: “To him who has only sung this hymn in a church much of its beauty must of necessity be hidden. It is revealed only in the light of the setting sun. The men 36 were facing the Golden West. The pomp of the dying day lay upon the rustling leaves of the trees and upon the grass at our feet. It lit up with beauty the faces of the men as they sang. ”

“ The following was adopted by The Hymn Society of America as its definition of a Christian hymn:
“A Christian hymn is a lyric poem, reverently and devotionally conceived, which is designed to be sung and which expresses the worshipper’s attitude toward God, or God’s purposes in human life. It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it.”—Carl F. Price.
10
“Some kinds of music are like mental and spiritual food. ”

“ Sea Scouts accompanied Boy Scouts to a morning service of worship on a February Sunday, 1947, and thus “gave modern color to the old-world dignity” of a very beautiful Presbyterian Church in an American city. It was also the first Sunday in his new pastorate of a man who had served during World War II with anti-aircraft units in the Southwest Pacific. Thus everything combined to make 83 the occasion memorable. Said the minister to the Scouts: “In my work as chaplain I found it was boys with Scout background who stepped forward and offered to be of service. ”

“ A newspaper reporter (Ernest J. Bowden) in an upstate city of New York has an assignment each Sunday to attend a selected church, and then write his impressions. He is peculiarly sensitive to the music rendered, and often makes illuminating comments on the same. He was peculiarly gratified when, on a December Sunday, he was assigned to a Presbyterian church to report a visiting minister. Thirty years earlier he had heard a new hymn sung in a city in California, and he had remembered the name of the writer. ”

“ Their spirits became responsive, for a little child had led them in a song which was both a prayer of thanksgiving and reverent petition. Mary Lundie Duncan, who was the daughter of one minister and the wife of another, wrote this hymn, as she did others, for her own children. “In every word it breathes the childlike spirit.” Dr. James Moffatt, speaking perhaps more for his native country than for America (though the hymn is found in the section for children in some of our American hymnals) , said that this is “the first evening prayer that thousands of little children learn.” ”

“ In the message of the bells there is joy and peace and love for all our fellow men, the love one sometimes forgets in the hurly-burly of a great city. Whenever I hear these bells I stop whatever I am doing, and my heart looks up to the great tower atop a lofty building and beyond to the vast blue sky.
My heart sings with the bells a prayer of gratitude for the gentle reminder that commerce is not all.
—Cy Lance in “The Classmate.”
106 Two Statesmen Sang “America” in Washington’s Pew
The American nation was called to supplication for Divine guidance on the first day of 1942. ”

“ The lark is in the sky,
The fields are wet with diamond dew,
The worlds awake to cry
Their blessings on the Lord of Life,
As He goes meekly by.”
There the visitor blended his voice with some of those he had known in his boyhood days as they together worshipped in the village church. The preacher stood in the pulpit with the ease of one born to it, and “joined in the singing with the full-voiced enthusiasm of a thrush or mockingbird on a spring morning.”
This song is placed among the morning hymns in The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1940) . ”

“ This beautiful tribute appeared in a review of one of his little collections of hymns, where an English periodical made this comment: “Hymns are rarely poetry, say the critics, but there is poetry of a high order here ... and frequent evidence that the poet has been inspired not by the muse alone, but also by the Holy Spirit.” ”

“ The great military leader who had a premonition that he would die in battle came to his death as the result of an accident sustained soon after the close of World War II. Generals and colonels were the pall bearers of General George S. Patton, Jr., when he was laid to rest on Christmas eve, 1945, in the American Military Cemetery near Luxembourg. Six hundred men who had served under General Patton in combat formed an honor guard; and his grave “was no different from six thousand others 69 which marked the resting-place of soldiers from his own beloved Third Army.” ”

“ Many of these programs also included “America the Beautiful,” and, of course, our beloved national hymn, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”
Those who could not leave their homes were still enabled to listen to these services (and perhaps join in the singing of the hymns) . “The networks,” said an editor, “gave an impressive picture of the tribute being paid to a departed leader from one end of the country to another. One joined the solemn throng in front of the City Hall in New York, or sat in a great cathedral in Boston. ”

“ They inspire us to higher forms of living, which give us greater inner satisfaction. They stimulate us to make greater effort to overcome the immense difficulties in the future. This kind of music is beyond question of great value to every individual, community, and nation. This kind of music was bequeathed to us from many lands and is the birthright of everyone.”—Leopold Stokowski in “The New York Times Magazine.”
Hymn stories are related to a definite moment and to an unusual experience, such as the one which tells of the men in the submarine (p. 60) ”

“ He was now giving a spirited rendering of ‘The Church’s one foundation’—and he was a grey-headed old Negro. He wore what had been a very smartly cut officer’s tunic. The tune finished, the old fellow sat down on a doorstep.
“Where, I wondered, had he learned these hymn-tunes? And where had that Lascar seaman in the street in West Hartlepool learnt ‘There’s a Friend for Little Children?’—for he was humming it as he passed me by.” —F. H. E. in “The Methodist Recorder,” London.
Nothing is more beautiful than the sight of a company of Christians singing their hymns of praise. —Roy L. Smith. ”

“ In the early days of the war (World War II) a British submarine was trapped at the bottom of the Heligoland Bight through an unlocated defect in the machinery. In frantic despair the engineers endeavored to find the fault, but without success.
“When the oxygen supply was almost exhausted the lieutenant in charge assembled the crew and told them that the situation was beyond all hope. He gave each man an opiate so that death might be made easier. Someone started to sing that very popular hymn:
“‘Abide with me,’
and they all joined in. ”

“ Bishop Charles L. Mead, the presiding officer, suggested that the Uniting Conference would probably like to sing the verse and the chorus with the visitor. Soon the Japanese lady, the nine hundred delegates, and thousands of visitors were singing together:
“I need Thee, O I need Thee,
Every hour I need Thee;
O bless me now, my Saviour,
I come to Thee!”
“It was one of those rare moments,” said Dr. Bond to his English readers, “when a great tide of emotions sweeps over a big assembly and carries it out of itself.” ”

“ Night is drawing nigh;
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky.’”
Such was the testimony of Chaplain Thomas Tiplady, who was with the British forces in France during World War I. He gives the reason for this when he says that the man’s mother had for several years repeated the hymn to him every evening.
But most of the soldiers liked this hymn. Particularly impressive is the account given of the time when the men assembled for worship in a little church at Achicourt, about a mile out of Arras. There the men often gathered, even though the building had been badly shattered. ”