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WORTHY of distinct
mention as a factor in the great problem of human civilization is
the influence of music and song. Every student of ancient history
knows how conspicuous was that element in all the literature of
Greece, and in moulding the national character of her people. That
land of beauty would scarcely have sent its influence adown the ages
as the classic of all lands without the living lyre to voice forth
in song the martial melodies of its Horner, the inspiring odes of
its Pindar, Anacreon and Sappho, and the solemn choruses of its
great dramatists. Who could adequately write the history of the
Christian Church, and tell of its triumphs in all lands over
individual hearts and over mighty nations, without taking into
account that potent spell which is felt from heart to heart in all
our holy sanctuaries when great congregations are lifted heavenward
as on the wings of devotion by hymns of lofty praise, anthems of
rapture and songs of salvation? Could there he a gospel of true
power without music and song? A singing people, when they sing the
sentiments of God and of Nature, are always an influential and an
advancing people.
Scarcely less
potential than her literature, her science or her philosophy has
been Scotland's influence upon the world by the magic melody of her
songs. In this instance, at least, the ballads of a nation have
proved mightier than its laws. A wreath of evergreens and
immortelles is the fitting chaplet of the Muse of Scottish Song, and
she has flung it in living beauty over the heart of the world. Who
has not heard—and, hearing, who can ever forget—that witching
minstrelsy of the North which in childhood's hour waked all the
chords of feeling in our hearts, and even down to old age has power
to make us young again? Who has not been melted into tenderness by
the plaintive pathos of "Annie Laurie" or "Roslyn Castle," of
"Bonnie Doon" or "Auld Lang Syne"? And who has not been thrilled by
the wild warbling measures of "Bruce's Address" or "Bonnie Dundee"
or "McGregor's Gathering"? The French soldier will rush to glory or
the grave under the martial inspiration of the Marseillaise Hymn;
the Swiss exiled from his mountain-home is overpowered with emotion
at the rehearsal of the national airs of Helvetia; but all around
the globe where there are tongues to speak our language there are
not wanting hearts to feel the omnipotent charm of nature, love and
beauty in the Scottish song.
No claim is here set
up for Scotland as a producer of what is called "artistic," or
cIassicaI, music; her lyric genius did not lie in that direction.
She has originated no great school of the opera or oratorio, like
Germany, Austria, France and Italy; she has produced no great
composers, such as Handel and Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven,
Mendelssohn, Rossini and Wagner. Her music and her song have been of
a simpler order. Still, they have not been less real or less
potential in their influence on the Scottish people and on the world
than these celebrated schools of the great continental nations. From
a high antiquity Scotland gave birth to a class of national airs of
a peculiar style and structure, possessing a wild, dignified,
strongly-marked and expressive character. These were put into songs
by her wandering minstrels and sung from border to border over all
the land, and from age to age, until at last they found permanent
and deathless expression in the greatest of her lyric poets.
Long before the days
of Robert Burns or Allan Ramsay or William Dunbar the Scottish
people were essentially a musical and song-loving race. Scotland was
the native home of the minstrel and the ballad, and her very
atmosphere had become vocal with the inspiring national melodies,
the music of nature in its deepest human emotions. In such a land,
and tinder such influences, was born Robert Burns, destined to
become, notwithstanding the most untoward surroundings, not only the
greatest lyric poet of his own land, but one of the great canonized
bards of all ages and all climes. " He was," says a recent critic,
"a son of the soil; without education, without culture, without
friends, all he had in the world, save a well-knit frame and arms
strong to work, was genius, against which there was every possible
obstacle placed that it should not be able to do itself justice."
Yet how resplendently
did that genius triumph over all its narrow environments! What a
flood of song did it pour forth, unheard before in Scotland, to be
heard thenceforth by all the world! Incomparable Robert Burns! as
distinguished in song as Bruce was in battle, the child of poverty,
the child of Nature, the man of feeling, the bard of humanity, the
interpreter of the common people, the artist of the soul! How loved,
honored, idolized by all Scotsmen, at home and abroad, his memory as
fresh and green in the hearts of his country to-day as it was nearly
a century ago! Notwithstanding all his foibles and his faults, was
ever poet so beloved before? The true representative he stands of
the national heart and the Scottish character, and therefore
entitled to wear—as he confessedly does wear—the laureate crown of
Scotland. His genius, his history, his deep sympathy with humanity,
his tenderness, his misfortunes, his sad end,—all added to the
picture and combined to endear to his countrymen both the poet and
the man.
Principal Shairp
tells us that two chief factors met to make Burns what he was. The
first of these was the "great background of national melody and
antique verse coming down to him from remote ages and sounding
through his heart from childhood." Cradled in the very atmosphere of
melody, he owed much to the old forgotten song-writers of his
country, dead for ages before he lived and lying in their unknown
graves all over Scotland. This is the one form of literature he had
mastered. Reviewing the ordinary method of other poets, by which the
song is first composed and the music afterward set to it, Burns made
the music the very inspiration of his song. The tune, as he
expressed it, was soothed over and over in his mind till the words
came spontaneously. The words of his songs were inspired by the
pre-existing popular tunes of his country. But all this love and
study of the ancient songs and outward melody would have gone for
nothing but for the second element—that is, "the inward melody, born
in the poet's deepest heart, which received into itself the whole
body of national song, and then, when it had passed through his
soul, sent it forth ennobled and glorified by his own genius."
To this must be
added, as this able critic suggests, that Burns had the good sense
to choose as the subjects of his verse those great fundamental and
permanent emotions of our common humanity which alike belong to all
climes and which time can never antiquate. He has given ultimate and
consummate expression "in thoughts that breathe and words that burn"
to the truest, the tenderest and the deepest sentiments of love,
friendship, patriotism, philanthropy, charity, courage, equality,
liberty and manly independence in all their varying phases and
relations. When, for example, he takes the theme of friendship
rooted in the past, it is for all time that he sings in the familiar
lines, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" In the pathos of
undying love what can be more perfect than his "Mary in Heaven"? or
what more thrilling in heroic devotion to country than "Bruce's
Address at Bannockburn "? or what more admirable as an expression of
honest poverty and true manhood than the lines,
"A man's a man for a'
that.
The rank is but the guinea's stamp:
The man's the good for a' that"?
"This powerful song,"
says Professor Shairp, "speaks out a sentiment that through all his
life had been dear to the heart of Burns. It has been quoted, they
say; by Beranger in France and by Goethe in Germany, and is the word
which springs up in the mind of all foreigners when they think of
Burns. It was inspired, no doubt, by his keen sense of social
oppression, quickened to white heat by influences that had lately
come from France, and by what he had suffered for his sympathy with
that cause. It has since become the watchword of all who fancy that
they have secured less, and others more, of this world's good than
their respective merit deserves. Stronger words he never wrote. That
is a word for all time."
Burns did not often
try his Muse on warlike themes; but when he did, it was to some
purpose. He was all-alive to the heroic character of Wallace and to
the achievements of Bruce, which some day he purposed to dramatize.
The national deliverance wrought by Bruce at Bannockburn was a theme
worthy of his genius. With it lie produced a song that has gone
around the globe and fired the heroes of ,a thousand battles.
Scotland has no grander national air. In many a hard-fought conflict
it has been to both British and American no less than to Scottish
soldiers all the "Marseillaise Hymn of Liberty " has been to the
French. Its terse energy of expression, its lyric power, its fervid
glow of patriotism, its lofty spirit of self-immolation, have never
been exceeded since the inspired Muse of Hebrew Poetry penned the
sublime battle-song of Barak and Deborah, recorded in the book of
Judges. Thomas Carlyle tells us that Burns composed it mentally
while riding with a single fellow-traveler across one of the
desolate moors of his country in a driving storm of snow and hail.
He remained in deep silence while the elements were raging around
him, but the working of his features seemed in harmony with the
outward war, as indicating that sterner conflict of thought which
was going on within. The result of the day's ride was this great ode
of independence and victory—as worthy of study, certainly, as
anything that has come down to us from classical antiquity. Like all
the songs of Burns, it has a Scottish dialect of its own and is set
to a slow and stately national music befitting the mighty thought
and the solemn rhythm of its stanzas ; but it loses none of its
grandeur or its fire by being translated into modern English. Its
words of power and pathos are those of Bruce addressed to the
veteran soldiers of his army on the eve of battle. "As long as there
is warm blood in the heart of Scotch men or of man," says Carlyle,
"it will move in fierce thrills under this war-song—the best, I
believe, that was ever written by any pen:"
"Scots who have with
Wallace bled,
Scots whom Bruce has often led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!
"Now's the day and
now's the hour:
See the front of battle lower!
See approach proud Edward's power—
Chains and slavery.
"Who will be a traitor
knave,
Who can fill a coward's grave,
Who so base as be a slave,
Let him turn and flee!
"Who for Scotland's
king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand or freeman fa',
Let him follow me!
"By oppression's woes
and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers
low:
Tyrants fall in every foe;
Liberty's in every blow:
Let us do or die!"
This sublime little
ode—which can never be recited or sung without emotion, and which so
depicts a nation's history and a hero's triumph that it strikes a
responsive chord in every human breast—well illustrates the mood in
which Burns composed his songs. He threw his very soul into them; he
lived over again the scenes he described; he impersonated their
characters and caught the very inspiration of their mighty deeds and
their ennobling sentiments. Save the battle itself, there was no
better preparation for the production of this song of the ages than
the fierce storm in which he composed it. While he was a true child
of Nature, in full sympathy with her wildest and her softest moods,
and while he was an intense Scotchman, he was not a narrow one. His
brotherhood was as wide as the world; his sympathies extended to man
and brute; and hence, while speaking out his own heart's experience,
he never failed to touch the deepest and strongest chords of human
nature.
One great merit of
Burns was that he became the reformer and purifier of Scottish song.
Before his day it had been exceedingly sensual and debasing; he
breathed a new and nobler life into it. With some few exceptions,
his songs inculcated sentiments of morality, virtue and all pure and
generous affections, and thereby became fitted for their mission
around the globe as the teacher of youth in the myriads of home
circles where they have now been sung for more than a century, to
cheer the heart, inspire generous emotions and bind mankind in the
ties of brotherhood. Who is the poet that has had a wider influence
in this respect than Robert Burns?
Most fittingly has
Professor Shairp closed his brief but appreciative monograph on
Burns with the following just estimate of the character and
influence of his songs: "So purified and ennobled by Burns, these
songs embody human emotion in its most condensed and sweetest
essence. They appeal to all ranks, they touch all ages, they cheer
toil-worn men under every clime. Wherever the English tongue is
heard—beneath the suns of India, amid African deserts, on the
Western prairies of America, among the squatters of
Australia—whenever men of British blood would give vent to their
deepest, kindliest, most genial feelings, it is to the songs of
Burns they spontaneously turn, and find in them at once a perfect
utterance and a fresh tie of brotherhood. It is this which forms
Burns's most enduring claim on the world's gratitude."
The service rendered
by Burns to the ballad literature of Scotland by taking its old
familiar airs and clothing them in a diction of poetic beauty and
elevated sentiment was soon followed by other brilliant writers of
kindred spirit and exquisite taste; such were Sir Walter Scott,
William Motherwell, author of Jeannie Morrison, James Hogg, the
"Ettrick Shepherd," and William Edmondstone Aytoun, son-in-law of
Professor John Wilson and author of the Lays of the Scottish
cavaliers.
Some of the most
famous of the Scottish songs that have come down from the earlier
period are, so far as we know, the only things of the kind produced
by their comparatively unknown authors; as, for example, "Auld Robin
Gray," by Lady Anne Lindsay, and "Annie Laurie," by Douglas of
Fingland, the unsuccessful suitor of the lady of Maxwelton, of whom
he sings so sweetly. Perhaps we could not find a more striking
illustration of the character and wide influence of this ballad
literature than in the last-named familiar song, which was written
prior to 1688, and which has been sung for nearly two centuries by
the English-speaking race in all parts of the world.
This song need not be
repeated here, but its deep pathos and power may be well illustrated
by the following little poem of one of our own gifted bards, Bayard
Taylor. It is entitled "The Camp-Song," and is descriptive of the
terrible scenes before Sebastopol, in the Crimean war, where
English, Scotch and Irish soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder and
died as brothers;
"'Give us a song!' the
soldier cried,
The outer trenches guarding,
When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.
"The dark Red an in
silent scoff
Lay grim and threatening under,
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belched its thunder.
"There was a pause. A
guardsman said,
'We storm the forts to-morrow;
Sing while we may: another day
Will bring enough of sorrow.'
"They lay along the
battery's side,
Below the smoking cannon
Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde,
And from the banks of Shannon.
"They sang of love,
and not of fame:
Forgot was Britain's glory;
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang 'Annie Laurie.'
"Voice after voice
caught up the song,
Until its tender passion
Rose like an anthem rich and strong,
Their battle-eve confession.
"Dear girl! her name
he dared not speak,
But as the song grew louder
Something upon the soldier's cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.
"Beyond the darkening
ocean burned
The bloody sunset's embers,
While the Crimean valleys learned
How English love remembers.
"And once again a fire
of hell
Rained on the Russian quarters
With scream and shot, and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars;
"And Irish Nora's eyes
are dim
For a singer dumb and gory,
And English Mary mourns for him
Who sang of Annie Laurie.
"Sleep, soldiers,
still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring."
Sir Walter Scott
contributed not a little to the ballad literature of Scotland,
ennobling it so as to make its influence felt over the world. He
seemed to have caught the very inspiration of the old minstrelsy of
his country, and he was himself the soul of the mediaeval chivalry
and romance revived. His rich poetic genius, with its lofty
enthusiasm and its creative imagination, breathes forth not only in
all his fascinating poems, but in all his more fascinating and
wonderful historical romances, whether Scottish, English or
continental. His first important poem, the Lay of the Last Minstrel,
gave the keynote of his poetry, which was soon heard again in
Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, and in The Lord of the Isles, and
never ceased to be heard and admired as long as lie wrote. When, at
last, seemingly dissatisfied with his poems because, as he modestly
expressed it, "Byron bate him," he bent his versatile and prolific
mind to the new task of prose fiction, it was curious to see how his
lyric Muse was ever and anon bursting forth in song. Every reader of
those wonderful productions well knows that when he did not have an
"old song" at hand to suit his purpose he easily made one just as
good, or even better. Even the hymnology of our churches has been
enriched with a few choice pieces drawn from this source, such as
"The day of wrath, that dreadful day."
Scott was not, like
Burns, a man of the people, in deep sympathy with the poorer
classes. He had, however, much of that sense of human brotherhood,
that deep tenderness of feeling for every thing that breathes, which
found such hearty expression in Burns and voiced itself in almost
everything he wrote. But, like Burns, he was a lover of Scotland,
was proud of its romantic and heroic history and gloried in the
wealth of its magnificent scenery. The traditions of Wallace, the
wanderings and the prowess of Bruce, filled his young heart with
admiration and fired him with that intense patriotic ardor which had
always haunted the imagination of Burns as with the spell of a
passion. Though so unlike in character and genius, they may be well
classed together in that irresistible charm which their writings
threw over their native land and over all the world. "If Scotchmen
to-day," says Professor Shairp, "love and cherish their country with
a pride unknown to their ancestors of the last century; if strangers
of all countries look on Scotland as a land of romance,—this we owe
in great measure to Burns, who first turned the tide which Scott
afterward carried to full flood. All that Scotland had done and
suffered, her romantic history, the manhood of her people, the
beauty of her scenery, would have disappeared in modern commonplace
and manufacturing ugliness if she had been left without her two
sacred poets."
The ballad poetry of
Scott is, for the most part, exceedingly spirited and martial. All
his poetry is animated in the highest degree, but this is always
full of life, breathing the high ambition, with the "pomp and
circumstance, of glorious war." No doubt he has pushed this martial
spirit to a point not in accord with the peaceful spirit of
Christianity, but this very element has taken strong hold upon the
educated youth of all English-speaking lands, and this makes his
poetry as popular to-day as when it first appeared. No boy can read
it without catching something of its high heroic enthusiasm and
military ardor. What inspiring music has he not breathed in the
famous "Boat-Song" in The Lady of the Lake, " ail to the chief who
in triumph advances," and what martial enthusiasm in the following
"Border ballad" from the Monastery, which may be instanced as a
specimen of all the rest:
"March, march, Ettrick
and Teviotdale!
Why, my lads, dinna ye march forward in order?
March, march, Eskdale and Liddisdale!
All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border.
Many a banner spread
Flutters above your head,
Many a crest that is famous in story;
Mount and make ready, then,
Sons of the mountain-glen:
Fight for the queen and our old Scottish glory.
"Come from the hills
where your horses are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the buckle, the lance and the bow.
Trumpets are sounding,
War-steeds are bounding;
Stand to your arms and march in good order:
England shall many a day
Tell of the bloody fray
When the Blue Bonnets came over the Border."
Some of the most
popular and widely known ballads of recent times are from the pen of
Thomas Campbell, author of The Plcasiti c's of Hope. lie was born in
Glasgow, Scotland, in 1777, and died in 1844. his lyric pieces were
not numerous, but what he wrote was finished to a high degree of
perfection. Sir Waiter Scott greatly admired the terse energy and
fire of his inspiring verse, and thought it far superior to his own.
His longer poems have been widely read, and they have found many
admirers; but his poetic faire rests mainly on his ballads and
shorter pieces, which have been sung around the world. His "Hohenlinden,"
"Battle of the Baltic," "Ye Mariners of England," "Lord Ullin's
Daughter " and "Lochiel's Warning" have found a place in all
collections of English literature and in all handbooks of rhetoric
and oratory, where they have never ceased to furnish the subjects
for juvenile declamation in our schools and academies. His
description of the night-attack-
"On Linden's hills of
blood-stained snow
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
Shout in their sulphurous canopy "—
In its vivid imagery,
its brevity, its shifting; scenery and its rushing movement till all
is still and "every turf beneath their feet becomes a soldier's
sepulchre," is not unworthy of the genius of Scott or of Homer.
But Scotland's
heath-clad hills and valleys green through all her borders rang with
music of a different order in the days of fierce persecution unto
death, when her heroic sons, driven from the public sanctuaries,
were compelled to take the open fields or the dense forests, and
worship God in Nature's own sanctuaries at the risk of their lives.
In that long and dreary period of the Stuart misrule there was not
much call for the softer influences of the lyric Muse or the
artistic worship of the grand overarching cathedral, though these
had not been unknown in the peaceful days of Scottish history. But
in that "killing-time," as this reign of terror has been not inaptly
called, when the truest and the best men in the realm were not safe
either in their own castles or within their most secret
hiding-places of the mountains, Scotia's bards not less than her
preachers assumed a loftier vocation and uttered a sterner voice. No
class of people—not even our own New England Puritans—has been more
unjustly assailed or more frequently misrepresented than the
Presbyterian heroes of the Scottish Covenant. If they needed any
apology, their justification might be found in the times in which
they lived, the wrongs they suffered and the battle for liberty and
very existence they were called to fight. The following stanzas may
be taken as an illustration of the spirit and character, the lofty
bearing, the heroic endeavor and the sacrifice unto death of these
old martyrs of the covenant, the end of whose labors we now enjoy in
every Christian land. The stanzas are entitled " The Cameronian's
Dream." They were written by James Hyslop, a young Scotch poet who,
like Robert Pollok, was cut off in early youth. He depicts the
fierce conflict of 1681, in which, at the head of a small band, the
brave Richard Cameron and his brother fell side by side, overpowered
by numbers, but contending for those principles of civil and
religious liberty in defence of which Hampden, Russell and Sidney
suffered in England. The description, however, would well answer to
that greater and more disastrous battle at Bothwell Bridge, two
years earlier, where the blood of the Covenanters flowed mingling
with the waters of the Clyde----a libation to the wrath of
Claverhouse. The little poem is given in full because of its
intrinsic merit as a remembrancer of the days that "tried men's
souls." In it there is a ring of lyric power not unworthy to find a
place in Scotia's best Border minstrelsy, and to be associated with
Byron's famous ode on the "Destruction of Sennacherib's Army."
"In a dream of the
night I was wafted away
To the muirland of mist where the martyrs lay—
Where Cameron's sword and his Bible are seen
Engraved on the stone where the heather grows green.
"'Twas a dream of
those ages of darkness and blood
When the minister's home was the mountain and wood-
When in Wellwood's dark valley the standard of Zion
All bloody and torn in the heather was lying.
"'Twas morning, and
summer's young sun from the east
Lay in loving repose on the green mountain's breast;
On Wardlaw and Cairnstable the clear-shining dew
Glistened there 'mong the heathbells and flowers of blue.
"And far up in heaven,
near the white sunny cloud,
The song of the lark was melodious and loud,
And in Glenmuir's wild solitude, lengthened and deep,
Were the whistling of plovers and bleating of sheep.
"And Wellwood's sweet
valley breathed music and gladness,
The fresh meadow-blooms hung in beauty and redness;
Its daughters were happy to hail the returning
And drink the delight of July's sweet morning.
But oh, there were
hearts filled with far other feelings,
Illumed by the light of prophetic revealings,
Who drank from the scenery of beauty but sorrow;
For they knew that their blood would bedew it to-morrow.
"'Twas the few
faithful ones who with Cameron were lying
Concealed in the mist where the heath-fowl was crying,
For the horsemen of Earshall around them were hovering,
And their bridle-reins rung through the thin misty covering.
"Their faces grew pale
and their swords were unsheathed,
But the vengeance that darkened their brow was unbreathed;
With eyes turned to heaven in calm resignation,
They sang their last song to the God of salvation.
"The hills with the
deep mournful music were ringing,
The curlew and plover in concert were singing;
But the melody died 'mid derision and laughter,
As the host of the ungodly rushed on to the slaughter.
"In mist and in
darkness and fire they were shrouded,
Yet the souls of the righteous were calm and unclouded;
Their dark eyes flashed lightning as, firm and unbending,
They stood like the rock which the thunder is rending.
"The muskets were
flashing, the blue swords were gleaming,
The helmets were cleft and the red blood was streaming,
The heavens grew dark and the thunder was rolling,
When in Wellwood's dark muirlands the mighty were failing.
"When the righteous
had fallen and the combat was ended,
A chariot of fire through the dark cloud ascended;
Its drivers were angels on horses of whiteness,
And its burning wheels turned upon axles of brightness.
"A seraph unfolded its
doors, bright and shining,
All dazzling like gold of the seventh refining,
And the souls that came forth out of great tribulation
Have mounted the chariots and steeds of salvation.
On the arch of the
rainbow the chariot is gliding;
Through the path of the thunder the horsemen are riding:
Glide swiftly, bright spirits! the prize is before ye---
A crown never fading, a kingdom of glory."
In this connection
must be mentioned yet another class of Scotia's bards whose
minstrelsy has been heard in many lands. These are the writers of
sacred song, who from time to time have enriched the hymnology of
the ages and contributed to swell the volume of public praise in all
Christian sanctuaries. There are critics who look with indifference,
or perhaps contempt, upon this unpretentious style of literature.
Such condemnation is uncalled for. Is it a great thing to produce
the ballads of a nation, and yet a thing too small for recognition
to produce those inspiring hymns of the Christian Church which shall
be sung in the morning and evening devotions of the family and in
the Sabbath worship of assernbled multitudes as far as the gospel is
preached ? Unquestionably, the sacred psalmist (though no canonized
laureate) has done something for his generation and for the world
when he has produced a song for the Church which can stand the test
of time and be sung by millions: such as Bishop Heber's "Missionary
Hymn," "From Greenland's icy mountains," and Duncan's "Coronation
Hymn," "All hail the power of Jesus' name."
Some of the most
popular, and to all appearance permanent, of our Christian hymns are
of Scottish authorship, and they breathe the essential spirit of the
gospel. Two prominent hymn-writers of this evangelical class may be
instanced in illustration—James Montgomery and Horatius Bonar. The
extent to which these two Scottish authors have enriched our
existing hymnology is illustrated by the fact that in. one of the
most widely-used collections of our American churches there are
twenty-four admirable hymns by Dr. Bonar, and not less than sixty
from the prolific pen of Montgomery. Most of Montgomery's hymns are
of great lyrical beauty, having much originality of both thought and
expression, striking imagery and the very essence of a deep
Christian experience. They have found a place in the hymnals of all
denominations of evangelical Christians, have been sung for a large
part of the present century in all Christian countries, and have
become familiar as household words to the aged and the young. To
myriads of Christian hearts all around the globe no sacred songs of
Zion are better known, and none more precious, than those of this
sweet singer beginning, " Prayer is the soul's sincere desire;" "Oh,
where shall rest be found?" "Daughter of Zion, from the dust;" "Hail
to the Lord's Anointed!" "People of the living God;" "Sow in the
morn thy seed;" "Who are these in bright array?" and his beautiful
communion hymn of six stanzas, beginning "According to thy gracious
word."
One little ode in
particular is worthy, for its pathos and power, to stand among the
best productions of the sacred Muse:
"There is a calm for
those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found;
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground.
"The storm that racks
the wintry sky
No more disturbs their deep repose
Than summer evening's latest sigh,
That shuts the rose.
"I long to lay this
painful head
And aching heart beneath the soil—
To slumber in that dreamless bed
From all my toil.
"The soul, of origin
divine,
God's glorious image freed from clay,
In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine,
A star of day.
"The sun is but a
spark of fire,
A transient meteor in the sky;
The soul, immortal as its Sire,
Shall never die."
A similar service to
the Church universal has been rendered by Dr. Bonar in many
evangelical songs of exquisite beauty and tenderness full of love
and of true spiritual unction. These, too, have gone into all our
Church hymnals to swell the vast volume of rhythmic praise which for
ages Christianity has been collecting in all lands. Many a tender
chord has he struck in the heart of the Church, and in the heart of
the oppressed and heavy-laden, by such songs as "Beyond the smiling
and the weeping" and "Only remembered by what I have done." To-day
the gospel songs of the evangelists Moody and Sankey, incorporating
these beautiful gems of Christian thought with hundreds like them,
gathered from other gifted bards of Zion, are carrying the glad news
of our common salvation to the ends of the earth, and thus with
other Christian agencies preparing the way for that glad day of
final triumph described by Cowper: "When earth with her ten thousand
tongues shall roll the rapturous hosannas round." |
