Down from the willow bough My slumbering harp I'll take, And bid its silent strings To heavenly themes awake; Peaceful let its breathings be When I sing of Calvary. Love, love divine, I sing; And touch'd with living fire; Love, love on earth appears, He beareth all their griefs, He wipes their tears away! Soft and sweet the strain should be, Saviour, when I sing of Thee. He saw me as He passed, In hopeless sorrow lie, Condemned and doomed to death, And no salvation nigh; Loud and long the strain should be, When I sing His love to me. "I die for thee,” He said— Behold the cross arise; And lo, He bows His head He bows His head and dies. Soft, my harp, thy breathing be, Let me weep on Calvary. He lives! again He lives! I hear the voice of love, "So when even was come, the Lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, call the labourers and give them their hire." HO has not gone to the grave side often enough, even during a short life, to become mournfully familiar with the solemn magnificence of our English Burial Service? It can scarcely be said which is the more deeply impressive, the holy fervour, reverent submission, soaring faith, and heavenward swell of the prayers, or the simple grandeur of the anthems, awing and melting us by turns. Now, the soul kindles; and now, it softens into tears; and now again, its death-song becomes intense with prayerful feeling, as the utterances rise— In the midst of life we are in death: Who for our sins art justly displeased. Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, Of eternal death! Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; Shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; But spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, To fall from Thee! the This is an ancient hymn. It comes to us borne along from generation to generation by the voices of nearly a thousand years. Just about the beginning of the tenth century, there was a Swiss monk in the celebrated monastery of St. Gall, whose name was Notker. If not "slow of speech," he lisped, and was, therefore, nicknamed by his brethren, Balbulus. His defect of speech, however, as in the case of many a deep thinker and bright genius, was no check upon his thoughts; he was a quiet thinker. Nor did it prevent the play of his somewhat hallowed imagination. As he watched the samphire-gatherers fearfully pendant over brink of death as they pursued their perilous calling on the precipices around St. Gall, he caught the suggestion of "death in the midst of life"; and when he saw the bridge-builders at Martinsbruck exposing themselves every moment to death, in order to secure for the living a safe passage over danger, the suggestion ripened into a fruitful form; and his monastery was taught to sing or chant the anthem which soon became common to entire Christendom. Notker himself died, and was buried in 912; but his funeral hymn will never die while any European Christians live to bury their dead amidst the solemnities of the ancient service for the grave side. Notker's hymn long formed a part of the funeral service in Germany; and Luther's translation of it is still with us, rendered into English thus Whom for help then shall we pray, Where shall grace be found? In Thee, O Lord, alone! We rue the evil we have done, Strong and holy God! Leave us not to sink beneath Those dark pains of bitter death, In the midst of death, the jaws Openeth us escape? Our bitter suffering and our sin Pity from Thy mercy win, Holy Lord and God! Eternal God! Let not dread our souls o'erwhelm, Of the dark and burning realm, In the midst of hell would sin Drive us to despair; Where is refuge, where? With Thee, Lord Christ, alone! For Thou hast shed Thy precious blood, All our sins Thou makest good. Holy Lord and God! Strong and holy God! Leave us not to fall on death, From the hope of Thy true faith, In the year 1768, as the month of May was closing, there was a great gathering in the burial ground of Bunhill Fields. The crowd was densely packed around an open grave, by the side of which stood the Rev. Andrew Kinsman, of Plymouth. He was delivering a funeral oration, in the course of which he said of the departed, “I had the pleasure of knowing, and I will say the honour, too, of preaching the gospel to his aged parents, who both died in the faith. I knew him to be the son of many prayers years ago; and from this knowledge, as soon as I had read his 'Experience' and hymns (believing his tender parents' earnest addresses to the throne of grace for him were in some measure answered), I found my heart warmed with the relation, and my soul knit to the writer. This love led me eagerly to seek after a personal interview; and from the year 1759, a religious and literary correspondence ensued. Oh how full were his epistles of sound experience! How sweetly did he write of Jesus and his great salvation! Since that we have loved as brethren and servants of the same Master." The address was ended, and then the multitude lifted up their voices and sang Sons of God by bless'd adoption, View the dead with steady eyes; |