American Unitarian Hymn Writers and Hymns — John Shaqi
American Unitarian Hymn Writers and HymnsFoote, Henry Wilder
Religion
American Unitarian Hymn Writers and Hymns
Foote, Henry Wilder
Hymn writers; Hymns, English -- History and criticism; Unitarian Universalist churches -- Hymns -- History and criticism
Edited by Rev. Francis William Pitt Greenwood (1797-1843), minister of
King’s Chapel, Boston. _Greenwood’s Collection_, as it was generally
called, containing 560 psalms and hymns, superseded Belknap’s (3) as
the hymn-book most widely used in Unitarian churches in the first half
of the 19^th century. It ran to fifty editions and was used in King’s
Chapel, for which it was prepared, until superseded there by _Hymns of
the Church Universal_, 1890, (39). Based upon Watts, the book contains
the then very recent hymns by James Montgomery, Harriet Auber, Bowring
and Heber, and practically introduced Charles Wesley to American
Unitarians. In _Young Emerson Speaks_, edited by A. C. McGiffert,
1937, pages 145-150, will be found a sermon on “Hymn Books” preached
by R. W. Emerson in 1831, while still minister of the Second Church in
Boston, in which he recommends the church to adopt _Greenwood’s
Collection_ in place of Belknap’s. Emerson, in his Journal for 1847,
noted that _Greenwood’s Collection_ was “still the best.”
14. _The Springfield Collection of Hymns for sacred worship_, by
William B. O. Peabody—Springfield: Samuel Bowles, 1835.
Rev. William Oliver Bourne Peabody (1799-1847) was minister at
Springfield, Mass. His collection contains 509 hymns, admirably chosen
from the accepted classics of the period, Watts and Doddridge
predominant, but with an increasing number of the recent compositions
by Unitarian hymn-writers of the first third of the 19^th century. No
musical instructions beyond indication of metres. On its merits the
_Springfield Collection_ rightly shared with _Greenwood’s Collection_
(13) and _The Cheshire Collection_ (20) the largest measure of
popularity and use among Unitarians in the middle of the 19^th
century.
15. _The Christian Psalter: A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for
social and private worship_—Boston, 1841.
Edited by Rev. William Parsons Lunt (1805-1857), for use in the First
Church in Quincy, Mass. It contains 702 hymns and psalms and
represents a reversion to the older type of hymnody, “but, if
old-fashioned, it was excellent and serviceable.” Lunt included 22
pieces by his parishioner, ex-President John Quincy Adams, whose wife
had put into his hands a complete metrical psalter which Adams had
composed. At least one of Adams’ psalms is still to be found in some
hymn-books.
16. _A Manual of Prayer for public and private worship, with a
collection of hymns_—Boston, 1842.
Edited by Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot (1811-1887). Although printed
in Boston, this book was prepared for The First Congregational Society
of St. Louis, Missouri, of which the editor had become minister in
1834. The Society was the earliest Unitarian church in the Mississippi
Valley, excepting that at New Orleans. The book is primarily a
collection of service materials followed by 272 well-selected hymns
from standard sources. It was the earliest volume of the sort to be
prepared for Unitarian use in the Middle West.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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