The earliest record of the hymn, however, is to be found in the autograph letter (now in the Harvard University Library) which Hedge wrote to Rev. Joseph H. Allen, his successor in the pulpit at Bangor, Maine, asking him to recommend hymns for inclusion in the book on which he and Huntington were working. This letter is dated “Providence, March 27th, 1853.” In the course of it Hedge wrote, “I have made a new translation of Luther’s splendid psalm ‘Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott’ Carlyle’s translation not being available.” This statement is followed by the four stanzas of his translation. That book contained no printed tunes, only citing the metre at the head of each hymn as a guide to the organist, but in his letter Hedge goes on with the surprizing statement, “The original is much sung in Germany and therefore I suppose that it will not be difficult to find a tune for it.” Since he must have become familiar with both the words and the music of the famous chorale when he was a youthful student in Germany this remark indicates that the tune was still unknown in America, and that he took little interest in introducing it. J. 504, 1647 Revised by H.W.F. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 12, 1822—May 9, 1911, Cambridge. He graduated from Harvard College in 1841 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1847. Entering the Unitarian ministry he served churches in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1847-1850, and in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1852-1858. He was an ardent Abolitionist and when the Civil War came he entered the Union Army, in which he rose to the command of a Negro regiment. After the war he became a man of letters and published several books and numerous essays. While still a student in the Divinity School he contributed to the _Book of Hymns_, 1846, which his friends Longfellow and Johnson were preparing, four hymns, which they marked with an asterisk, viz: 1. _No human eyes Thy face may see_ (God known through love) 2. _The land our fathers left to us_ (American Slavery) 3. _The past is dark with sin and shame_, (Hope) 4. _To thine eternal arms, O God_, (Lent) The last two have had considerable use. Both express the pessimistic mood with which the young man viewed the evils of the time. One of his later poems of social justice has also had some use as a hymn, 5. _From street and square, from hill and glen,_ _Of this vast world beyond my door._ His four hymns in the _Book of Hymns_, with other poems by him, are included in Putnam’s _Singers and Songs, of the Liberal Faith_, 1875. Of the above hymns those listed as 3 and 5 are included in _Hymns of the Spirit_, 1937. J. 521, 1711 H.W.F.