Handbook to the Mennonite HymnaryHostetler, Lester
Religion
Handbook to the Mennonite Hymnary
Hostetler, Lester
Hymns, English -- History and criticism; Mennonites -- Hymns -- History and criticism
_MUSIC._ AUSTRIAN HYMN is founded on a Croatian melody. It was used in
Germany as the tune of “Deutschland über alles.” Joseph Haydn,
1732-1809, made a setting of it to be sung at the Emperor’s birthday,
Feb. 12, 1797, to the words, “Gott erhalte Franz der Kaiser.” The tune
was a great favorite of Haydn and he used it as a theme in one of the
movements in his famous “_Emperor Quartet_,” No. 76.
For comments on Franz Joseph Haydn, see Hymn 27.
275. I love Thy Kingdom, Lord _Timothy Dwight_, 1752-1817
Based on Psalm 137:5, 6: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right
hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave
to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”
It is rated high among all the hymns on the church and is probably the
earliest American hymn in use today.
Timothy Dwight, the great president of Yale, was the grandson of
Jonathan Edwards and shared in a large measure the intellectual
brilliance of the Edwards family. A precocious youth, he entered Yale
College at 13 and graduated at 17. An outstanding personality of his
time, he was honored for his sound scholarship, elected a member of the
Massachusetts legislature, and served as minister of the Congregational
Church at Greenfield, Conn. From 1795 until his death in 1817, he was
President of Yale, simultaneously holding the Chair of Theology. His
presence at Yale changed the whole moral and religious attitude of the
campus, there having been only four or five professed Christians at the
college, according to Prof. W. W. Sweet, when he became president. At
the request of the General Association of Congregational Churches in
Connecticut and with the concurrence of the Presbyterian General
Assembly, he revised _The Psalms of David_, by I. Watts, a work which
was used in the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of Connecticut
for over 30 years.
Dwight did a prodigious amount of work in spite of a serious physical
handicap. His eyesight, for the greater part of forty years, was so poor
that his reading was done only with the greatest of difficulty and with
frequent and agonizing pain behind the eyeballs.
_MUSIC._ STATE STREET. For comments on this tune see Hymn 246.
276. O where are kings and empires now _Arthur C. Coxe_, 1818-96
From a larger poem by Coxe, entitled “Chelsea,” containing ten stanzas
of eight lines each. It is a hymn of confidence that the church, built
on a solid foundation, will survive all earthly kings and empires and
will be able to withstand every earthly foe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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