Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/603

587 GERMAN.] H Y M N S 587 good. They arc more objective than those of Heermann, and written, upon the whole, in a more manly spirit. Next to Heerrrrann and Hist in fertility of production, and ,ch. above them in poetical genius, was Simon Dach, pro fessor of poetry at Konigsberg, who died in 1659. Miss Winkworth ranks him high among German poets, &quot;for the sweetness of form and depth of tender contemplative emotion to be found in his verses.&quot; The fame of all these writers was eclipsed in the latter part of the same century by three of the greatest hymno- graphers whom Germany has produced, Paul Gerhardt (1604-167G), John Franck (1618-1C77), and John Scheffler (1624-1677), the founder of the &quot;second Silesian hardt. school,&quot; who assumed the name of &quot; Angelus.&quot; Gerhardt is by universal consent the prince of Lutheran poets. His compositions (which may be compared, in many respects, to those of the Christian Year] are lyric poems, of consider able length, rather than hymns, though many hymns have been taken from them. They are, with few exceptions, subjective, and speak the language of individual experience. They occupy a middle ground between the masculine sim plicity of the old Lutheran style and the highly wrought religious emotion of the later Pietists, towards whom they (on the whole) incline. Being nearly all excellent, it is not easy to distinguish among the 123 those which are entitled to the highest praise. Two, which were written one during the war and the other after the conclusion of peace, &quot; Zeuch ein zu deinen Thoren &quot; (&quot; Come to Thy temple here on earth&quot;), and &quot; Gottlob, nun 1st erschollen,&quot; (&quot;Thank God, it hath resounded&quot;), are historically in teresting. Of the rest, one is well known and highly appreciated in England through Wesley s translation, &quot; Commit thou all thy ways.&quot; &c. ; and the Evening and Spring-tide hymns (&quot; Now all the woods are sleeping,&quot; and &quot; Go forth, my heart, and seek delight &quot;) show an exquisite feeling for nature ; while nothing can be more tender and pathetic than &quot; Du bist zwar mem und bleibest mein &quot; (&quot;Thou rt mine, yes, still thou art mine own&quot;), on the ! .nek. death of his son. Franck, who was burgomaster of Guben in Lusatia, has been considered by some second only to Gerhardt. If so, it is with a great distance between them. His approach to the later Pietists is closer than that of Gerhardt. His hymns were published, under the title of Spiritual Zion, in 1674, some of them being founded on Ambrosian and other Latin originals. Miss Winkworth gives them the praise of a condensed and polished style and fervid and impassioned thought. It was after his eifler. conversion to Romanism that Scheffler adopted the name of &quot; Angelus,&quot; and published (1657) his hymns, under a fantastic title, and with a still more fantastic preface. Their key-note is divine love ; they are enthusiastic, in tense, exuberant in their sweetness, like those of St Bernard among mediaeval poets. An adaptation of one of them, by Wesley, &quot;Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower,&quot; is familiar to English readers. Those for the first Sunday after Epiphany, Sexagesima Sunday, and Trinity Sunday, in Lyra Germanica, are good examples of his excellences, with few of his defects. His hymns are generally so free from the expression, or even the indirect suggestion, of Roman Catholic doctrine, that it has been supposed they WBK written before his conversion, though published afterwards. The evangelical churches of Germany found no difficulty in admitting them to that prominent place in their services which they have ever since retained. lists. Towards the end of the 17th century, a new religious school arose, to which the name of &quot; Pietists &quot; was given, and of which Philip Jacob Spener was esteemed the founder. He and his pupils and successors, August Hermann Francke and Anastasius Freylinghausen, all wrote hymns. Spener s hymns are not remarkable, and Francke s are not numer ous. Freylinghausen was their chief singer : his rhythm is lively, his music florid : but, though his book attained extraordinary popularity, he was surpassed in solid merit by other less fertile writers of the same school. The &quot; Auf hinauf zu deiner Freude &quot; (&quot; Up, yes, upward to thy glad ness &quot;) of Schade may recall to an English reader a hymn by Seagrave, and more than one by Lyte ; the &quot; Malabarian hymn &quot; (as it was called by Jacobi) of Schiitz, &quot; All glory to the Sovereign Good,&quot; has been popular in England as well as Germany ; and one of the most exquisite strains of pious resignation ever written is &quot; Whate er my God ordains is right,&quot; by Rodigast. Joachim Neander, a schoolmaster at Diisseldorf, and a Neander. friend of Spener and Schiitz (who died before the full development of the &quot; Pietistic &quot; school), was the first man of eminence in the &quot;Reformed&quot; or Calvinistic Church who imitated Lutheran hymnocly. This he did, while suffering persecution from the elders of his own church for some other religious practices, which he had also learnt from Spener s example. As a poet, he is sometimes deficient in art ; but there is feeling, warmth, and sweetness in many of his &quot; Bundeslieder &quot; or &quot; Songs of the Covenant,&quot; and they obtained general favour, both in the Reformed and in Lutheran congregations. The Summer Hymn (&quot; O Thou true God alone &quot;) and that on the Glory of God in Creation (&quot; Lo, heaven and earth and sea and air &quot;) are instances of his best style. With the &quot; Pietists &quot; may be classed Schmolke and Dessler, representatives of the &quot; Orthodox &quot; division of Spener s school ; Hiller, their leading poet in South Ger many ; Arnold and Tersteegen, who were practically inde pendent of ecclesiastical organization, though connected, one with the &quot;Orthodox&quot; and- the other with the &quot;Reformed&quot; churches ; and Louis Count Zinzendorf. Schmolke, a SchmoU pastor in Silesia, called the Silesian Rist (1672-1737), was perhaps the most voluminous of all German hymn- writers. He wrote 1188 religious poems and hymns, a large proportion of which do not rise above mediocrity. His style, if less refined, is also less subjective and more simple than that of most of his contemporaries. Among his best and most attractive works (which, indeed, it would be difficult to praise too highly) are the &quot; Hosianna David s Sohn,&quot; for Palm Sunday, much resembling a shorter hymn by Jeremy Taylor ; and the Ascension, Whitsuntide, and Sabbath hymns, &quot;Heavenward doth our journey tend,&quot; &quot; Come deck our feast to-day,&quot; and &quot; Light of light, enlighten me.&quot; Dessler was a greater poet than Schmolke. Dessler. Few hymns, of the subjective kind, are better than his &quot; I will not let Thee go, Thou Help in time of need ; &quot; &quot; O Friend of souls, how well is me ; &quot; and &quot; Now the pearly gates unfold,&quot; &c. Hiller was a pastor in Wiirtemberg Hiller. (1699-1769), who, falling into ill-health during the latter part of his ministry, published a Casket of Spiritual So&amp;gt;/gs, in a didactic vein, with more taste than power, but (as Miss Winkworth says) in a tone of &quot; deep, thoughtful, practical piety.&quot; They were so well-adapted to the wants of his people that to this day Killer s Casket is prized, next to their Bibles, by the peasantry of Wiirtemberg ; and the numerous emigrants from that part of Germany to America and other foreign countries generally take it with them wherever they go. Arnold, a professor at Giessen, and Arnold, afterwards a pastor in Brandenburg, was a man of strong will, uncompromising character, and austere views of life, intolerant and controversial towards those whose doctrine or practice he disapproved, and more indifferent to sepa ratism and sectarianism than the &quot;Orthodox&quot; gem&amp;gt;ralty thought right. His hymns, like those of our own Toplady (whom in these respects he resembled), unite with con siderable strength more gentleness and breadth of sympathy than might be expected from a man of such a character.