Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/604

588 588 HYMNS [GERMAN. Tersteegen (1G97-17G9), who never formally separated himself from the &quot; Reformed &quot; communion, in which he was brought up, but whose sympathies were with the Moravians and Count Zinzendorf, was, of all the more copious German hymn- writers after Luther, perhaps the most remarkable man. Pietist, mystic, and missionary, he was also a great religious poet. His 111 hymns were published in 1731, in a volume called The Spiritual Flower-garden. They are intensely individual, meditative, and subjective. Wesley s adaptations of two &quot; Lo ! God is here ; let us adore,&quot; and &quot;Thou hidden Love of God, whose source &quot; are well known. Among those translated by Miss Winkworth, &quot; O God, O spirit, Light of all that live,&quot; and &quot;Come, brethren, let us go,&quot; are specimens which exhibit favourably his manner and power. Miss Cox speaks of him as &quot; a gentle heaven-inspired soul, whose hymns are the reflexion of a heavenly, happy life, his mind being full of a child-like simplicity ;&quot; and his own poem on the child- character, which Miss Winkworth has appropriately con nected with Innocents day (&quot; Dear Soul, couldst thou become a child &quot;) one of his best compositions, ex quisitely conceived and expressed shows that this was in truth the ideal which he sought to realize. The hymns of Zinzendorf are often disfigured by excess in the application of the language and imagery of human affections to Divine Objects ; and this blemish is also found in many later Moravian hymns. But one hymn, at least, of Zinzendorf may be mentioned with unqualified praise, as uniting the merits of force, simplicity, and brevity, &quot; Jesu, geh voran &quot; (&quot; Jesus, lead the way &quot;), which is taught to most children of religious parents in Germany. Wesley s &quot;Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness&quot; is a translation from Zinzendorf/ The transition from Tersteegen and Zinzendorf to Gellert and Klopstock marks strongly the reaction against Pietism which took place towards the middle of the 18th century. The Spiritual Odes and Songs of C. F. Gellert were pub lished in 1757, and are said to have been received with an enthusiasm almost like that which &quot; greeted Luther s hymns on their first appearance.&quot; It is a proof of the modera tion both of the author and of his times that they were largely used, not only by Protestant congregations, but in those German Roman Catholic churches in which ver nacular services had been established through the influ ence of the emperor Joseph II. They became the model which was followed by most succeeding hymn-writers, and exceeded all others in popularity till the close of the century, when a new wave of thought was generated by the movement which produced the French Revolution. Since that time they have been, perhaps, too much depre ciated. They are, indeed, cold and didactic, as compared with Scheffler or Tersteegen ; but there is nevertheless in them a spirit of genuine practical piety ; and, if not marked by genius, they are pure in taste, and often terse, vigorous, and graceful. Klopstock, the author of the Messiah, cannot be con sidered great as a hymn-writer, though his &quot; Sabbath Hymn &quot; (of which there is a version in Hymns from the Land of Luther} is simple and good. Generally his hymns (ten are translated in Mr Sheppard s Foreign Sacred Lyre) are artificial and much too elaborate. Of the &quot; romantic &quot; school, which came in with the French Revolution, the two leading writers are Frederick von Hardenberg, called &quot; Novalis,&quot; and Frederick de la Motte Fouque, the celebrated author of Undine and Sintram, both romance-writers, as well as poets. The genius of Novalis was early lost to the world ; he died in 1802, just thirty years old. Some of his hymns are very beautiful ; but even in such works as &quot; Though all to Thee were faithless,&quot; and &quot;If only He is mine,&quot; there is a feeling of insulation and of despondency as to good in the actual world, which was perhaps inseparable from his ecclesiastical idealism. Fouque survived till 1843. Fouqm In his hymns there is the same deep flow of feeling, richness of imagery, and charm of expression, which distinguishes his prose works. The two missionary hymns &quot; Thou, solemn Ocean, rollest to the strand,&quot; and &quot; In our sails all soft and sweetly,&quot; and the exquisite composition which finds its motive in the gospel narrative of blind Bartimeus, &quot;Was du vor tausend Jahren &quot; (finely translated both by Miss Winkworth and by Miss Cox), are among the best examples. The later German hymn-writers of the present century are numerous, and belong, generally, to the revived &quot; Pietistic &quot; school. Some of the best, e.g., Arndt, Albertini, Krummacher, and especially Spitta, have produced works Spittn. not unworthy of the fame of their nation. Mr Massie, the able translator of Spitta s Psaltery and Harp (published at Leipsic in 1833), speaks of it as having &quot;obtained for him in Germany a popularity only second to that of Paul Gerhardt.&quot; Such praise is hyperbolical ; posterity alone can adjust the relative places of the writers of this and of former generations. In Spitta s poems (for such they generally arc, rather than hymns) the subjective and meditative tone is tempered, not ungracefully, with a didactic element ; and they are not, like some contemporary hymns, disfigured by exaggerated sentiment, or by a too florid and rhetorical style. The best and fullest modern collection of choice German hymns is Autho that of Baron von Bunsen, in his fcrsuch dues allgcmcincn Gcsang- ties. und Gcbcibuclis of 1833, unfortunately not reprinted after the first edition. This contains about 900 hymns. In his later All ycmcines cvangclischcs Gesany- imd Gebctbuch of 1846 the number was reduced to 440. Many other authors, besides those who have been here mentioned, are represented in these collections, and also in the excellent English translations contained in the Lyra Gcrmanica of Miss Winkworth ; Miss Cox s Sacred Hymns from the Ger man ; Miss Fry s Hymns of the Reformation ; Miss Dunn s Hymns from the German; the Misses Borthwick s Hymns from the Land of Luther ; and the Rev. Arthur T. Russell s Hymns for the Church of England. In Cunz s Gcschichtc dcs dcutschcn Kirchen- liedes (Leipsic, 1855), the number of German hymn-writers named considerably exceeds 300. Besides the volumes of mixed trans lations from different authors just enumerated (of which the earliest is that of Miss Cox, 1841), translations of Luther s hymns were pub lished by Mr John Hunt, of Preston, in 1853, and by Mr Massie, of Ecclcston, in 1854. The Lyra Domcstica of Mr Massie (which appeared in 1860) contains his translations from Spitta. A much earlier series of English versions of ninety-three mixed German hymns was published in 1722, 1725, and 1732, by John Christian Jacobi, under the patronage of Caroline, queen of George II. To this collection, entitled Psalmodia Gcrmanica, a supplement, con taining thirty-one more, and also two Latin hymns by Petersen, was added by John Haberkorn in 1765, with a dedication to the mother of George III. Some of these are now sung (though not without considerable alteration) in English churches. Much of the historical and critical information contained in the foregoing account of German hymnody has been taken from Miss &quot;VVinkworth s book, entitled Christian Singers of Germany (Maemillan, 1869) ; and to her also we are in most instances in debted for our English renderings of the first lines of hymns. The principal German authorities on the subject, Wackernagel s Das Deutsche Kirchcnlicd, Koch s Geschichte dcs Kirchcnlicdes u Kirch- cnf/csangcs, &c. , are mentioned in her preface ; to which may be added the work already mentioned of F. A. Cunz. G, British Hymnody. After the Reformation, the development of hymnody was retarded, in both parts of Great Britain, by the example and influence of Geneva. Archbishop Craumer appears at one time to have been disposed to follow Luther s course, and to present to the people, in an English dress, some at least of the hymns of the ancient church. In a letter to King Henry VIII. (7th October 1544), among some new &quot;processions&quot; which he had him self translated into English, he mentions the Easter hymn, &quot;Salve, festadies, toto memorabilis sevo&quot; (&quot;Hail, glad day,