Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/300

 288 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED

1529), where the German princes made that protest against the revocation of their privileges, which earned them the name Protestants.

The great chorale by Luther was published with the hymn in 1529. Words and music soon spread over Germany. It became the National Hymn and the battle-song of the nation. It was Luther s stay in some of the darkest hours of his life. Often in later troubles he would say to Melanchthon, Come, Philip, let us sing the 46th Psalm. The first line of the hymn is inscribed on Luther s monument at Wittenberg. When Melanchthon and two of his comrades were banished from Wittenberg in 1547, they were greatly comforted by hearing a little girl sing this hymn in the street as they entered Weimar. Sing on, dear daughter mine, said Melanchthon ; thou knowest not what great people thou art now comforting.

The Elector Frederic III, when asked why he did not build more fortresses, replied, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. Gustavus Adolphus, at the head of his army, sang the hymn to the accompaniment of trumpets on the morning of the battle of Leipzig, September 17, 1631, and at Liitzen next year, where victory was bought at the cost of the king s life. Frederick the Great used to call it God Almighty s Grenadier March. Ranke speaks of it as the production of the moment in which Luther, engaged in a conflict with a world of foes, sought strength in the consciousness that he was defending a divine cause which could never perish.

Thomas Carlyle s version, given in an article on Luther s Psalm in Eraser s Magazine, 1831, has all the fire and force of the original, which he compares to a sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmur of earthquakes. Sixty-three translations are noticed in the Dictionary of Hymnology, which describes Carlyle s as the most faithful and forcible of all the English versions.

A great revival broke out in Moravia in 1720 at the town in which David Nitschmann was living. The Jesuits got the meetings prohibited, but they were still held wherever pos sible. Once a hundred and fifty people were in Nitschmann s house, when the officers broke in. The congregation began to sing And were the world all devils o er. Twenty house holders were sent to prison. Nitschmann was treated with special severity, but escaped and joined the Moravians at Herrnhut, where he became a bishop. He was one of Wesley s

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