February 1927
80
T h e
K i n g ’ s
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Nearer My God to Thee B y R ev . A. S. L angley (In London Christian )
T HIS hymn will be forever associated with the greatest maritime disaster in history. As the White Star liner, the Titantic —the last word in shipbuild ing achievement—was on her maiden voyage, she crashed into an iceberg and sank in mid-Atlantic. That was on April 14, 1912; there were over 1,600 souls still on board, and the last sounds heard by the passengers in the life boats were the strains of “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” played by the devoted bandsmen, and continued until the rushing water overwhelmed the vessel and all on board. As the great ship plunged to her grave, how fitting a requiem were the last strains of this hymn, which has brought comfort and light to countless men and Women all over the world! Two miles deep lies the Titantic, and there, too, midway between the two great sections of the English-speaking race which he did much toUnite, lies William T. Stead, who in 1895, in a book entitled Hymns that have Helped, made a'valuable contribution to hymnol- ogy. In that little work he gave the judgment, among others, of the Prince of Wales, afterward King Edward VII., who, in response to a question, declared that, “among serious hymns, he thought there was none more- touching, nor one that went more truly to the heart, than ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’.” The hymn now before us was written by a woman, that woman a Unitarian, and that Unitarian the daughter of a couple who first met in Newgate gaol, whither the father had been consigned for six months, for the political crime of defending, the French Revolution, and criticizing the conduct of a certain Bishop Watson. T he A uthor Sarah Flower Adams was born in Cambridge in 1805; her father, Benjamin Flower, being editor and proprietor of the Cambridge Intelligencer. She and her sister Eliza were endowed with poetical and musical talents. Mendel ssohn knew them, and Browning admired Eliza’s gifts. In fact, the great poet was an intimate friend of the fam ily, and in his boyhood often discussed religious problems with the two girls. Sarah, at that time, was passing, through clouds of doubt and unbelief. “I lost hold,” she said. In later life the poet referred to her as a “very remarkable person,” while his biographer declares “that if any woman was Pauline inspired, it was she.” Leigh Hunt called her “rare mistress of thought and tears.” When their father died, the girls were placed under the guardianship of William J. Fox, then minister of South Place Unitarian Chapel, Finsbury Pavement, E. C., sometime Member of Parliament for Oldham, and an anti- Corn-Law orator. They sang in the choir, and the hymn now before us was first heard in the Finsbury Chapel, and sung there for nearly a generation before it attained outside fame. It is Jacob’s dream in song—-founded on Gen. 28:10-19. It sets forth with happy emphasis the purest and loftiest of all aspirations, but wisely recog nizes that what sometimes seems to hinder may, indeed, be made to help. In 1834 Sarah Flower married W. Bridges Adams, a civil engineer, a man of considerable literary and scientific ability, also connected with the Unitarian denom
ination. Naturally of a delicate constitution, her health was enfeebled by watching over her sister, who died of consumption in 1847. The same disease, carried her off, on August 13, 1848. At the funerals of both, the hymns sung were compositions of the two gifted sisters. M odifications and A dditions The close of Sarah’s life is thus described: “She wore away, almost her last breath bursting into uncon scious song as the gentle spirit glided from its beautiful frame.” She was buried at Harlow, Essex. She wrote a catechism for children, interspersed with hymns, entitled “The Flock at the Fountain.” This hymn, along with twelve other pieces, she contributed to W. J- Fox’s “Hymns and Anthems,” published in 1841. The lines say nothing of Christ, but to those who have Christ in their hearts they have often been made a bless ing. The hymn has been translated into many European and other languages, and several modifications and alter ations of it have been made. Bishop Walsham How gave an entirely new version- of it in his— Nearer, my God, to Thee, Hear Thou my prayer. The first and most satisfactory change was the addi tion of-.a stanza, in 1851, by Rev. A. Tozer Russell, in his “Psalms and Hymns” : Christ alone beareth me Bishop Bickersteth, in a note to this hymn in his annotated edition of the “Hymnal Companion,” 1876, says: “The Editor shrunk from appending a closing verse of his own to a hymn so generally esteemed complete as this, or he would have suggested the following:-- There in my Father’s home, Safe and at rest, There in my Saviour’s love, Perfectly blest; Age after age to be Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee. S triking S tories In 1902, in Buffalo, U. S. A„ as President McKinley lay dying by the hand of an assassin, the martyred Presi dent was heard singing faintly:— Nearer, my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee; E’en though it be a cross That raiseth me! Where Thou dost shine ; Joint-heir He maketh me Of the divine. , In Christ my soul, shall be, Nearest, my God, to Thee—- Nearest to Thee!
Still all my song shall be— . Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee.
Thus passed away one of the noblest men of our age. On the day of his funeral, at Canton, Ohio, all trains, trol-
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