Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Unitarian hymn writer and hymnal editor Frederick Lucian Hosmer was born today in 1840, in Framingham, Massachusetts.  In 1872, following graduation from Harvard Divinity School a few years earlier, he was "ordained to a fruitful ministry," as described by the Handbook to The Hymnal (1935 - Presbyterian), serving both Unitarian and Congregational churches in different states.

Writing hymns came later, and he was considered the finest hymn writer of his day (a worthy successor to Samuel Longfellow) among the Unitarians, but several of his texts were taken up by hymnals outside that denomination as well.

In the fourth volume of Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1952), American Unitarian Association president Samuel Atkins Eliot wrote of Hosmer:

...a poet intent on making his hymns as perfect an expression of his thought as possible. He had a wide knowledge of hymnody and sound theories of hymn construction which he expounded in lectures at the Harvard Divinity School in 1908. His hymns are the expression of a cheerful faith and are carefully wrought out in simple and facile forms which do not disclose the labor and care which went into their making.

In today's hymn, Hosmer only wrote the second stanza.  The first had been written nearly a century earlier, by Reginald Heber, and over the years other people have added stanzas of their own.  The stanza by Hosmer was written in 1912, and may have first appeared in The New Hymn and Tune Book (1914), a Unitarian collection that Hosmer had helped compile. 

God that madest earth and heaven,
Darkness and light;
Who the day for toil hast given,
For rest the night;
May thine angel guards defend us,
Slumber sweet thy mercy send us,
Holy dreams and hopes attend us,
This livelong night.

When the constant sun, returning,
Unseals our eyes,
May we, born anew, like morning,
To labor rise.
Gird us for the tasks that call us,
Let not ease and self enthrall us,
Strong through thee, whate'er befall us,
O God most wise.

Reginald Heber, 1827 (st. 1);
Frederick Lucian Hosmer, 1912 (st. 2)
Tune: AR HYD Y NOS (8.4.8.4.8.8.8.4.)
Welsh traditional melody; harm. Luther O. Emerson, 1906

The idea of adding a stanza or two to an existing hymn is not particularly novel and may be done for various reasons, though some consider it unnecessary tinkering with the original author's intent.  In this case I suspect that people just thought that a hymn with a single stanza was too short and was less likely to be sung at all.  Certainly the stanzas added to Mary Lathbury's Break thou the bread of life seem intended to "correct" her original concept of seeking God "beyond the sacred page" (of scripture).  I believe that several hymnal editors before the twentieth century, when scholarship around hymns and their origins became more widespread, often added stanzas to hymns either original or borrowed from other hymns, and since those books often didn't include any credits at all, no one knew the difference.

This continues in more modern times; I am particularly thinking of the stanza added by Georgia Harkness to This is my song, O God of all the nations by Lloyd Stone, found in a number of modern hymnals.  And I've even done it myself a few times, such as this instance seen here a few years back.



Seven Years Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Six Years Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Five Years Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

One Year Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Georgia Harkness

Methodist theologian and hymnwriter Georgia Elma Harkness was born today in 1891. After graduating from Cornell University in 1912 she taught school for a few years before entering graduate studies in religion at Boston University. She was ordained in the Methodist Church in 1926, but women were not given full clergy privileges and responsibilities until 1956.

She became the first woman professor of theology at a major seminary, first at Garrett Biblical Institute in 1940 and then at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. She also accepted visiting professorships in Japan and the Philippines.

Harkness was a prolific writer, publishing more than thirty books, the last published posthumously after her death in 1974. Three of those books were poetry, and included some of her hymns. In 1954 she wrote her most well-known hymn, Hope of the world, which was the winning entry in a contest sponsored by the Hymn Society of America, for a hymn to be sung that year at the opening service of the World Council of Churches (an organization that Harkness had helped found). Hope of the world was included in many hymnals published over the next forty years; it's likely to be in your own church's hymnal.

Harkness's hymns were written on a variety of subjects. Hope of the world is a hymn of social justice, perhaps illustrating a quote from her that "it is easier to praise Jesus than to follow him." At the 2008 Hymn Society Conference, we sang a number of her less-familiar hymns, including one on the subject of recovery from depression. Harkness herself went through a long period of depression in the early 1940s, after a period of illness and isolation. In 1944 her pastor introduced her to another member of their congregation, a musician named Verna Miller. The two women moved in together and remained together until Harkness died thirty years later. After Harkness retired from the Pacific School of Religion, she and Miller wanted to move into a retirement residence in nearby Claremont but were denied, so they bought the house next door and were fully part of the social circle of the other retirees.

Her books were out of print for many years but a new collection of her early essays was published last month, Georgia Harkness: the Remaking of a Liberal Theologian.

One Year Ago: Reginald Heber

Two Years Ago: Saint Anselm