Nativity of John the Baptist

The birth of John the Baptist is commemorated in some churches on June 24 (or June 25 this year, to move it away from a Sunday).  Many churches might only mention John during Advent, or perhaps at the Baptism of Jesus, but some additionally mark the day of his martyrdom by beheading (in the famous story of Salome) on August 29.

Today's hymn comes from The Holy Year (1865), a book of hymns by Christopher Wordsworth, delineated for each Sunday of the church year and many saints' days.  Wordsworth wrote eleven stanzas, but I can't imagine a modern congregation singing many more than four.

In the wilderness prepare ye
For our God a way to go,
Ev'ry valley shall be lifted,
Ev'ry hill shall be made low;
Straight shall be the crooked places,
And the rough be level made,
And all flesh shall see the glory
Of the Lord of Hosts displayed.

In his mother's womb exulting
Did the Voice salute the Word,
In the wilderness the Servant
Gladly did proclaim the Lord;
When the Spirit came upon him
Whom the Maker's love did send,
Christ the Savior sent from heaven,
John on earth the Savior's friend.

John the Baptist, our Elijah,
Preached thee in his mother's womb,
In the desert, in the palace,
In the prison's narrow room;
Greater than the holy prophets,
For he did the Christ baptize;
Greater than the holy prophets,
For he did evangelize.

In our hearts thy way preparing,
May we, Christ, thy grace obtain,
Level hills, fill up the valleys,
Crooked straight and rough make plain;
Haste, O haste thy second coming!
May thy everlasting Word
Bloom and flow'r through generations,
And be glorified, O Lord!

Christopher Wordsworth, 1865; alt.
Tune: BEECHER (8.7.8.7 D.)
John Zundel, 1870

The familiar tune BEECHER, by John Zundel, was named for Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church, where Zundel was organist.  I chose it for this text in honor of Beecher's birthday, which is also today.



P.S. The painting above, John the Baptist Preaching (1733) is by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Four Years Ago:  Henry Ward Beecher

Three Years Ago: Nativity of John the Baptist

They Sang a New Song

Using the tune BEECHER the other day reminded me of something I had intended to write about a few weeks ago. That tune was named for Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn NY, and was composed by John Zundel, who was the organist there for many years.

I attended a service at the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims (as it is now known) at the end of October. The church still looks similar to the nineteenth-century illustration here. The occasion of my visit was the dedication of the congregation's new hymnal, Hymns of Faith and Light. The service was constructed around the theme of congregational singing, an important part of that church's history. Beecher and Zundel produced the Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes (1855) which was the first major hymnal anywhere to include the texts and the tunes of the hymns on the same page.

That book (acknowledged in the present-day service) was originally intended for use in their own church, but went on to be used in many other congregations over the next several years. Today, in a kind of reversal, they are singing from a new hymnal that was originally produced in another church for their own use (the First Congregational Church of Houston) and has also spread to many congregations.  The title of this post came from the title of the sermon preached by Senior Minister David C. Fisher recounting an overview of congregational song from its earliest days (alas, no longer available online).

One Year Ago: World AIDS Day

Louisa May Alcott

Popular novelist Louisa May Alcott was born on this day in 1832, in Pennsylvania, though she lived for most of her life in New England. Orchard House, in Concord, MA, was the Alcott family home for many years and is maintained today as a museum. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a prominent intellectual of the day and other literary figures such as Henry David Thoreau. Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller were friends of the family.

However, Bronson Alcott was not particularly good at providing for his family, and Louisa went to work at an early age to help, serving as a teacher, governess, and seamstress in addition to some early writing. She wrote articles, stories, and poetry for the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines, publishing her first book of childrens' stories, Flower Fables, in 1849. She briefly served as a nurse during the Civil War, and in 1863 revised some of her letters home during that time, publishing them as Hospital Sketches. This was her first book to receive critical notice.

Five years later came the well-known and well-loved Little Women, which has never been out of print since. Three sequels followed, establishing Alcott as the wholesome author of uplifting tales for children. However, in the 1940s, literary sleuths Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine B. Stern discovered several short stories and novels that Alcott had published under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. These tales were sensationalistic and somewhat lurid, a long way from the March sisters of Little Women, but Alcott has written most of them in the years before the acclaim of her childrens' novels, and the Barnard material had sold well, which was, after all, its purpose. Later novels for adults included Work (1873), which was also semi-autobiographical, and A Modern Mephistopheles (1873), which was much closer in tone to the Barnard stories and published anonymously.

Alcott herself said that she had written only one hymn, A little kingdom I possess. However, this poem about the life of Christ was set to music in Charles Hutchins' Carols Old and Carols New (1916) and has appeared in a few other collections since. I've chosen a more accessible tune for its possible use today.

O, the beautiful old story!
Of the little child that lay
In a manger on that morning,
When the stars sang in the day;
When the happy shepherds kneeling,
As before a holy shrine,
Bless’d God and the tender mother
For this life that was divine.

O, the pleasant, peaceful story!
Of the youth who grew so fair,
In his parents’ humble dwelling
Poverty and toil to share,
Till around him in the temple,
Marveling, the old men stood,
As through his wise innocency
Shone the meek boy’s angelhood.

O, the wonderful, true story!
Of the messenger from God,
Who among the poor and lowly,
Bravely and devoutly trod,
Working miracles of mercy,
Preaching peace, rebuking strife,
Blessing all the little children,
Lifting up the dead to life.

O, the sad and solemn story!
Of the cross, the crown, the spear,
Of the pardon, pain, and glory
That have made his Name so dear.
Christ's example let us follow,
Fearless, faithful to the end,
Walking in the sacred footsteps
Of our Brother, Savior, Friend.

Louisa May Alcott, 19th cent.; alt.
Tune: BEECHER (8.7.8.7.D.)
John Zundel, 1870

Hymnary.org lists a few other Alcott texts that have appeared in hymnals, in spite of her own claim of a single hymn. As we have often seen, later generations choose their own hymns from the verse of the past.

Two Years Ago: John Haynes Holmes

Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher (born June 24, 1813) was the most famous clergyman of his time, a Civil War-era media star of a type we might recognize today. He'd get himself on television in this century, although unlike today's well-known television preachers his views were mostly liberal: favoring abolition, evolution, and women's suffrage.

He pastored the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn NY from its inception in 1847 until his death in 1887. Under his leadership the church was one of the largest in the country, with regular attendance in the thousands, and occasional guests such as Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain came to hear Beecher's acclaimed sermons.

He's here today because he actively promoted congregational singing in worship. The first hymnal he compiled was Temple Melodies in 1851, which included about 500 hymns and 200 tunes. He soon decided that was inadequate, and in 1855 brought out the Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes, with 1374 hymns and 367 tunes. Since he could get no publisher to bring out anything that extensive, the congregation raised the money themselves to have the first edition privately printed for their use. Both these hymnals were among the first in this country to include both words and music on the same page. Beecher also deliberately chose the texts from several different traditions, from psalm paraphrases, from the Englishmen Wesley and Watts, and (shockingly to some) from Unitarian and Roman Catholic sources. Before long the Plymouth Collection was being used in many other churches, no longer considered a publishing risk.

The members of Beecher's extended family were among the intellectual elites of the country, most of them acclaimed in their own fields. Like other Beecher ventures, the Plymouth Collection was a bit of a family affair. Novelist sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, then particularly famous following the publication of mammoth bestseller Uncle Tom's Cabin, contributed three hymns, and younger brother Charles was one of the music editors. Charles and his fellow music editor, John Zundel (longtime organist at Plymouth Church) both contributed several tunes to the hymnal. Zundel later wrote the hymn tune BEECHER, named for Henry Ward, and still used today for a few different texts.

This hymn is by Mrs. Stowe, with a tune by Charles, from Henry Ward's Plymouth Collection:

When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,
And billows wild contend with angry roar,
’Tis said, far down, below the wild commotion,
That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.

Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth,
And silver waves chime ever peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce so e’er it flieth,
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.

So to the heart that knows Thy love, O Purest!
There is a temple, sacred evermore,
And all the babble of life’s angry voices
Dies in hushed stillness at its peaceful door.

Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth,
And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce so e’er it flieth,
Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee.

O Rest of rests! O Peace, serene, eternal!
Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never.
And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth
Fullness of joy, forever and forever.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, c.1855
Tune REST (Beecher) (11.10.11.10)
Charles Beecher, c.1855


Harriet's text is very much of its time and would probably not go over well today, though I think there's a lot to like in it (you may notice - no alt.). Charles's tune is pretty rangy (that second line!) and a bit hard to match up with the text, written in an American style that would be largely supplanted by the English Victorian tune writers and their more stately stepwise-moving tunes, meaning that Charles's several other tunes had little chance to migrate to other, later hymnals. And there's another, much better-known tune called REST by Frederick C. Maker.

P.S. The Plymouth Collection was the first American hymnal to include Abide with me. It was on the facing page to the above hymn, indicating that it could be sung to the same tune. Luckily, a few years later, W. H. Monk wrote the tune that we know today (EVENTIDE) and saved us from singing it to Charles Beecher's REST (not really -- with REST it would never have survived until today)