PREFACE

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THE writing of these pages was an accident and a pleasAn editorial emergency called forth the first article; our personal interest induced several others; then the interest of our readers requested the series. Favorable comments and the expressed desire of not a few to have the articles in permanent form explain the appearance of this volume.

As a member of the committee which had charge of the preparation of the new Lutheran Common Service Book with Hymnal we were led to assemble a four foot shelf of books on Liturgics and Hymnology which volumes we have freely consulted. Grateful acknowledgment is here made to the many distinguished writers on hymnology whose interesting and valuable writings we have read and compared and assimilated. We trust that the work has been done in such a way as to give a new, fresh and interesting story of a number of the Favorite Hymns which are most widely loved and used.

We hope that every reader of these pages will miss from the incomplete list of Favorite Hymns here treated some of the hymns he most dearly loves, and that his interest will be so aroused as to send him to the libraries to find the same pleasure we have found and which has been our personal profit.

If the reader is as interested in the reading as we were in the writing then these chapters will have the fascination

of fiction. We therefore send them forth in the firm belief that they will prove helpful in making many appreciative of the hymns they sing and able to draw more knowledge and worship out of the songs of the sanctuary.

WILLIAM LEE HUNTON.

Written in the Quadricentennial Jubilee

Year of the Birth of Protestantism.

FAVORITE HYMNS

ADVENT HYMNS

O HOW SHALL I RECEIVE THEE?

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HOW shall I receive Thee,

How greet Thee, Lord, aright?
All nations long to see Thee,
My Hope, my heart's delight!

O kindle, Lord most holy,
Thy lamp within my breast,
To do in spirit lowly

All that may please Thee best.

Thy Zion palms is strewing,
And branches fresh and fair;
My heart, its powers renewing,
An anthem shall prepare.
My soul puts off her sadness
Thy glories to proclaim;

With all her strength and gladness
She fain would serve Thy name.

I lay in fetters groaning,

Thou comest to set me free!
I stood, my shame bemoaning,
Thou comest to honor me!
A glory Thou dost give me,
A treasure safe on high,
That will not fail nor leave me.
As earthly riches fly.

Love caused Thy incarnation,
Love brought Thee down to me.
Thy thirst for my salvation
Procured my liberty.
O Love beyond all telling,
That led Thee to embrace,
In love all love excelling,

Our lost and fallen race!

Rejoice then, ye sad-hearted,
Who sit in deepest gloom,
Who mourn o'er joys departed,
And tremble at your doom;
He who alone can cheer you
Is standing at the door;
He brings His pity near you,

And bids you weep no more.

An Advent hymn which is greatly loved by all who appreciate the purpose and spirit of the Advent season; we find in these stanzas prayer, praise, theology, redemption, Christian penitence, Christian joy. The heart is laid bare, so to speak, and the Christian who with heart, mind and voice sings this Advent hymn of prayer and praise must certainly be ready to welcome the Saviour when He comes. To this end our first thought in contemplating this hymn is to see the beauty, the expressiveness and the fitness of its thought as a hymn to begin the Advent season.

Paul Gerhardt is the author of this hymn. He ranks with Luther as one of the most gifted and most popular hymn writers of the Christian Church.

It will give us a higher appreciation of the hymn to know a little of the author. He was a German poet of a high order, one whom the German people loved and owned. He was a native of Saxony, his student life being passed during the time of the Thirty Years' War, at the close of

which he became a pastor. It was while pastor at St. Nicholas' Church, Berlin, that be became known as a writer of hymns. He was held in high honor by the people of the city as an eloquent preacher and earnest pastor. In spite of this fact, because of his uncompromising stand for the Lutheran doctrine and all that it implied in teaching and in living, he was, in 1666, deposed from his spiritual office. When told of it he said, "This is only a small Berlin affliction; but I am also willing and ready to seal with my blood the evangelical truth, and, like my namesake, St. Paul, to offer my neck to the sword."

Reinstated, he again was superseded because his conscience would not let him compromise as he was expected to do. In the midst of these official trials he also was called upon to suffer family affliction, losing three children and his wife within a very short time.

He later became pastor at Lübben and archdeacon. Under his picture in this church there was the inscription which seemed to indicate the detraction and unkindness which he experienced during the last seven years of his life- The inscription, which was in Latin, was, "A divine sifted in Satan's sieve."

When we know this story, and that out of these experiences as the expression of his innermost soul some of his best hymns came, we shall then love more and understand better those hymns of his which it is our privilege to have and to sing in our English churches.

These facts give new meaning to the first, third and fifth stanzas. They become so personal that they will be of deeper significance to each and everyone who sings them.

It has been well said of Gerhardt that he had a firm grasp of the objective realities of the Christian faith and that he manifested a loyal adherence to the doctrinal stand