Part 40 (1/2)

was invariably old ”Kentucky,” by Jeremiah Ingalls. Sung as a solo by a sweet and spirited voice, it slightly resembled ”Golden Hill,” but oftener its halting bars invited a more drawling style of execution unworthy of a hymn that merits a tune like ”St. Thomas.”

Old ”Kentucky” was not field music.

”CHRISTIANS, IF YOUR HEARTS ARE WARM.”

Elder John Leland, born in Grafton, Ma.s.s., 1754, was not only a strenuous personality in the Baptist denomination, but was well known everywhere in New England, and, in fact, his preaching trip to Was.h.i.+ngton (1801) with the ”Ches.h.i.+re Cheese” made his fame national. He is spoken of as ”the minister who wrote his own hymns”--a peculiarity in which he imitated Watts and Doddridge. When some natural shrinking was manifest in converts of his winter revivals, under his rigid rule of immediate baptism, he wrote this hymn to fortify them:

Christians, if your hearts are warm, Ice and cold can do no harm; If by Jesus you are prized Rise, believe and be baptized.

He found use for the hymn, too, in rallying church-members who staid away from his meetings in bad weather. The ”poetry” expressed what he wanted to say--which, in his view, was sufficient apology for it. It was sung in revival meetings like others that he wrote, and a few hymnbooks now long obsolete contained it; but of Leland's hymns only one survives.

Gray-headed men and women remember being sung to sleep by their mothers with that old-fas.h.i.+oned evening song to Amzi Chapin's[23] tune--

The day is past and gone, The evening shades appear, O may we all remember well The night of death draws near;

--and with all its solemnity and other-worldness it is dear to recollection, and its five stanzas are lovingly hunted up in the few hymnals where it is found. Bradbury's ”Braden,” (_Baptist Praise Book_, 1873,) is one of its tunes.

[Footnote 23: Amzi Chapin has left, apparently, nothing more than the record of his birth, March 2, 1768, and the memory of his tune. It appeared as early as 1805.]

Elder Leland was a remarkable revival preacher, and his prayers--as was said of Elder Jabez Swan's fifty or sixty years later--”brought heaven and earth together.” He traveled through the Eastern States as an evangelist, and spent a season in Virginia in the same work. In 1801 he revisited that region on a curious errand. The farmers of Ches.h.i.+re, Ma.s.s., where Leland was then a settled pastor, conceived the plan of sending ”the biggest cheese in America” to President Jefferson, and Leland (who was a good democrat) offered to go to Was.h.i.+ngton on an ox-team with it, and ”preach all the way”--which he actually did.

The cheese weighed 1450 lbs.

Elder Leland died in North Adams, Ma.s.s., Jan. 14, 1844. Another of his hymns, which deserved to live with his ”Evening Song,” seemed to be answered in the brightness of his death-bed hope:

O when shall I see Jesus And reign with Him above, And from that flowing fountain Drink everlasting love?

”AWAKE, MY SOUL, TO JOYFUL LAYS.”

This glad hymn of Samuel Medley is his thanksgiving song, written soon after his conversion. In the places of rural wors.h.i.+p no lay of Christian praise and grat.i.tude was ever more heartily sung than this at the testimony meetings.

Awake, my soul, to joyful lays, And sing thy great Redeemer's praise; He justly claims a song from me: His loving-kindness, oh, how free!

Loving-kindness, loving-kindness, His loving-kindness, oh, how free!

_THE TUNE,_

With its queer curvet in every second line, had no other name than ”Loving-Kindness,” and was probably a camp-meeting melody in use for some time before its publication. It is found in _Leavitt's Christian Lyre_ as early as 1830. The name ”William Caldwell” is all that is known of its composer, though he is supposed to have lived in Tennessee.

”THE LORD INTO HIS GARDEN COMES.”

Was a common old-time piece sure to be heard at every religious rally, and every one present, saint and sinner, had it by heart, or at least the chorus of it--

Amen, amen, my soul replies, I'm bound to meet you in the skies, And claim my mansion there, etc.

The anonymous[24] ”Garden Hymn, as old, at least, as 1800,” has nearly pa.s.sed out of reach, except by the long arm of the antiquary; but it served its generation.

[Footnote 24: A ”Rev.” Mr. Campbell, author of ”The Glorious Light of Zion,” ”There is a Holy City,” and ”There is a Land of Pleasure,” has been sometimes credited with the origin of the Garden Hymn.]