Part 1

American Unitarian Hymn Writers and Hymns

Compiled by Henry Wilder Foote for the Hymn Society of America for publication in the Society’s proposed Dictionary of American Hymnology

_Contents_:

(1) Historical Sketch of American Unitarian Hymnody. (Pages 1-11) (2) Catalogue of American Unitarian Hymn Books. (Pages 12-36) (3) Alphabetical List of Writers. (Pages 37-39) (4) Biographical Sketches, with Notes on Hymns. (Pages 40-247) (5) Index of First Lines of Published Hymns. (Pages 248-270)

Cambridge, Massachusetts January, 1959

I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Misses Ruth and Orlo McCormack in the preparation of this compilation.

H.W.F.

_AMERICAN UNITARIAN HYMNODY_

In the first edition of Julian’s _Dictionary of Hymnology_ (1891) F. M. Bird[1] wrote, “The Unitarians—possessing a large share of the best blood and brain of the most cultivated section of America—exhibit a long array of respectable hymnists whose effusions have often won the acceptance of other bodies,” (pp. 58-59). And in this century Louis F. Benson[2] in his classic book _The English Hymn_ (p. 460) wrote, “It is not surprizing that a body including the best blood and highest culture of Massachusetts shared in the Literary Movement [of the 19^th century] and succeeded in imparting to its hymn books a freshness of interest in great contrast to those of the orthodox churches” and that “from their [the compilers’] hands there proceeded —— a series of hymn books whose literary interest was very notable” (p. 462).

This succession of Unitarian hymn writers over a period of approximately 150 years can best be traced in the nearly 50 hymn books compiled by individuals or committees for use in Unitarian churches.[3] The editors of these books were among the best educated men of their time, who knew where to look for fresh lyrical utterances of a living faith. The earliest of them lived in the period when the traditional metrical psalms which, for more than two centuries, had been almost the only worship-song of the English speaking world, were being slowly superseded by the songs of a new age. These songs they chiefly found in the various hymn-books published for use in English Non-conformist chapels when the Church of England still generally adhered to the Old or New Versions of the Psalms. It was from these sources that Jeremy Belknap first introduced to Americans the hymns of Anne Steele, and included in his _Sacred Poetry_ (1795) hymns by Addison, Cowper, Newton, Doddridge and other English contemporaries. When, in 1808, the vestry of Trinity Church, Boston, impatient at the delay of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in getting out a hymnal, issued one for their own use, they drew heavily upon Belknap’s collection, saying in their preface “In this selection we are chiefly indebted to Dr. Belknap, whose book unquestionably contains the best expressions of sacred poetry extant.”

Many of the later collections in this series of Unitarian hymn books have been no less notable for their introduction to use in this country of new English hymns, such as Pope’s “Father of all, in every age;” Sir Walter Scott’s “When Israel of the Lord beloved;” translations of hymns in the Roman Breviary; Sarah Flower Adams’ “Nearer, my God, to Thee” (only three years after its publication in England); and Newman’s “Lead, kindly Light;” and for the ability of their compilers to discover fresh materials near at hand, as when Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson were the first to notice the hymnic possibilities of Whittier’s poems.

The story of American Unitarian hymnody begins with the publication in 1783 of the _Collection of Hymns—designed for the use of the West Society of Boston._ This church belonged to the liberal wing of New England Congregationalism, destined to become known as Unitarian a generation later. The book contained a small selection of traditional psalms and hymns by British authors and a number of quaintly didactic moral ditties in doggerel, presumably contributed by Boston versifiers who cannot now be identified.

The first group of Unitarian hymn-writers whose names are known and whose productions have survived did not begin to write until the opening decades of the 19^th century. Of this group the earliest born was John Quincy Adams, (1767-1848), best remembered as the sixth President of the United States. That he was also a hymn writer, and the only president of the country who was one, has generally been forgotten. Two or three hymns by him were written earlier but most of them came from the period following his retirement from the presidency in 1829. Soon after that event he wrote one for the 200^th anniversary of the First Church in Quincy, of which he was a member, and later in life he composed a metrical paraphrase of the whole Book of Psalms. When Dr. Lunt, minister of the Quincy church, was preparing his _Christian Psalter_, 1841, Mrs. Adams put into his hands the mss. of her husband’s poems, and Lunt included in his book five hymns and seventeen psalms by his distinguished parishioner. None of them rose above the level of respectable verse but his version of Psalm 43 survived in one or more hymn books 100 years later.

Rev. John Pierpont (1785-1866) was a poet of considerable abilities whose verses were in demand for special occasions and whose hymns were the best lyrical expressions of the developing new thought in religion. W. Garrett Horder, the English hymnologist, wrote that Pierpont’s hymn of universal praise was “the earliest really great hymn I have found by an American author.” It is still in use, as are two others by him.

Prof. Andrews Norton (1786-1853) of the Harvard Divinity School, published a hymn as early as 1809 and a good deal of verse in later years, much of it in a rather sombre introspective mood, but with one fine hymn still in use. He was followed by Rev. Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham (1793-1870) who wrote a good many hymns for special occasions, one of which survives today, and by Rev. Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843) who wrote a number of hymns highly valued as utterances of the religious idealism of the period, but long since dropped from use, except for an excellent one for the dedication of an organ, probably the only hymn in the English language written expressly for such an occasion. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), a lay man of letters, was another of the elder members of the famous group of New England poets of the 19^th century, and as early as 1820 he contributed 5 hymns to Sewall’s _New York Collection_, published in that year, and he later wrote others.

The latest born of this first group who attained memorable distinction in this field was Rev. Frederic Henry Hedge (1805-1890), whose earliest hymn, still in use, was written in 1829, but who is best known for his great translation of Luther’s “Ein’ feste Burg,” and for a fine Good Friday hymn. He collaborated with Rev. Frederic Dan Huntington[4] (1819-1904) then the college preacher at Harvard, in compiling _Hymns for the Church of Christ_, (1853), to which Huntington contributed five hymns, none now in use. Their book was the last and best of the various _Collections_ published up to the middle of the century by editors who belonged to what was becoming the conservative wing of the denomination, to whom Emerson’s _Divinity School Address_ of 1838 seemed dangerously radical.

But meantime a new era in Unitarian hymnody was opening with the publication in 1846 of the _Book of Hymns_ edited by Samuel Longfellow (1819-1891) and Samuel Johnson (1822-1882), while they were still studying in the Harvard Divinity School. Both had come under the influence of the Transcendentalist movement which was liberalizing Unitarian thought and they eagerly sought out hymns which were fresh expressions of their youthful outlook on religion. The book was notable for the new sources of hymns which they discovered, among them the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, which they were the first to introduce into a hymn book.

Their _Book of Hymns_ was followed in 1864 by their larger and even more influential _Hymns of the Spirit_, which includes most of their own hymns and many by other Unitarian writers of the period, too numerous to name here, but whose hymns are listed in the catalogue of writers appended to this introductory sketch. Samuel Johnson wrote only half a dozen hymns, but they are among the finest in the language. Samuel Longfellow wrote many more, the best of which are quite equal to Johnson’s, and together they made a more important contribution to American Unitarian hymnody than that of any other writers in the middle of the 19^th century.

This was the period of “the flowering of New England literature” and two of its poets, besides those already named, made their contribution to hymnody. The more important of the two was Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, (1809-1894) with half a dozen fine and widely used hymns, and Prof. James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) who, strictly speaking, was hardly a hymn writer at all, but from whose poems two or three have been quarried. Two other writers of this period were Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876) and his niece, Miss Eliza Scudder (1819-1896). Sears wrote two Christmas hymns widely used throughout the English speaking world. Miss Scudder wrote half a dozen hymns in a mystical vein of the highest quality, but in temperament and outlook both writers belong more to the earlier period of Unitarian thought than to that prevalent in their later lifetime.

In this mid-century period should also be included the famous war-time hymn by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” written in 1861 to provide worthier words than “John Brown’s body” for the popular tune “Glory, Hallelujah”, which had been composed a few years earlier for a Sunday School in Charleston, South Carolina.

A third period in Unitarian hymnody began with the appearance of hymns by three good friends, Rev. John White Chadwick (1840-1906), Rev. Frederic Lucian Hosmer (1840-1929) and Rev. William Channing Gannett (1840-1923), who carried forward in the last third of the century the broadly theistic interpretation of a universal religion to which Longfellow and Johnson had given utterance. Chadwick’s first hymn was written in 1864 for the graduation of his class from the Harvard Divinity School, a great hymn of brotherhood, widely used in England as well as here. A half-dozen others of fine quality have survived. Hosmer and Gannett worked together in bringing out their book _The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems_, 1885, 1894, and _Unity Hymns and Chorals_, 1880, 1911. Neither wrote any hymns while in the Divinity School, but both began to do so soon after. In 1873 Gannett wrote a fine one which is probably the earliest in the language to give a religious interpretation to the then controversial doctrine of evolution, and later a half dozen others to which deep feeling is expressed in beautiful lyrical verse. Hosmer, however, was a much more prolific writer, producing more than 40 hymns which have had some use. He was a meticulous craftsman who studied the technique of hymn-writing, and several of his hymns are among the finest in the language. Canon Dearmer, a leading authority on hymnody in the Church of England, included seven of them in his _Songs of Praise_ and calls one of them “this flawless poem, one of the completest expressions of religious faith,” and says another is “one of the noblest hymns in the language.” For approximately 40 years, c. 1880-1920, Hosmer was the outstanding hymn writer in the English speaking world, and he left no successor who was his equal in the perfection of his finest hymns.

A smaller but important contribution to the Unitarian hymnody of this period was made by Rev. Theodore Chickering Williams (1855-1915) who, while still a student in the Harvard Divinity School wrote one of the best ordination hymns in the language, and, in later years, eight others, still in use, which are religious poetry of a high order.

The latest period in Unitarian hymnody, covering the last half-century, is notable for the productions of two writers, Rev. Marion Franklin Ham (1867-1957) and Rev. John Haynes Holmes, (1879-still living). Although he had published a volume of poems in 1896 Dr. Ham did not begin to write hymns until 1911, but thereafter he produced a succession of beautiful religious lyrics, eight or ten of which have come into use. Some of them are utterances of a profound mystical insight akin to that of Eliza Scudder, but others are expressions of a world-wide theism, and one has been translated into Japanese.

Rev. John Haynes Holmes has been a more prolific writer, author of about 45 hymns, many written for special occasions, but 10 or 15 others have come into general and widespread use. His hymns are in a quite different key from those of Dr. Ham’s quiet mysticism, generally being stirring calls to social justice and the service of mankind, though a few are hymns of gratitude for the simple joys of life. While he has infrequently attained the felicity of phrasing which results in a memorable line his hymns are cast in vigorous and often stirring verse, expressing a noble altruism and a wholesome attitude towards life.

M. F. Ham and J. H. Holmes are the latest notable figures in this era of 150 years since the beginning of American Unitarian hymnody, throughout which scores of lesser writers have also contributed their offerings to the main stream. These writers are far too numerous to name in this outline sketch but their thumbnail biographies and notations as to their hymns will be found in the following catalogue. A survey of this whole era discloses the evolution in liberal religious thought from the period when the emphasis was on the sinfulness of man and the redemptive function of the Christian Church, to the vision of a world wide religion taking in many forms, and manifested in that service of mankind which found expression in the “social gospel” in the first half of this century.

The production of so great a number of fine hymns (and of a long series of hymn books of a superior type) over so long a period, by persons belonging to one of the smallest Protestant denominations, commonly considered coldly intellectual rather than emotional in its approach to religion, is a phenomenon unique in the history of hymnody. When the first edition of the _Pilgrim Hymnal_ was published in 1910 it listed both the nationality and the church membership of the authors included, which led to the disclosure that nearly half the American authors were Unitarians who had contributed considerably more than half the hymns of American authorship. In answer to critics Dr. Washington Gladden replied that this was due to the simple fact that the Unitarians had written a larger number of the best hymns than had the American writers in other denominations.

Canon Dearmer in England observed the same fact and was puzzled to explain it. The explanation, however, is a simple one. With the exception of a relatively small number of writers born in other parts of the country and with different backgrounds, these Unitarian authors were men brought up in the atmosphere of the so-called “New England Renaissance,” that literary revival of which Boston, Cambridge and Concord were the chief centres in the 19^th century, and they belonged by blood, by education and by social ties to the New England literary group. The majority were also graduates of Harvard College or Harvard Divinity School, or both, in a period when the spirit of the time was most favorable to the stimulation of poetic gifts, and in a place where the intellectual level was high and there was freedom from any dogmatic control.[5] Thus they had the culture and the warmth of atmosphere needed, and the Divinity School had the admirable custom of encouraging students to write a hymn for the annual graduation exercises or for the School’s Christmas service, and so stimulated their poetic gifts.

Thanks to these favorable circumstances what has been called “the Harvard school of hymnody” has had no equal in the English speaking world, the only comparable institution being Trinity College, Cambridge, England, which, for a much briefer period (1820-1845) was the nursing mother of a notable succession of Anglican hymn writers. It was this fact which led W. Garrett Horder, an English Congregationalist who was also a highly competent hymnologist, to write, “Harvard, like our English Cambridge, has been ‘a nest of singing birds’. I was struck by this when editing _The Treasury of American Sacred Songs_. Harvard provided the bulk —— of the verse I included.” And other orthodox authorities, notably F. M. Bird and Louis F. Benson, already quoted, have borne witness to the high achievements of both the editors of the long succession of Unitarian hymn books and the authors of the hymns which they included.

_Catalogue of American Unitarian Hymn Books._ compiled by Henry Wilder Foote and reprinted (with revisions) from the Proceedings of the Unitarian Historical Society, May, 1938, by permission.

In the 17^th century, and down to the middle of the 18^th, all churches of the Congregational order in New England used the _Bay Psalm Book_, first printed in Cambridge in 1640, except for the use of Ainsworth’s _Psalter_ in the churches of the Plymouth Plantation and in the First Church in Salem for a part of the 17^th century. In the latter part of the 18^th century, the _Bay Psalm Book_ was gradually superseded by either the New Version of the Psalms (Tate and Brady) or, more generally, by one of the editions of _Watts and Select_, i.e. Isaac Watts’ _Psalms and Hymns_, with a supplement of hymns selected from other authors.

The first steps away from the Psalm books in general use were taken by two churches which were in the vanguard of the rising liberalism of the last half of the 18^th century. In 1782 the West Church in Boston published _A Collection of Hymns, more particularly designed for the Use of the West Society in Boston_ (1),[6] and in 1788 the East Church in Salem published _A Collection of Hymns for Publick Worship_, (2). These two books were of only local significance, but they clearly pointed the way which later publications were to follow. In 1795 Rev. Jeremy Belknap brought out his _Sacred Poetry_ (3), which was an attempt to produce a book which should be acceptable to both the liberal and the orthodox wings of Congregationalism. In this purpose it failed, though it was widely used by Unitarians. The succeeding books were more definitely Unitarian in character and illustrate the changing emphasis in religious thought and practice through five generations of religious liberals. They form a notable series, for most of them attained a literary standard and spiritual outlook higher than that of other contemporary hymn books.

The earlier books in this series were very imperfectly edited, judged by modern standards. Some of them contain no preface and no indication as to the identity of the compiler. In other cases, the compiler is indicated by initials. In some cases the names of the authors of hymns are not given at all, in others only the surname, when known, and there are frequent mistaken attributions. Directions as to the music are usually lacking, the metre of each hymn alone being indicated. In some cases the names of suitable tunes are given, but only one book (18) earlier than 1868 included any music, in that case an appendix of twenty-one tunes in two parts at the back of the book. The first American Unitarian hymn book to be printed with a tune on each page was the American Unitarian Association’s _Hymn and Tune Book_ of 1868 (34). Thereafter few books appeared without tunes, but half-a-dozen other collections with music were published in the next forty years, each of which had considerable use.

It will be noted that in the course of the 19^th century no less than thirty-six different hymn-books appeared, a far larger number than any other American denomination can show for the same period, and illustrative of the extreme individualism of the Unitarian churches. Throughout the middle third of the century Greenwood’s _Collection_ (13), the _Springfield Collection_ (14), and the _Cheshire Collection_ (20), had the widest use, followed in the last third of the century by the _Hymn and Tune Books_ (34) and (36) of the American Unitarian Association, but all the other collections had some local vogue, in some cases only for a brief period or only in those churches the ministers of which had compiled the collections in question. As late, however, as the beginning of the 20^th century, at least eight different hymn-books were in use in the Unitarian churches of the United States and Canada. This diversity of usage declined rapidly after the publication of _The New Hymn and Tune Book_ (45) in 1914, and had practically disappeared by the time when that book’s successor, _Hymns of the Spirit_ (48) was published in 1937.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Copies of at least one edition of each of the following books are in the Historical Library of the American Unitarian Association, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, except in the cases noted.

1. _A Collection of Hymns, more particularly designed for the Use of the West Society in Boston_—Boston, 1782; 2nd ed., 1803; 3rd ed., 1806; 4th ed., 1813.

The editor is said to have been Rev. Simeon Howard (1733-1804), (See Bentley’s _Diary_, II, 371), Jonathan Mayhew’s successor as minister of the West Church. Mayhew’s congregation was notably liberal and this book represents the first step away from psalm-books of the traditional type. It contains 166 hymns, including a number of classics by Watts, Barbauld, Addison, etc. The tone in general is ethical rather than theological, and many of the hymns are moral precepts in mediocre verse, some, at least, probably of local production, but the authors cannot be identified as no author is named; there is no preface, and the compiler’s name is not given.

Note:—The American Unitarian Association does not own a copy. There is one in the Congregational Library, 14 Beacon Street, Boston.

2. _A Collection of Hymns for Publick Worship_—Salem; n.d. (1788)

Edited by Rev. William Bentley (1750-1819) of the East Church, Salem, Mass., and used there until superseded in 1843 by Flint’s _Collection_ (17). There is no preface and the compiler’s name is not given. There are no musical directions except the metre of each hymn. The book consists of two parts, the first containing 40 psalms “according to Tate and Brady’s Version,” arranged by metre; the second containing 163 hymns of high quality, including many of the classics of the period. The book is much superior to No. 1, but had little use outside the church for which it was intended, perhaps because Bentley, though one of the earliest outspoken Unitarians, was _persona non grata_ in a Federalist stronghold on account of his political opinions.

Note:—The American Unitarian Association does not own a copy. There is one at The Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.

3. _Sacred Poetry: consisting of Psalms and Hymns adapted to Christian devotion in publick and private. Selected from the best authors, with variations and additions_—By Jeremy Belknap, D.D., Boston, 1795.

Many editions. Some included a supplement of _Hymns for the Lord’s Supper, selected and original_, (7) prepared by Rev. Thaddeus M. Harris, minister of the First Church in Dorchester, 1801. In 1812 an edition appeared with 28 additional hymns, “Selected by the successor of the Rev. Author,” i.e. by W. E. Channing.