SAILORS' HYMNS.
The oldest sailors' hymn is found in the 107th Psalm, vss. 23-30:
They that go down to the sea in ships,
To do business in great waters,
These see the works of the Lord,
And His wonders in the deep, etc.
Montgomery has made this metrical rendering of these verses:
They that toil upon the deep,
And in vessels light and frail
O'er the mighty waters sweep
With the billows and the gale,
Mark what wonders God performs
When He speaks, and, unconfined,
Rush to battle all His storms
In the chariots of the wind.
The hymn is not in the collections, and has no tune. Addison paraphrased
the succeeding verses of the Psalm in his hymn, "How are thy servants
blessed O Lord," sung to Hugh Wilson's[35] tune of "Avon":
When by the dreadful tempest borne
High on the broken wave,
They know Thou art not slow to hear,
Nor impotent to save.
The storm is laid, the winds retire,
Obedient to Thy will;
The sea that roars at Thy command,
At Thy command is still.
[Footnote 35: Hugh Wilson was a Scotch weaver of Kilmarnock, born 1764;
died 1824.]
"FIERCE WAS THE WILD BILLOW."
([Greek: Zopheras trikumias])
The ancient writer, Anatolius, who composed this hymn has for centuries
been confounded with "St" Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople, who
died A.D. 458. The author of the hymn lived in the seventh century, and
except that he wrote several hymns, and also poems in praise of the
martyrs, nothing or next to nothing, is known of him. The "Wild Billow"
song was the principle seaman's hymn of the early church. It is being
introduced into modern psalmody, the translation in use ranking among
the most successful of Dr. John Mason Neale's renderings from the Greek.
Fierce was the wild billow,
Dark was the night;
Oars labored heavily,
Foam glimmered white;
Trembled the mariners;
Peril was nigh;
Then said the God of God,
"Peace! It is I!"
Ridge of the mountain wave,
Lower thy crest!
Wall of Euroclydon,
Be thou at rest!
Sorrow can never be,
Darkness must fly,
When saith the Light of Light,
"Peace! It is I!"
_THE TUNE._
The desire to represent the antiquity of the hymn and the musical style
of Its age, and on the other hand the wish to utilize it in the
tune-manuals for Manners' Homes and Seamen's Bethels, makes a difficulty
for composers to study--and the task is still open to competition.
Considering the peculiar tone that sailors' singing instinctively
takes--and has taken doubtless from time immemorial perhaps the
plaintive melody of "Neale," by J.H. Cornell, comes as near to a vocal
success as could be hoped. The music is of middle register and less than
octave range, natural scale, minor, and the triple time lightens a
little the dirge-like harmony while the weird sea-song effect is kept. A
chorus of singing tars must create uncommon emotion, chanting this
coronach of the storm.
John Henry Cornell was born in New York city, May 8, 1838, and was for
many years organist at St. Paul's Chapel, Trinity Church. He is the
author of numerous educational works on the theory and practice of
music. He composed the above tune in 1872. Died March 1, 1894.
"AVE, MARIS STELLA."
One of the titles which the Roman Catholic world applied to the Mother
of Jesus, in the Middle Ages, was "Stella Maris," "Star of the Sea."
Columbus, being a Catholic, sang this hymn, or caused it to be sung,
every evening, it is said, during his perilous voyage to an unknown
land. The marine epithet by which the Virgin Mary is addressed is
admirable as a stroke of poetry, and the hymn--of six stanzas--is a
prayer which, though offered to her as to a divine being, was no doubt
sincere in the simple sailor hearts of 1492.
The two following quatrains finish the voyagers' petition, and point it
with a doxology--
Vitam praesta puram,
Iter para tutum,
Ut videntes Jesum
Semper collaetemur.
Sit laus Deo Patri,
Summo Christo decus,
Spiritui Sancto,
Tribus honor unus!
A free translation is--
Guide us safe, unspotted
Through life's long endeavor
Till with Thee and Jesus
We rejoice forever.
Praise to God the Father,
Son and Spirit be;
One and equal honor
To the Holy Three.
Inasmuch as this ancient hymn did not attain the height of its
popularity and appear in all the breviaries until the 10th century, its
assumed age has been doubted, but its reputed author, Venantius
Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, was born about 531, at Treviso, Italy,
and died about 609. Though a religious teacher, he was a man of romantic
and convivial instincts--a strange compound of priest, poet and _beau
chevalier_. Duffield calls him "the last of the classics and first of
the troubadours," and states that he was the "first of the Christian
poets to begin that worship of the Virgin Mary which rose to a passion
and sank to an idolatry."
_TUNES_
To this ancient rogation poem have been composed by Aiblinger (Johann
Caspar), Bavarian, (1779-1867,) by Proch (Heinrich), Austrian,
(1809-1878,) by Tadolini (Giovanni), Italian, (1803-1872,) and by many
others. The "Ave, Maris Stella" is in constant use in the Romish church,
and its English translation by Caswall is a favorite hymn in the _Lyra
Catholica_.
"AVE, SANCTISSIMA!"
This beautiful hymn is not introduced here in order of time, but because
it seems akin to the foregoing, and born of its faith and
traditions--though it sounds rather too fine for a sailor song, on ship
or shore. Like the other, the tuneful prayer is the voice of
ultramontane piety accustomed to deify Mary, and is entitled the
"Evening Song to the Virgin."
Ave Sanctissima! we lift our souls to Thee
Ora pro nobis! 'tis nightfall on the sea.
Watch us while shadows lie
Far o'er the waters spread;
Hear the heart's lonely sigh;
Thine, too, hath bled.
Thou that hast looked on death,
Aid us when death is near;
Whisper of heaven to faith;
Sweet Mother, hear!
Ora pro nobis! the wave must rock our sleep;
Ora, Mater, ora! Star of the Deep!
This was first written in four separate quatrains, "'Tis nightfall on
the sea" being part of the first instead of the second line, and "We
lift our souls," etc., was "Our souls rise to Thee," while the
apostrophe at the end read, "Thou Star of the Deep."
The fact of the modern origin of the hymn does not make it less probable
that the earlier one of Fortunatus suggested it. It was written by Mrs.
Hemans, and occurs between the forty-third and forty-fourth stanzas of
her long poem, "The Forest Sanctuary."
A Spanish Christian who had embraced the Protestant faith fled to
America (such is the story of the poem) to escape the cruelties of the
Inquisition, and took with him his Catholic wife and his child. During
the voyage the wife pined away and died, a martyr to her conjugal
loyalty and love. The hymn to the Virgin purports to have been her daily
evening song at sea, plaintively remembered by the broken-hearted
husband and father in his forest retreat on the American shore with his
motherless boy.
The music was composed by a sister of Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Hughes, who
probably arranged the lines as they now stand in the tune.
The song, though its words appear in the _Parochial Hymn-book_, seems to
be in use rather as parlor music than as a part of the liturgy.
"JESUS, LOVER OF MY SOUL."
The golden quality of this best-known and loved of Charles Wesley's
hymns is attested by two indorsements that cannot be impeached; its
perennial life, and the blessings of millions who needed it.
Jesus, Lover of my soul
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the billows near me roll,
While the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
Till the storm of life is past,
Safe into the haven guide,
O receive my soul at last!
Wesley is believed to have written it when a young man, and story and
legend have been busy with the circumstances of its birth. The most
poetical account alleges that a dove chased by a hawk dashed through
his open window into his bosom, and the inspiration to write the line--
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
--was the genesis of the poem. Another report has it that one day Mr.
Wesley, being pursued by infuriated persecutors at Killalee, County
Down, Ireland, took refuge in a milk-house on the homestead of the
Island Band Farm. When the mob came up the farmer's wife, Mrs. Jane
Lowrie Moore, offered them refreshments and secretly let out the
fugitive through a window to the back garden, where he concealed himself
under a hedge till his enemies went away. When they had gone he had the
hymn in his mind and partly jotted down. This tale is circumstantial,
and came through Mrs. Mary E. Hoover, Jane Moore's granddaughter, who
told it many years ago to her pastor, Dr. William Laurie of Bellefonte,
Pa. So careful a narrative deserves all the respect due to a family
tradition. Whether this or still another theory of the incidental cause
of the wonderful hymn shall have the last word may never be decided nor
is it important.
There is "antecedent probability," at least, in the statement that
Wesley wrote the first two stanzas soon after his perilous experience in
a storm at sea during his return voyage from America to England in 1736.
In a letter dated Oct. 28 of that year, he describes the storm that
washed away a large part of the ship's cargo, strained her seams so
that the hardest pumping could not keep pace with the inrushing water,
and finally forced the captain to cut the mizzen-mast away. Young Wesley
was ill and sorely alarmed, but knew, he says, that he "abode under the
shadow of the Almighty," and finally, "in this dreadful moment," he was
able to encourage his fellow-passengers who were "in an agony of fear,"
and to pray with and for them.
It was his awful hazard and bare escape in that tempest that prompted
the following stanzas--
O Thou who didst prepare
The ocean's caverned cell,
And teach the gathering waters there
To meet and dwell;
Toss'd in our reeling bark
Upon this briny sea,
Thy wondrous ways, O Lord, we mark,
And sing to Thee.
* * * * *
Borne on the dark'ning wave,
In measured sweep we go,
Nor dread th' unfathomable grave,
Which yawns below;
For He is nigh who trod
Amid the foaming spray,
Whose billows own'd th' Incarnate God,
And died away.
And naturally the memory of his almost shipwreck on the wild Atlantic
colored more or less the visions of his muse, and influenced the
metaphors of his verse for years.
The popularity of "Jesus, Lover of my Soul" not only procured it, at
home, the name of "England's song of the sea," but carried it with "the
course of Empire" to the West, where it has reigned with "Rock of Ages,"
for more than a hundred and fifty years, joint primate of inspired human
songs.
Compiled incidents of its heavenly service would fill a chapter. A
venerable minister tells of the supernal comfort that lightened his
after years of sorrow from the dying bed of his wife who whispered with
her last breath, "Hide me, O my Saviour, hide."
A childless and widowed father in Washington remembers with a more than
earthly peace, the wife and mother's last request for Wesley's hymn, and
her departure to the sound of its music to join the spirit of her babe.
A summer visitor in Philadelphia, waiting on a hot street-corner for a
car to Fairmount Park, overheard a quavering voice singing the same hymn
and saw an emaciated hand caressing a little plant in an open
window--and carried away the picture of a fading life, and the words--
Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee.
On one of the fields of the Civil War, just after a bloody battle, the
Rev. James Rankin of the United Presbyterian Church bent over a dying
soldier. Asked if he had any special request to make, the brave fellow
replied, "Yes, sing 'Jesus, Lover of my Soul.'"
The clergyman belonged to a church that sang only Psalms. But what a
tribute to that ubiquitous hymn that such a man knew it by heart! A
moment's hesitation and he recalled the words, and, for the first time
in his life, sang a sacred song that was not a Psalm. When he reached
the lines,--
Safe into the haven guide,
O receive my soul at last,
--his hand was in the frozen grip of a dead man, whose face wore "the
light that never was on sea or land." The minister went away saying to
himself, "If this hymn is good to die by, it is good to live by."
_THE TUNE._
Of all the tone-masters who have studied and felt this matchless hymn,
and given it vocal wings--Marsh, Zundel, Bradbury, Dykes, Mason--none
has so exquisitely uttered its melting prayer, syllable by syllable, as
Joseph P. Holbrook in his "Refuge." Unfortunately for congregational
use, it is a duo and quartet score for select voices; but the four-voice
portion can be a chorus, and is often so sung. Its form excludes it from
some hymnals or places it as an optional beside a congregational tune.
But when rendered by the choir on special occasions its success in
conveying the feeling and soul of the words is complete. There is a
prayer in the swell of every semitone and the touch of every accidental,
and the sweet concord of the duet--soprano with tenor or bass--pleads
on to the end of the fourth line, where the full harmony reinforces it
like an organ with every stop in play. The tune is a rill of melody
ending in a river of song.[36]
[Footnote 36: Holbrook has also an arrangement of Franz Abt's, "When the
Swallows Homeward Fly" written to "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," but with
Wesley's words it is far less effective than his original work. "Refuge"
is not a manufacture but an inspiration.]
For general congregational use, Mason's "Whitman" has wedded itself to
the hymn perhaps closer than any other. It has revival associations
reaching back more than sixty years.
"WHEN MARSHALLED ON THE NIGHTLY PLAIN."
Perhaps no line in all familiar hymnology more readily suggests the name
of its author than this. In the galaxy of poets Henry Kirke White was a
brief luminary whose brilliancy and whose early end have appealed to the
hearts of three generations. He was born at Nottingham, Eng., in the
year 1795. His father was a butcher, but the son, disliking the trade,
was apprenticed to a weaver at the age of fourteen. Two years later he
entered an attorney's office as copyist and student.
The boy imbibed sceptical notions from some source, and might have
continued to scoff at religion to the last but for the experience of his
intimate friend, a youth named Almond, whose life was changed by
witnessing one day the happy death of a Christian believer. Decided to
be a Christian himself, it was some time before he mustered courage to
face White's ridicule and resentment. He simply drew away from him. When
White demanded the reason he was obliged to tell him that they two must
henceforth walk different paths.
"Good God!" exclaimed White, "you surely think worse of me than I
deserve!"
The separation was a severe shock to Henry, and the real grief of it
sobered his anger to reflection and remorse. The light of a better life
came to him when his heart melted--and from that time he and Almond were
fellows in faith as well as friendship.
In his hymn the young poet tells the stormy experience of his soul, and
the vision that guided him to peace.
When, marshalled on the nightly plain,
The glittering host bestud the sky,
One star alone of all the train
Can fix the sinner's wandering eye.
Hark, hark! to God the chorus breaks,
From every host, from every gem,
But one alone the Saviour speaks;
It is the Star of Bethlehem.
Once on the raging seas I rode:
The storm was loud, the night was dark;
The ocean yawned, and rudely blowed
The wind that tossed my foundering bark.
Deep horror then my vitals froze,
Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem,
When suddenly a star arose;
It was the Star of Bethlehem.
It was my guide, my light, my all,
It bade my dark forebodings cease;
And through the storm and danger's thrall,
It led me to the port of peace.
Now, safely moored, my perils o'er,
I'll sing, first in night's diadem,
For ever and for evermore,
The Star, the Star of Bethlehem!
Besides this delightful hymn, with its graphic sea-faring metaphors, two
others, at least, of the same boy-poet hold their place in many of the
church and chapel collections:
The Lord our God is clothed with might,
The winds obey His will;
He speaks, and in his heavenly height
The rolling sun stands still.
And--
Oft in danger, oft in woe,
Onward, Christians, onward go.
Henry Kirke White died in the autumn of 1806, when he was scarcely
twenty years old. His "Ode to Disappointment," and the miscellaneous
flowers and fragments of his genius, make up a touching volume. The fire
of a pure, strong spirit burning through a consumptive frame is in them
all.
_THE TUNE._
"When, marshalled on the mighty plain" has a choral set to it in the
_Methodist Hymnal_--credited to Thos. Harris, and entitled
"Crimea"--which divides the three stanzas into six, and breaks the
continuity of the hymn. Better sing it in its original form--long metre
double--to the dear old melody of "Bonny Doon." The voices of Scotland,
England and America are blended in it.
[Illustration: William B. Bradbury]
The origin of this Caledonian air, though sometimes fancifully traced to
an Irish harper and sometimes to a wandering piper of the Isle of Man,
is probably lost in antiquity. Burns, however, whose name is linked with
it, tells this whimsical story of it, though giving no date save "a good
many years ago,"--(apparently about 1753). A virtuoso, Mr. James Millar,
he writes, wishing he were able to compose a Scottish tune, was told by
a musical friend to sit down to his harpsichord and make a rhythm of
some kind _solely on the black keys_, and he would surely turn out a
Scotch tune. The musical friend, pleased at the result of his jest,
caught the string of plaintive sounds made by Millar, and fashioned it
into "Bonny Doon."
"LAND AHEAD!"
The burden of this hymn was suggested by the dying words of John Adams,
one of the crew of the English ship Bounty who in 1789 mutinied, set the
captain and officers adrift, and ran the vessel to a tropical island,
where they burned her. In a few years vice and violence had decimated
the wicked crew, who had exempted themselves from all divine and human
restraint, until the last man alive was left with only native women and
half-breed children for company. His true name was Alexander Smith, but
he had changed it to John Adams.
The situation forced the lonely Englishman to a sense of solemn
responsibility, and in bitter remorse, he sought to retrieve his wasted
life, and spend the rest of his exile in repentance and repentant works.
He found a Bible in one of the dead seamen's chests, studied it, and
organized a community on the Christian plan. A new generation grew up
around him, reverencing him as governor, teacher, preacher and judge,
and speaking his language--and he was wise enough to exercise his
authority for the common good, and never abuse it. Pitcairn's Island
became "the Paradise of the Pacific." It has not yet belied its name.
Besides its opulence of rural beauty and natural products, its
inhabitants, now the third generation from the "mutineer missionary,"
are a civilized community without the vices of civilization. There is no
licentiousness, no profanity, no Sabbath-breaking, no rum or
tobacco--and _no sickness_.
John Adams died in 1829--after an island residence of forty years. In
his extreme age, while he lay waiting for the end, he was asked how he
felt in view of the final voyage.
"Land ahead!" murmured the old sailor--and his last words were,
"Rounding the Cape--into the harbor."
That the veteran's death-song should be perpetuated in sacred music is
not strange.
Land ahead! its fruits are waving
O'er the hills of fadeless green;
And the living waters laving
Shores where heavenly forms are seen.
CHORUS.
Rocks and storms I'll fear no more,
When on that eternal shore;
Drop the anchor! furl the sail!
I am safe within the veil.
Onward, bark! the cape I'm rounding;
See, the blessed wave their hands;
Hear the harps of God resounding
From the bright immortal bands.
The authorship of the hymn is credited to Rev. E. Adams--whether or not
a descendent of the Island Patriarch we have no information. It was
written about 1869.
The ringing melody that bears the words was composed by John Miller
Evans, born Nov. 30, 1825; died Jan. 1, 1892. The original air--with a
simple accompaniment--was harmonized by Hubert P. Main, and published in
_Winnowed Hymns_ in 1873.
"ETERNAL FATHER, STRONG TO SAVE."
This is sung almost universally on English ships. It is said to have
been one of Sir Evelyn Wood's favorites. The late William Whiting wrote
it in 1860, and it was incorporated with some alterations in the
standard English Church collection entitled _Hymns Ancient and Modern_.
It is a translation from a Latin hymn, a triune litany addressing a
stanza each to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The whole four stanzas have
the same refrain, and the appeal to the Father, who bids--
--the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep,
--varies in the appeal to Christ, who--
--_walked_ upon the foaming deep.
The third and fourth stanzas are the following:
O Holy Spirit, Who didst brood
Upon the waters dark and rude,
And bid their angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.
O Trinity of love and power,
Our brethren shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe'er they go:
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land to sea.
William Whiting was born at Kensington, London, Nov. 1, 1825. He was
Master of Winchester College Chorister's School Died in 1878.
_THE TUNE._
The choral named "Melita" (in memory of St. Paul's shipwreck) was
composed by Dr. Dykes in 1861, and its strong and easy chords and
moderate note range are nobly suited to the devout hymn.
"THE OCEAN HATH NO DANGER."
This charming sailors' lyric is the work of the Rev. Godfrey Thring. Its
probable date is 1862, and it appeared in Morell and Howe's collection
and in _Hymns Congregational and Others_, published in 1866, which
contained a number from his pen. Rector Thring was born at Alford,
Somersetshire, Eng., March 25, 1823, and educated at Shrewsbury School
and Baliol College, Oxford. In 1858 he succeeded his father as Rector of
Alford.
He compiled _A Church of England Hymnbook_ in 1880.
The ocean hath no danger
For those whose prayers are made
To Him who in a manger
A helpless Babe was laid,
Who, born to tribulation
And every human ill,
The Lord of His creation,
The wildest waves can still.
* * * * *
Though life itself be waning
And waves shall o'er us sweep,
The wild winds sad complaining
Shall lull us still to sleep,
For as a gentle slumber
E'en death itself shall prove
To those whom Christ doth number
As worthy of His love.
The tune "Morlaix," given to the hymn by Dr. Dykes, is simple, but a
very sweet and appropriate harmony.
"FIERCE RAGED THE TEMPEST ON THE DEEP."
This fine lyric, based on the incident in the storm on the Sea of
Galilee, is the work of the same writer and owes its tune "St. Aelred"
to the same composer.
The melody has an impressive rallentando of dotted semibreves to the
refrain, "Peace, be still," after the more rapid notes of the three-line
stanzas.
The wild winds hushed, the angry deep
Sank like a little child to sleep,
The sullen waters ceased to leap.
* * * * *
So when our life is clouded o'er
And storm-winds drift us from the shore
Say, lest we sink to rise no more,
"Peace! be still."
"PULL FOR THE SHORE."
When a shipwrecked crew off a rocky coast were hurrying to the
long-boat, a sailor begged leave to run back to the ship's forecastle
and save some of his belongings.
"No sir," shouted the Captain, "she's sinking! There's nothing to do but
to pull for the shore." Philip P. Bliss caught up the words, and wrought
them into a hymn and tune.
Light in the darkness, sailor, day is at hand!
See o'er the foaming billows fair Haven's land;
Drear was the voyage, sailor, now almost o'er;
Safe in the life-boat, sailor, pull for the shore!
CHORUS.
Pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore!
Heed not the rolling waves, but bend to the oar;
Safe in the life-boat, sailor, cling to self no more;
Leave the poor old stranded wreck and pull for the shore!
The hymn-tune is a buoyant allegro--solo and chorus--full of hope and
courage, and both imagery and harmony appeal to the hearts of seamen. It
is popular, and has long been one of the song numbers in demand at
religious services both on sea and land.
"JESUS, SAVIOUR, PILOT ME."
The Rev. Edward Hopper, D.D. wrote this hymn while pastor of Mariner's
Church at New York harbor, "The Church of the Sea and Land." He was born
in 1818, and graduated at Union Theological Seminary in 1843.
Jesus, Saviour, pilot me
Over life's tempestuous sea,
Unknown waves before me roll,
Hiding rock and treacherous shoal;
Chart and compass come from Thee,
Jesus, Saviour, pilot me!
Only three stanzas of this rather lengthy hymn are in common use.
_THE TUNE._
Without title except "Savior, pilot me." A simple and pleasing melody
composed by John Edgar Gould, late of the firm of Gould and Fischer,
piano dealers, Phila., Pa. He was born in Bangor, Me., April 9, 1822.
Conductor of music and composer of psalm and hymn tunes and glees, he
also compiled and published no less than eight books of church,
Sunday-school, and secular songs. Died in Algiers, Africa, Feb. 13,
1875.
"THROW OUT THE LIFE-LINE."
This is one of the popular refrains that need but a single hearing to
fix themselves in common memory and insure their own currency and
_eclat_.
The Rev. E.S. Ufford, well-known as a Baptist preacher, lecturer, and
evangelist, was witnessing a drill at the life-saving station on Point
Allerton, Nantasket Beach, when the order to "throw out the life-line"
and the sight of the apparatus in action, combined with the story of a
shipwreck on the spot, left an echo in his mind till it took the form of
a song-sermon. Returning home, he pencilled the words of this rousing
hymn, and, being himself a singer and player, sat down to his instrument
to match the lines with a suitable air. It came to him almost as
spontaneously as the music of "The Ninety and Nine" came to Mr. Sankey.
In fifteen minutes the hymn-tune was made--so far as the melody went.
It was published in sheet form in 1888, and afterwards purchased by Mr.
Sankey, harmonized by Mr. Stebbins, and published in _Winnowed Songs_,
1890. Included in _Gospel Hymns_, Nov. 6, 1891.
Ever since it has been a favorite with singing seamen, and has done
active service as one of our most stirring field-songs in revival work.
Throw out the Life-line across the dark wave,
There is a brother whom some one should save;
Somebody's brother! oh, who, then, will dare
To throw out the Life-line, his peril to share?
Throw out the Life-line with hand quick and strong!
Why do you tarry, why linger so long?
See! he is sinking; oh, hasten today--
And out with the Life-boat! away, then away!
CHORUS.
Throw out the Life-line!
Throw out the Life-line!
Some one is drifting away;
Throw out the Life-line!
Throw out the Life-line!
Some one is sinking today.
One evening, in the midst of their hilarity at their card-tables, a
convivial club in one of the large Pennsylvania cities heard a sweet,
clear female voice singing this solo hymn, followed by a chime of
mingled voices in the chorus. A room in the building had been hired for
religious meetings, and tonight was the first of the series. A strange
coolness dampened the merriment in the club-room, as the singing went
on, and the gradual silence became a hush, till finally one member threw
down his cards and declared, "If what they're saying is right, then
we're wrong."
Others followed his example, then another, and another.
There is a brother whom some one should save.
Quietly the revellers left their cards, cigars and half-emptied glasses
and went home.
Said the ex-member who told the story years after to Mr. Ufford, "'Throw
Out the Life-line' broke up that club."
He is today one of the responsible editors of a great city daily--and
his old club-mates are all holding positions of trust.
A Christian man, a prosperous manufacturer in a city of Eastern
Massachusetts, dates his first religious impressions from hearing this
hymn when sung in public for the first time, twenty years ago.
Visiting California recently, Mr. Ufford sang his hymn at a
watch-meeting and told the story of the loss of the Elsie Smith on Cape
Cod in 1902, exhibiting also the very life-line that had saved sixteen
lives from the wreck. By chance one of those sixteen was in the
audience.
An English clergyman who was on duty at Gibraltar when an emigrant ship
went on the rocks in a storm, tells with what pathetic power and effect
"Throw out the Life-line" was sung at a special Sunday service for the
survivors.
At one of Evan Roberts' meetings in Laughor, Wales, one speaker related
the story of a "vision," when in his room alone, and a Voice that bade
him pray, and when he knelt but could not pray, commanded him to "Throw
out the Life-line." He had scarcely uttered these words in his story
when the whole great congregation sprang to its feet and shouted the
hymn together like the sound of many waters.
"There is more electricity in that song than in any other I ever heard,"
Dr. Cuyler said to Mr. Sankey when he heard him sing it. Its electricity
has carried it nearly round the world.
The Rev. Edward Smith Ufford was born in Newark, N.J., 1851, and
educated at Stratford Academy (Ct.) and Bates Theological Seminary, Me.
He held several pastorates in Maine and Massachusetts, but a preference
for evangelistic work led him to employ his talent for object-teaching
in illustrated religious lectures through his own and foreign lands,
singing his hymn and enforcing it with realistic representation. He is
the author and compiler of several Sunday-school and chapel
song-manuals, as _Converts' Praise_, _Life-long Songs_, _Wonderful Love_
and _Gathered Gems_.