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For the Healing of the Nations
Author: Fred Kaan, 1929-2009 Meter: 8.7.8.7.8.7 Appears in 58 hymnals Topics: Horror of War Lyrics: 1 For the healing of the nations,
Lord, we pray with one accord;
For a just and equal sharing
Of the things that earth affords.
To a life of love and action
Help us rise and pledge our word.
2 Lead your people into freedom,
From despair your world release
That, redeemed from war and hatred,
All may come and go in peace.
Show us how, through care and goodness,
Fear will die and hope increase.
3 All that kills abundant living,
Let it from the earth be banned:
Pride of status, race, or schooling,
Dogmas that obscure your plan.
In our common quest for justice
May we hallow life's brief span.
4 You, creator God, have written
Your great name on humankind;
For our growing in your likeness
Bring the life of Christ to mind,
That by our response and service
Earth its destiny may find. Scripture: Genesis 1:27 Used With Tune: ST. THOMAS
For the Healing of the Nations
While sounds of war are heard around
Appears in 50 hymnals Topics: In time of war Lyrics: 1 While sounds of war are heard around,
And death and ruin strew the ground:
To thee we look, on thee we call,
The Parent and the Lord of all.
2 Thou, who hast stamp'd on human kind
The image of a heav'n-born mind,
And in a Father’s wide embrace
Hast cherished all the kindred race;
3 O see, with that insatiate rage
Thy sons their impious battles wage;
How spreads destruction like a flood,
And brothers shed their brothers' blood!
4 See guilty passions spring to birth,
And deeds of hell deform the earth;
Whilst righteousness and justice mourn,
And love and pity droop forlorn.
5 Great God! whose pow'rful hand can bind
The raging waves, the furious wind,
O bid the human tempest cease,
And hush the madd'ning world to peace.
6 With rev'rence may each hostile land
Hear and obey that high command,
Thy Son’s blest errand from above:—
“My creatures, live in mutual love!”
While sounds of war are heard around
O Who Will Speak for Justice
Author: Betsy Phillips Fisher Meter: 7.6.7.6 D Appears in 1 hymnal Topics: Justice War and peace First Line: O who will speak for justice and who will act for peace Used With Tune: LLANGLOFFAN
O Who Will Speak for Justice
GENEVAN 68
Meter: 8.8.7.8.8.7 D Appears in 102 hymnals Topics: War and Revolution Tune Key: D Major Incipit: 11231 34554 32134 Used With Text: Approach Our God with Songs of Praise
GENEVAN 68
If the War Goes On
Author: John L. Bell; Graham Maule Hymnal: Voices Together #794 (2020) Meter: 5.8.5.7.5.8.5 Topics: Peace Conflict and War Scripture: Psalm 13 Tune Title: THE ROAD TO BASRAH
If the War Goes On
Looking to God in the Distress of War
Hymnal: Doctor Watts's imitation of the Psalms of David, to which is added a collection of hymns; the whole applied to the state of the Christian Church in general (3rd ed.) #104 (1786) Topics: Day of Humiliation and Disappointments in War; War disappointments therein; Day of Humiliation and Disappointments in War; War disappointments therein First Line: Lord thou hast scourg'd our guilty land Lyrics: 1 Lord thou hast scourg'd our guilty land,
Behold thy people mourn;
Shall vengeance ever guide thy hand?
And mercy ne'er return?
2 Beneath the terrors of thine eye,
Earth's haughty towers decay;
Thy frowning mantle spreads the sky,
And mortals melt away.
3 Our Sion trembles at thy stroke,
And dreads thy lifted hand!
Oh, heal the people thou hast broke,
And save the sinking land.
4 Exalt thy banner in the field,
For those that fear thy name;
From barbarous hosts our nation shield,
And put our foes to shame.
5 Attend our armies to the fight,
And be their guardian God;
In vain shall numerous powers unite,
Against thy lifted rod.
6 Our troops, beneath thy guiding hand,
Shall gain a glad renown:
'Tis God who makes the feeble stand,
And treads the mighty down. Scripture: Psalm 60 Languages: English
Looking to God in the Distress of War
Looking to God in the Distress of War
Hymnal: Doctor Watts's Imitation of the Psalms of David #104 (1790) Topics: Day of Humiliation and Disappointments in War; War disappointments therein; Day of Humiliation and Disappointments in War; War disappointments therein First Line: Lord thou hast scourg'd our guilty land Lyrics: 1 Lord thou hast scourg'd our guilty land,
Behold thy people mourn;
Shall vengeance ever guide thy hand?
And mercy ne'er return?
2 Beneath the terrors of thine eye,
Earth's haughty towers delay;
Thy frowning mantle spreads the sky,
And mortals melt away.
3 Our Sion trembles at thy stroke,
And dreads thy lifted hand!
Oh, heal the people thou hast broke,
And save the sinking land.
4 Exalt thy banner in the field,
For those that fear thy name;
From barbarous hosts our nation shield,
And put our foes to shame.
5 Attend our armies to the fight,
And be their guardian God;
In vain shall numerous powers unite,
Against thy lifted rod.
6 Our troops, beneath thy guiding hand,
Shall gain a glad renown:
'Tis God who makes the feeble stand,
And treads the mighty down. Scripture: Psalm 60 Languages: English
Looking to God in the Distress of War
Julia Ward Howe
1819 - 1910 Topics: War; War Author of "Mine Eyes have Seen the Glory" in The Worshiping Church Born: May 27, 1819, New York City.
Died: October 17, 1910, Middletown, Rhode Island.
Buried: Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Howe, Julia, née Ward, born in New York City in 1819, and married in 1843 the American philanthropist S. G. Howe. She has taken great interest in political matters, and is well known through her prose and poetical works. Of the latter there are Passion Flower, 1854; Words of the Hour, 1856; Later Lyrics, 1866; and From Sunset Ridge, 1896. Her Battle Hymn of the Republic, "eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," was written in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War, and was called forth by the sight of troops for the seat of war, and published in her Later Lyrics, 1806, p. 41. It is found in several American collections, including The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1904, and others. [M. C. Hazard, Ph.D.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)
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Howe, Julia Ward. (New York, New York, May 27, 1819--October 17, 1910). Married Samuel Gridley Howe on April 26, 1843. She was a woman with a distinguished personality and intellect; an abolitionist and active in social reforms; author of several book in prose and verse. The latter include Passion Flower, 1854; Words of the Hours, 1856; Later Lyrics, 1866; and From a Sunset Ridge, 1896.
She became famous as the author of the poem entitled "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which, in spite of its title, was written as a patriotic song and not as a hymn for use in public worship, but which has been included in many American hymn books. It was written on November 19, 1861, while she and her husband, accompanied by their pastor, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, minister of the (Unitarian) Church of the Disciples, Boston, were visiting Washington soon after the outbreak of the Civil War. She had seen the troops gathered there and had heard them singing "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave" to a popular tune called "Glory, Hallelujah" composed a few years earlier by William Steffe of Charleston, South Carolina, for Sunday School use. Dr. Clarke asked Julie Howe if she could not write more uplifting words for the tune and as she woke early the next morning she found the verses forming in her mind as fast as she could write them down, so completely that later she re-wrote only a line or two in the last stanza and changed only four words in other stanzas. She sent the poem to The Atlantic Monthly, which paid her $4 and published it in its issue for February, 1862. It attracted little attention until it caught the eye of Chaplain C. C. McCable (later a Methodist bishop) who had a fine singing voice and who taught it first to the 122nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry regiment to which he was attached, then to other troops, and to prisoners in Libby Prison after he was made a prisoner of war. Thereafter it quickly came into use throughout the North as an expression of the patriotic emotion of the period.
--Henry Wilder Foote, DNAH Archives
Julia Ward Howe
William Cowper
1731 - 1800 Topics: War and Revolution Author of "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" in Lift Up Your Hearts William Cowper (pronounced "Cooper"; b. Berkampstead, Hertfordshire, England, 1731; d. East Dereham, Norfolk, England, 1800) is regarded as one of the best early Romantic poets. To biographers he is also known as "mad Cowper." His literary talents produced some of the finest English hymn texts, but his chronic depression accounts for the somber tone of many of those texts. Educated to become an attorney, Cowper was called to the bar in 1754 but never practiced law. In 1763 he had the opportunity to become a clerk for the House of Lords, but the dread of the required public examination triggered his tendency to depression, and he attempted suicide. His subsequent hospitalization and friendship with Morley and Mary Unwin provided emotional stability, but the periods of severe depression returned. His depression was deepened by a religious bent, which often stressed the wrath of God, and at times Cowper felt that God had predestined him to damnation.
For the last two decades of his life Cowper lived in Olney, where John Newton became his pastor. There he assisted Newton in his pastoral duties, and the two collaborated on the important hymn collection Olney Hymns (1779), to which Cowper contributed sixty-eight hymn texts.
Bert Polman
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Cowper, William, the poet. The leading events in the life of Cowper are: born in his father's rectory, Berkhampstead, Nov. 26, 1731; educated at Westminster; called to the Bar, 1754; madness, 1763; residence at Huntingdon, 1765; removal to Olney, 1768; to Weston, 1786; to East Dereham, 1795; death there, April 25, 1800.
The simple life of Cowper, marked chiefly by its innocent recreations and tender friendships, was in reality a tragedy. His mother, whom he commemorated in the exquisite "Lines on her picture," a vivid delineation of his childhood, written in his 60th year, died when he was six years old. At his first school he was profoundly wretched, but happier at Westminster; excelling at cricket and football, and numbering Warren Hastings, Colman, and the future model of his versification. Churchill, among his contemporaries or friends. Destined for the Bar, he was articled to a solicitor, along with Thurlow. During this period he fell in love with his cousin, Theodora Cowper, sister to Lady Hesketh, and wrote love poems to her. The marriage was forbidden by her father, but she never forgot him, and in after years secretly aided his necessities. Fits of melancholy, from which he had suffered in school days, began to increase, as he entered on life, much straitened in means after his father's death. But on the whole, it is the playful, humorous side of him that is most prominent in the nine years after his call to the Bar; spent in the society of Colman, Bonnell Thornton, and Lloyd, and in writing satires for The Connoisseur and St. James's Chronicle and halfpenny ballads. Then came the awful calamity, which destroyed all hopes of distinction, and made him a sedentary invalid, dependent on his friends. He had been nominated to the Clerkship of the Journals of the House of Lords, but the dread of appearing before them to show his fitness for the appointment overthrew his reason. He attempted his life with "laudanum, knife and cord,"—-in the third attempt nearly succeeding. The dark delusion of his life now first showed itself—a belief in his reprobation by God. But for the present, under the wise and Christian treatment of Dr. Cotton (q. v.) at St. Albans, it passed away; and the eight years that followed, of which the two first were spent at Huntingdon (where he formed his lifelong friendship with Mrs. Unwin), and the remainder at Olney in active piety among the poor, and enthusiastic devotions under the guidance of John Newton (q. v.), were full of the realisation of God's favour, and the happiest, most lucid period of his life. But the tension of long religious exercises, the nervous excitement of leading at prayer meetings, and the extreme despondence (far more than the Calvinism) of Newton, could scarcely have been a healthy atmosphere for a shy, sensitive spirit, that needed most of all the joyous sunlight of Christianity. A year after his brother's death, madness returned. Under the conviction that it was the command of God, he attempted suicide; and he then settled down into a belief in stark contradiction to his Calvinistic creed, "that the Lord, after having renewed him in holiness, had doomed him to everlasting perdition" (Southey). In its darkest form his affliction lasted sixteen months, during which he chiefly resided in J. Newton's house, patiently tended by him and by his devoted nurse, Mrs. Unwin. Gradually he became interested in carpentering, gardening, glazing, and the tendance of some tame hares and other playmates. At the close of 1780, Mrs. Unwin suggested to him some serious poetical work; and the occupation proved so congenial, that his first volume was published in 1782. To a gay episode in 1783 (his fascination by the wit of Lady Austen) his greatest poem, The Task, and also John Gilpin were owing. His other principal work was his Homer, published in 1791. The dark cloud had greatly lifted from his life when Lady Hesketh's care accomplished his removal to Weston (1786): but the loss of his dear friend William Unwin lowered it again for some months. The five years' illness of Mrs. Unwin, during which his nurse of old became his tenderly-watched patient, deepened the darkness more and more. And her death (1796) brought “fixed despair," of which his last poem, The Castaway, is the terrible memorial. Perhaps no more beautiful sentence has been written of him, than the testimony of one, who saw him after death, that with the "composure and calmness" of the face there “mingled, as it were, a holy surprise."
Cowper's poetry marks the dawn of the return from the conventionality of Pope to natural expression, and the study of quiet nature. His ambition was higher than this, to be the Bard of Christianity. His great poems show no trace of his monomania, and are full of healthy piety. His fame as a poet is less than as a letter-writer: the charm of his letters is unsurpassed. Though the most considerable poet, who has written hymns, he has contributed little to the development of their structure, adopting the traditional modes of his time and Newton's severe canons. The spiritual ideas of the hymns are identical with Newton's: their highest note is peace and thankful contemplation, rather than joy: more than half of them are full of trustful or reassuring faith: ten of them are either submissive (44), self-reproachful (17, 42, 43), full of sad yearning (1, 34), questioning (9), or dark spiritual conflict (38-40). The specialty of Cowper's handling is a greater plaintiveness, tenderness, and refinement. A study of these hymns as they stood originally under the classified heads of the Olney Hymns, 1779, which in some cases probably indicate the aim of Cowper as well as the ultimate arrangement of the book by Newton, shows that one or two hymns were more the history of his conversion, than transcripts of present feelings; and the study of Newton's hymns in the same volume, full of heavy indictment against the sins of his own regenerate life, brings out the peculiar danger of his friendship to the poet: it tends also to modify considerably the conclusions of Southey as to the signs of incipient madness in Cowper's maddest hymns. Cowper's best hymns are given in The Book of Praise by Lord Selborne. Two may be selected from them; the exquisitely tender "Hark! my soul, it is the Lord" (q. v.), and "Oh, for a closer walk with God" (q. v.). Anyone who knows Mrs. Browning's noble lines on Cowper's grave will find even a deeper beauty in the latter, which is a purely English hymn of perfect structure and streamlike cadence, by connecting its sadness and its aspiration not only with the “discord on the music" and the "darkness on the glory," but the rapture of his heavenly waking beneath the "pathetic eyes” of Christ.
Authorities. Lives, by Hayley; Grimshaw; Southey; Professor Goldwin Smith; Mr. Benham (attached to Globe Edition); Life of Newton, by Rev. Josiah Bull; and the Olney Hymns. The numbers of the hymns quoted refer to the Olney Hymns. [Rev. H. Leigh Bennett, M.A.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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Cowper, W. , p. 265, i. Other hymns are:—
1. Holy Lord God, I love Thy truth. Hatred of Sin.
2. I was a grovelling creature once. Hope and Confidence.
3. No strength of nature can suffice. Obedience through love.
4. The Lord receives His highest praise. Faith.
5. The saints should never be dismayed. Providence. All these hymns appeared in the Olney Hymns, 1779.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)
=====================
Cowper, W., p. 265, i. Prof. John E. B. Mayor, of Cambridge, contributed some letters by Cowper, hitherto unpublished, together with notes thereon, to Notes and Queries, July 2 to Sept. 24, 1904. These letters are dated from Huntingdon, where he spent two years after leaving St. Alban's (see p. 265, i.), and Olney. The first is dated "Huntingdon, June 24, 1765," and the last "From Olney, July 14, 1772." They together with extracts from other letters by J. Newton (dated respectively Aug. 8, 1772, Nov. 4, 1772), two quotations without date, followed by the last in the N. & Q. series, Aug. 1773, are of intense interest to all students of Cowper, and especially to those who have given attention to the religious side of the poet's life, with its faint lights and deep and awful shadows. From the hymnological standpoint the additional information which we gather is not important, except concerning the hymns "0 for a closer walk with God," "God moves in a mysterious way," "Tis my happiness below," and "Hear what God, the Lord, hath spoken." Concerning the last three, their position in the manuscripts, and the date of the last from J. Newton in the above order, "Aug. 1773," is conclusive proof against the common belief that "God moves in a mysterious way" was written as the outpouring of Cowper's soul in gratitude for the frustration of his attempted suicide in October 1773.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)
William Cowper
Thomas Tallis
1505 - 1585 Person Name: Thomas Tallis, 1505-1585 Topics: In Time of War/Disaster Composer of "TALLIS' CANON" in Catholic Book of Worship III Thomas Tallis (b. Leicestershire [?], England, c. 1505; d. Greenwich, Kent, England 1585) was one of the few Tudor musicians who served during the reigns of Henry VIII: Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I and managed to remain in the good favor of both Catholic and Protestant monarchs. He was court organist and composer from 1543 until his death, composing music for Roman Catholic masses and Anglican liturgies (depending on the monarch). With William Byrd, Tallis also enjoyed a long-term monopoly on music printing. Prior to his court connections Tallis had served at Waltham Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral. He composed mostly church music, including Latin motets, English anthems, settings of the liturgy, magnificats, and two sets of lamentations. His most extensive contrapuntal work was the choral composition, "Spem in alium," a work in forty parts for eight five-voice choirs. He also provided nine modal psalm tunes for Matthew Parker's Psalter (c. 1561).
Bert Polman
Thomas Tallis
