Sunday, October 7, 2007

History of the Hymns

‘My Faith Looks Up to Thee’ (1831) Page 452
Words: Ray Palmer (1808 – 1887) Music: Lowell Mason (1792 - 1872)
One day, in 1832, two men stood outside a store in Boston, Massachusetts. One was Lowell Mason, the other Ray Palmer.
Mason was one of the busiest men in Boston, directing three choirs and trying to persuade the local Board of Education to put music courses on the city schools curricula. Palmer, just 24 years old, had recently worked in a shoe shop; but was a graduate of Yale University and in another three years was to be ordained to the Congregational ministry. As the two men chatted on the street, Mason asked Palmer about the possibility of Palmer writing some verses for Mason, which he could set to music for a new book. As it happened, Palmer had just the very thing and he pulled a notebook from his pocket.
Mason was immediately impressed and, borrowing a sheet of paper, copied down ... My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary, Saviour divine! Now hear me while I pray, Take all my guilt away, O let me from this day Be wholly thine!
When he had finished, Mason turned to Palmer and said, “Mr. Palmer, you may
do many good things but posterity will remember you as the author of ‘My Faith Looks Up To Thee.’” That same night, in 1832, Mason set Palmer's first and greatest hymn to music. Thus two men, who stopped for a chat in Boston, gave the world a hymn, which Christians everywhere have been singing ever since.

Meanwhile…1831…176 years ago…in the United States…
President: Andrew Jackson …V.P.: Martin Van Buren
De Tocqueville’s comments on visiting Buffalo (1831): July 18: “Arrival at Buffalo. A multitude of savages in the streets… Their ugliness, their strange air, their bronzed and oily hide, their long hair black and stiff, their European clothes that they wear like savages. . . . Population brutalized by our wines and our liquors. More horrible than the equally brutalized peoples of Europe.” July 19. “Second walk in Buffalo; pretty shops, French goods. The refinement of European luxuries. Second glimpse of the Indians. Less disagreeable impression than the evening before. Several of them resembling our peasants in feature (with savage colour, however) the skin of Sicilians. Not one Indian woman passable."
Ref. HymnHistories Cyberhymnal WebEdelic DMarie TanBible Wikipedia BuffaloHistory.com

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