Baptist Hymn Writers

Baptist Hymn Writers
Taken from “Tales of Baptist Daring,” 1961

When you hold our hymnbook in church and join with others in singing, you ought to know that the idea of singing hymns rather than singing only psalms first took shape in the musical soul and mind of a Baptist pastor in England.
It was Benjamin Keach who started the practice of congregational hymn-singing in English-speaking churches. Before his day, congregations droned out “The Psalms of David” in unexciting tunes sung in a slow tempo. Keach, a prolific writer, decided to do something about this. Accordingly he produced popular gospel hymns for his church congregation to sing. In 1691, he published a book of over three hundred hymns, called Spiritual Melody.

You see, when Baptists were under persecution, printed words could be dangerous to them, so they developed a technique of using verses as an aid to memory. They discovered that rhymed instruction was easy for the illiterate people in their churches to remember. Rather naturally, this practice grew into the plan of fitting their verses of rhymed doctrines to musical accompaniments. Thomas Smith, for example, wrote for his church a total of one thousand, one hundred hymns which contained a complete system of doctrine, experience, and practice. But it was Benjamin Keach who really started the plan of congregational singing. He was attacked for this supposedly heretical innovation, “carnal formalities,” they called it, and many members left his church because he insisted on encouraging the singing of hymns by the whole congregation. His idea caught fire, however, and though there was fierce doctrinal controversy, eventually all over the land people sang hymns in the churches with joy and thanksgiving.Not only did Keach’s writing get him into trouble with other church people, but also the government wanted to stop him from writing Baptist doctrine for children. He wrote a primer for children in which he taught Baptist beliefs. For this, the constables came one day to his home and arrested him.

Standing as a prisoner in the court at Aylesbury, on October 9, 1664, he held himself with dignity while Chief Justice Hyde roared at him: “Benjamin Keach, you are here convicted of writing and publishing a seditious and scandalous book; you shall go to prison for a fortnight and the next Saturday stand in a pillory for two hours from eleven o'clock until one with a paper upon your head with this inscription: ‘for writing and printing and publishing a schismatical book entitled, The Child Instructor or A New and Easy Primer,’ and the next Thursday to stand in the same manner and for that same time in the market of Winslow, and there your book shall openly be burnt before your face by the common hangman in disgrace of you and your doctrine, and you shall forfeit to the king’s majesty the sum of twenty pounds.”

However, in spite of the fact that Keach saw his books burned and that he suffered imprisonment, he continued to write the happy songs of Zion and to print his books for the children whom he loved. Through all the years since, Baptists have continued to write hymns, and some of the best-loved hymns were written by our Baptist fathers.

When at the close of the Lord’s Supper many congregations sing, “Blest Be the Tie that Binds Our Hearts in Christian Love,” they are singing a hymn written by John Fawcett, pastor of the Baptist Church at Wainsgate, England. He was a good and true pastor whom his people came to love very dearly.

In 1772, Fawcett received a call to go to a famous church in London and felt led to accept the call. After his goods were packed and he was ready to move to the big city, his people came around him with their farewells. So great was their weeping that his heart melted as he realized their great affection for him. Neither he nor his wife could endure the sadness expressed by these people as they thought of losing their pastor. Finally, under tense emotion, he said: “Well, I shall stay here. You may help me unpack my things, and we shall live for the Lord lovingly together.”

After this moving experience he wrote the beautiful lines:

Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love:
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
When we are called to part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.

One of the great hymns which Americans have loved and which at one time was considered to be our national anthem, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” was written by a Baptist pastor, Samuel Francis Smith, whose home still stands in one of the suburbs of Boston. Smith was a student in what is now Andover Newtown Theological School, where his ability to translate languages was well known. In fact, before his death at eighty-six years of age, he had mastered fifteen different languages and was about to begin the study of Russian. A traveler returning from Germany brought home many German song books and gave them to the young Smith to see whether or not some of the songs might be suitable for translation into English. In going over them Smith’s eye fell upon the tune now known as “America,” but which really was first chosen by the English for use with the words, “God Save the King.” Under sudden inspiration, Smith reached down into the wastebasket in his seminary room, pulled out a scrap of paper, and within a half-hour’s time had written the words:

My country ‘tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died!
Land of the pilgrims’ pride!
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring!

This hymn was first sung on the Fourth of July, 1832, in the city of Boston in the Park Street Church, located opposite Boston Common on the site which came to be known as “Brimstone Corner.” It was this same Samuel Francis Smith who wrote the hymn which moved the foreign mission society to save the Lone Star Mission in India.
Many Baptists fervently sing the hymn written by John Henry Gilmore, entitled “He Leadeth Me”:

He leadeth me: 0 blessed thought!
0 words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be,
Still ‘tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

Dr. Gilmore had just finished conducting a prayer meeting in the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia where he had spoken on the Twenty-third Psalm. When he returned to the house where he was a guest, the discussion of God’s guidance continued. Subsequently he wrote: “During the conversation the blessedness of God’s leadership so settled upon me that I took up my pencil and wrote the hymn just as it stands today, handed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it without my knowledge to the Watchman and Reflector.” The hymn has remained a very popular one and has brought blessing to many thousands. Dr. Gilmore was the son of the governor of New Hampshire. He was a graduate of Brown University and of Newton Theological Institution. He wrote this hymn in 1862.

John Bunyan also was a hymn writer, but only one of his hymns has been given a place in our Baptist hymnbook. Strangely enough, the Anglican (Episcopal) Church which persecuted John Bunyan has now placed this hymn in its official hymnbook.
Bunyan’s love of singing is reflected in what he wrote in The Pilgrim’s Progress. “The pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose windows opened towards the rising sun. The name of the chamber was Peace, where he slept ‘til break of day, and then he awoke and sang.” The lines of the hymn are as follows:

He who would valiant be
‘Gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avow’d intent
To be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound,
His strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might,
Tho’ he with giants fight;
He will make good his right
To be a pilgrim.
Since, Lord, thou dost defend
Us with thy Spirit,
Know we at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies, flee away!
I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labor night and day
To be a pilgrim.

Bunyan wrote his hymn originally for Valiant-for-truth in his The Pilgrim’s Progress. Before it was revised by the hymnbook editors, the first stanza read:

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather;
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avow’d intent
To be a pilgrim.

Baptists have not only contributed writers for the words of hymns, but also composers who have created the melodies. One of the best-known Baptist American hymn composers was William H. Doane, who as a young man joined the Baptist Church in Norwich, Conn. His love of music developed at an early age, and when he was only six years old he was often called upon to sing in public. He joined the church choir at the age of ten. He played the contrabass when he was thirteen and became an organist when he was sixteen. He composed the music for such hymns as, “Rescue the Perishing,” “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross,” “Pass Me Not, 0 Gentle Savior,” “More Love to Thee, 0 Christ,” “Take the Name of Jesus With You,” and scores of others.

A Baptist hymn in which both the author of the words and the composer of the music were Baptists is the well-known “Saviour, Thy Dying Love Thou Gavest Me.” The author was Sylvanus D. Phelps and the composer was Robert Lowry.

Dr. Phelps was born at Suffield, Conn., and after graduation from Brown University and Yale Divinity School, he served for twenty-eight years as pastor of the First Baptist Church in New Haven. He began writing hymns during his college years and was the author of a great many poems. The hymn, “Saviour, Thy Dying Love Thou Gavest Me,” is a great favorite among Baptists, for it portrays the sacrifice of Christ as the atonement for sinners and suggests a grateful return to love and loyalty to Christ on the part of the redeemed. The closing verse is a prayer for undying devotion and a life of humble service to this crucified Lord.
But there also have been women among the Baptists who have been able writers of hymns. Many a person caught in temptation must be thankful to Mrs. Annie Sherwood Hawks who wrote the beautiful hymn, “I Need Thee Every Hour.”

I need thee every hour,
Stay thou near by;
Temptations lose their power
When thou art nigh.

Her interest in hymn writing started when she became a member of the Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn, N. Y., where Dr. Robert Lowry, the hymn composer, was then pastor. He encouraged Mrs. Hawks in her hymn writing and he wrote the music to the words of this hymn. This hymn spontaneously sprang out of her heart while she was doing her daily housework. As she moved about in the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room, she was conscious of needing Christ’s presence with her even as she engaged in routine domestic duties. The hymn promptly found wide use and has made for itself a secure place in Christian worship.

A voluminous writer of hymns and poems was Miss Anne Steele, out of whose tragic life was born the beautiful hymn:

Father, whate’er of earthly bliss
Thy sovereign will denies,
Accepted at thy throne of grace,
Let this petition rise:
Give me a calm, a thankful heart,
From every murmur free;
The blessings of thy grace impart,
And make me live to thee.
Let the sweet hope that thou art mine
My life and death attend;
Thy presence through my journey shine,
And crown my journey’s end.

She was an invalid from her childhood and at times a great sufferer. “When she was twenty-one years of age, the young man to whom she was engaged to be married was drowned while in bathing, the day before the wedding was to take place. Yet, heartbroken, she did not yield to despair but made herself a ministering spirit devoting her life to deeds of love and mercy. Many of her hymns, written to lighten her own burdens, give beautiful expressions to the sweetness of her Christian character and the depth of her Christian experience.”

Her journey’s end was crowned as she had desired. Weeping friends gathered around her deathbed and at “the happy moment of her dismission, she closed her eyes and said with dying lips, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’ She gently fell asleep in Jesus.”

There are few Christians who have not been melted into a fresh sense of devotion by singing the beautiful hymn:

My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine;
For thee all the follies of sin I resign;
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou;
If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.
This song was written by a Baptist preacher, Dr. Adoniram Judson Gordon, who was pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, Boston.

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