--and as the congregation caught up the refrain,--
O where is my boy tonight?
O where is my boy tonight?
My heart overflows, for I love him he knows, O where is my boy tonight?
--a young man who had been sitting in a back seat made his way up the aisle and sobbed, "Mother, I"m here!" The embrace of that mother and her long-lost boy turned the service into a general hallelujah. At the inquiry meeting that night there were many souls at the Mercy Seat who never knelt there before--and the young wanderer was one.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Philip Doddridge, D.D.]
Mr. Sankey, when in California with Mr. Moody, sang this hymn in one of the meetings and told the story of a mother in the far east who had commissioned him to search for her missing son. By a happy providence the son was in the house--and the story and the song sent him home repentant.
At another time Mr. Sankey sang the same hymn from the steps of a snow-bound train, and a man between whose father and himself had been trouble and a separation, was touched, and returned to be reconciled after an absence of twenty years.
At one evening service in Stanberry, Mo., the singing of the hymn by the leader of the choir led to the conversion of one boy who was present, and whose parents were that night praying for him in an eastern state, and inspired such earnest prayer in the hearts of two other runaway boys" parents that the same answer followed.
There would not be room in a dozen pages to record all the similar saving incidents connected with the singing of "Where Is My Wandering Boy?" The rhetoric of love is strong in every note and syllable of the solo, and the tender chorus of voices swells the song to heaven like an antiphonal prayer.
Strange to say, Dr. Lowry set lightly by his hymns and tunes, and deprecated much mention of them though he could not deny their success.
An active Christian since seventeen years of age, through his early pulpit service, his six years" professorship, and the long pastorate in Plainfield, N.J., closed by his death, he considered preaching to be his supreme function as it certainly was his first love. Music was to him "a side-issue," an "efflorescence," and writing a hymn ranked far below making and delivering a sermon. "I felt a sort of meanness when I began to be known as a composer," he said. And yet he was the author of a hymn and tune which "has done more to bring back wandering boys than any other" ever written.[45]
[Footnote 45: "Where Is My Boy Tonight" was composed for a book of temperance hymns, _The Fountain of Song_, 1877.]
"ETERNITY."
This is the t.i.tle and refrain of both Mrs. Ellen M.H. Gates" impressive poem and its tune.
O the clanging bells of Time!
Night and day they never cease; We are weaned with their chime, For they do not bring us peace.
And we hush our hearts to hear, And we strain our eyes to see If thy sh.o.r.es are drawing near Eternity! Eternity!
Skill was needed to vocalize this great word, but the ear of Mr. Bliss for musical prosody did not fail to make it effective. After the beautiful harmony through the seven lines, the choral reverently softens under the rallentando of the closing bars, and dwelling on the awe-inspiring syllables, solemnly dies away.
TRIUMPH BY AND BY.
This rally-song of the Christian arena is wonderfully stirring, especially in great meetings, for it sings best in full choral volume.
The prize is set before us, To win His words implore us, The eye of G.o.d is o"er us From on high.
His loving tones are falling While sin is dark, appalling, "Tis Jesus gently calling; He is nigh!
CHORUS.
By and by we shall meet Him, By and by we shall greet Him, And with Jesus reign in glory, By and by!
We"ll follow where He leadeth, We"ll pasture where He feedeth, We"ll yield to Him who pleadeth From on high.
Then nought from Him shall sever, Our hope shall brighten ever And faith shall fail us never; He is nigh.
CHORUS-- By and by, etc.
Dr. Christopher Ruby Blackall, the author of the hymn, was born in Albany, N.Y., Sept. 18, 1830. He was a surgeon in the Civil War, and in medical practice fifteen years, but afterwards became connected with the American Baptist Publication Society as manager of one of its branches.
He has written several Sunday-school songs set to music by W.H. Doane.
_THE TUNE_,
By Horatio R. Palmer is exactly what the hymn demands. The range scarcely exceeds an octave, but with the words "From on high," the stroke of the soprano on upper D carries the feeling to unseen summits, and verifies the t.i.tle of the song. From that note, through melody and chorus the "Triumph by and by" rings clear.
"NOT HALF HAS EVER BEEN TOLD"
This is emotional, but every word and note is uplifting, and creates the mood for religious impressions. The writer, Rev. John Bush Atchison, was born at Wilson, N.Y., Feb. 18, 1840, and died July 15, 1882.
I have read of a beautiful city Far away in the kingdom of G.o.d, I have read how its walls are of jasper, How its streets are all golden and broad; In the midst of the street is Life"s River Clear as crystal and pure to behold, But not half of that city"s bright glory To mortals has ever been told.
The chorus (twice sung)--
Not half has been told,
--concludes with repeat of the two last lines of this first stanza.
Mr. Atchison was a Methodist clergyman who composed several good hymns.
"Behold the Stone is Rolled Away," "O Crown of Rejoicing," and "Fully Persuaded," indicate samples of his work more or less well-known. "Not Half Has Ever Been Told" was written in 1875.
_THE TUNE._
Dr. Otis F. Presbry, the composer, was a young farmer of York, Livingston Co., N.Y., born there the 20th of December, 1820. Choice of a professional life led him to Berkshire Medical College, where he graduated in 1847. In after years his natural love of musical studies induced him to give his time to compiling and publishing religious tunes, with hymns more especially for Sunday-schools.
He became a composer and wrote the melody to Atchison"s words in 1877, which was arranged by a blind musician of Washington, D.C., J.W.
Bischoff by name, with whom he had formed a partnership. The solo is long--would better, perhaps, have been four-line instead of eight--but well sung, it is a flight of melody that holds an a.s.sembly, and touches hearts.
Dr. Presbry"s best known book was _Gospel Bells_ (1883), the joint production of himself, Bischoff, and Rev. J.E. Rankin. He died Aug. 20, 1901.
"COME."
One of the most characteristic (both words and music) of the _Gospel Hymns_--"Mrs. James Gibson Johnson" is the name attached to it as its author, though we have been unable to trace and verify her claim.
O, word of words the sweetest, O, words in which there lie All promise, all fulfillment, And end of mystery; Lamenting or rejoicing, With doubt or terror nigh, I hear the "Come" of Jesus, And to His cross I fly.
CHORUS.
Come, come-- Weary, heavy-laden, come, O come to me.
_THE TUNE_,
Composed by James McGranahan, delivers the whole stanza in soprano or tenor solo, when the alto, joining the treble, leads off the refrain in duet, the male voices striking alternate notes until the full harmony in the last three bars. The style and movement of the chorus are somewhat suggestive of a popular glee, but the music of the duet is flexible and sweet, and the ba.s.s and tenor progress with it not in the ride-and-tie-fashion but marking time with the t.i.tle-syllable.
The contrast between the spiritual and the intellectual effect of the hymn and its wakeful tune is ill.u.s.trated by a case in Baltimore. While Moody and Sankey were doing their gospel work in that city, a man, who, it seems, had brought a copy of the _Gospel Hymns_, walked out of one of the meetings after hearing this hymn-tune, and on reaching home, tore out the leaves that contained the song and threw them into the fire, saying he had "never heard such twaddle" in all his life.