become more or less popular, and passed into different hymn-books. Fischer^659 gives the first lines
of about five thousand of the best, many of which were overlooked by Von Hardenberg.
We may safely say that nearly one thousand of these hymns are classical and immortal.
This is a larger number than can be found in any other language.
To this treasury of German song, several hundred men and women, of all ranks and
conditions,—theologians and pastors, princes and princesses, generals and statesmen, physicians
and jurists, merchants and travelers, laborers and private persons,—have made contributions, laying
them on the common altar of devotion. The majority of German hymnists are Lutherans, the rest
German Reformed (as Neander and Tersteegen), or Moravians (Zinzendorf and Gregor), or belong
to the United Evangelical Church. Many of these hymns, and just those possessed of the greatest
vigor and unction, full of the most exulting faith and the richest comfort, had their origin amid the
conflicts and storms of the Reformation, or the fearful devastations and nameless miseries of the
Thirty Years’ War; others belong to the revival period of the pietism of Spener, and the Moravian
Brotherhood of Zinzendorf, and reflect the earnest struggle after holiness, the fire of the first love,
and the sweet enjoyment of the soul’s intercourse with her heavenly Bridegroom; not a few of them
sprang up even in the cold and prosy age of "illumination" and rationalism, like flowers from dry
ground, or Alpine roses on fields of snow; others, again, proclaim, in fresh and joyous tones, the
dawn of reviving faith in the land where the Reformation had its birth. Thus these hymns constitute
a book of devotion and poetic confession of faith for German Protestantism, a sacred band which
encircles its various periods, an abiding memorial of its struggles and victories, its sorrows and
joys, a mirror of its deepest experiences, and an eloquent witness for the all-conquering and invincible
life-power of the evangelical Christian faith.
The treasures of German hymnody have enriched the churches of other tongues, and passed
into Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, French, Dutch, and modern English and American hymn-books.
John Wesley was the first of English divines who appreciated its value; and while his brother
Charles produced an immense number of original hymns, John freely reproduced several hymns
of Paul Gerhardt, Tersteegen, and Zinzendorf. The English Moravian hymn-book as revised by
Montgomery contains about a thousand abridged (but mostly indifferent) translations from the
German. In more recent times several accomplished writers, male and female, have vied with each
other in translations and transfusions of German hymns.
Among the chief English translators are Miss Frances Elizabeth Cox;^660 Arthur TozerRussell;^661 Richard Massie;^662 Miss Catherine Winkworth;^663 Mrs. Eric Findlater and her sister,
Miss Jane Borthwick, of the Free Church of Scotland, who modestly conceal their names under
(^659) In his Kirchenlieder-Lexicon, 1878.
(^660) Sacred Hymns from the German, London, 1841, new ed. with German text, 1865.
(^661) Psalms and Hymns, partly original, partly selected, for the use of the Church of England, Cambridge, 1851. Many of the pieces are
from the German. He contributed most of the translations to Ernest Bunsen’s Hymns for Public Worship and Private Devotion, London,
1848.
(^662) Luther’s Spiritual Songs, London, 1854; and Lyra Domestica, translations from Spitta’s Psaltery and Harp, London, 1860; second
series, 1864.
(^663) Lyra Germanica, first and second series, Lond. and N. Y., 1855 and 1858, in several editions. Also the beautiful Chorale Book for
England, London, 1863, which contains many hymns from the Lyra Germanica, partly remodelled, with seventy-two others translated
by the same lady, together with the old tunes edited by Bennet and Goldschmidt. Several translations of Miss C. W., especially from Paul
Gerhardt, have passed into hymn-books. Comp. Theo. Kübler, Historical Notices to the Lyra Germanica (dedicated to Miss C. W.),
London, 1865.