August 19, 2012: The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Aug 19 2012

Hymn: I Sing the Mighty Power of God

From the Presbyterian Hymnal Companion: This text by Isaac Watts was first published in his Divine and Moral Songs for the Use of Children (1715), where it was titled “Praise for Creation and Providence.” This was the first hymnal exclusively written for children. Of the volume he wrote: Children of high and low degree, of the Church of England or dissenters, baptized in infancy or not, may all join together in these songs. And as I have endeavored to sink the language to the level of a child’s understanding, and yet to keep it, if possible, above contempt, so I have designed to profit all, if possible, and offend none.

Hymn: Praise the Source of Faith and Learning

Author, professor, and preacher Tom Troeger wrote this text after being commissioned by Duke Divinity School, who asked for a hymn that would serve as a compliment to the school’s motto: Eruditio et Religio-Knowledge and Faith. If you do a Google search for the text, you’ll find it mentioned many times in the blogs of scientists and professors, many of who cite it as a good exposition of science and faith being tied together.

Hymn: Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

Paul Westermeyer writes in the Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship: When Anthony J. Showalter was “conducting a singing-school in Hartsells, Alabama, [he] received a letter from two of [his] former pupils in South Carolina” telling him that they had buried their wives on the same day. He wrote back with words of consolation that included a quotation from Deuteronomy 33:27 in the King James Bible: “Underneath are the everlasting arms.” (The translation in the New Revised Standard Version does not say that.) As he thought about this, he wrote the words and music of the refrain of this hymn and asked his friend Elisha A. Hoffman to write the stanzas.

Anthem: Grace

It is good to have a thorough understanding of this hymn’s history to understand the significance of it. From The Presbyterian Hymnal Companion:

            John Newton was born in London and at age eleven went to sea with his father. his mother had die when he was six. By age seventeen he was in the British Royal Navy assigned to a man-of-war. After serving as a sailor on a slave ship, he became a captain, transporting Africans to port where they could be sold for the best price. In 1748 he was caught in a storm at sea and experienced a spiritual awakening…At age forty Newton was ordained in the Church of England despite his formal education.

            With William Cowper, Newton penned Olney Hymns (1779), from which the four stanzas we’ll sing today come. The fifth stanza is actually the tenth stanza of another hymn, “Jerusalem, My Happy Home,” which was included in another hymn collection; it is unclear when it was added to the four originals by Newton. Composer Mark Hayes has set this text to the British folk tune O WALY WALY.