Praise for the Lord #160
Words: Elisha A. Hoffman, 1877?
Music: John H. Stockton, 1877?
As a songwriter-publisher, Hoffman’s contributions reflect a significant role in the development of 19th-century gospel hymnody. Unlike Ira Sankey, Philip Bliss, and Fanny Crosby, who were luminaries of the early gospel song movement, Hoffman is more representative of a myriad of writers and composers displaying a healthy avocational interest in the popular religious music of the day (38).
.png) |
| Hall's Biography of Gospel Song Writers |
One key to Hoffman's success was his ability to forge productive partnerships. In 1876 he co-edited Songs of Faith with John Harrison Tenney (1840-1918), a Massachusetts farmer and businessman who, like Hoffman, was largely self-taught in music. They would produce twelve hymnals together, including Temperance Jewels (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1879), Hoffman's first book from a major publisher and his first outside Ohio, and the first two numbers of Pentecostal Hymns for Hope Publishing. As Hoffman became better known in church music circles, he engaged in co-editor partnerships with the emerging Southern publishing houses too, including those of Anthony J. Showalter (Voice of Praise, 1889) and Ruebush-Kieffer (To His Praise, 1903). With the growing success of Pentecostal Hymns, Hoffman was appointed Hope Publishing's chief music editor, a position he maintained through 1912 (Eskew). At the same time he edited songbooks for Evangelical Publishing (by that time also located in Chicago), frequently teaming up with Harold F. Sayles, a Chicago-based revival preacher (Moore 105).
It may come as something of a surprise, then, that Hoffman was so modest about his musical accomplishments. In a speech to the Chicago Presbytery in 1924, he said of his own works,
They are not in themselves of a high literary order. No such claim has ever been made for them. Only this can be said of them . . . they interpret well the Spiritual phases of the soul's experience (Ebert 92).
Jacob H. Hall was more generous in his assessment:
His musical education was limited. He is no graduate from any School of Music, but the best of all he is a natural musician. All the musical knowledge he has was gained by personal application (162).
Wilson and Wilhoit's 1984 article on Hoffman notes that his son, Ira Hoffman, often harmonized his father's melodies (36). When I was indexing Hoffman's Evergreen (1873) earlier this year for Hymnary.org, I noted that he is sometimes credited only with the melody of a song, with the harmonizer unidentified. Also, a large number of tunes in the book credit a harmonizer without noting the composer of the melody, leading me to suspect that Hoffman was involved in the melody writing but was unsure of his ability to write the parts. (I personally have the opposite problem.)
Elisha Hoffman's poetry also had its critics. The Independent, a New York religious magazine, had this to say of Hoffman and Tenney's Spiritual Songs for Gospel Meetings and the Sunday School (Cleveland: Barker, 1878):
Of these songs we have read thirty entirely through consecutively, and have not discovered one that on its own merits could have found a place in the columns of this or any other religious newspaper of respectable literary ability ("Some recent religious verse and song").
Five of these first thirty songs are by Hoffman, including his most famous, "Are you washed in the blood?" Now it is worth noting that, critics aside, this song has served its purpose remarkably well over the decades; the Salvation Army, in fact, was so taken with it that it practically became an anthem of the movement and in some quarters became known as the "Salvation Army Hymn." But the critic has a point about the poetry of "Are you washed in the blood?"—Hoffman had a somewhat formulaic manner of writing, which will become evident in "Glory to His name" as well.
Down at the cross, down at the cross,
Down at the cross where Jesus died,
There to my heart was the blood applied,
Glory, glory to His name.
No doubt it was an honor for Hoffman to have the text set to music by Sweney, who was a major figure in gospel music circles in Philadelphia. But a different musical setting appeared at almost the same time by the New Jersey minister and songwriter John Hart Stockton, and thus it is in Gospel Gems (Boston: George Russell, 1879) that we see the first appearance of this hymn with its now-familiar music and with the refrain built around the phrase "Glory to His name!" The Sweney setting was reprinted in a half-dozen collections, but disappeared by the 1890s (Hymnary.org tune authority).
The pairing of Hoffman's lyrics with Stockton's music is something of a mystery, because Stockton died 25 March 1877, more than two years before Gospel Gems was published (McCutcheon 230). Obviously, then, the text was written at least by 1877, barring the unlikely event of Stockton's music being adapted from a previously existing song (no evidence of which has been found). The delay was probably not that unusual, since the major gospel song publishers had multiple books in the works every year, and would have to keep material flowing in; but it is interesting that two different settings emerged almost simultaneously. The U.S. Copyright Virtual Card Catalog shows that Gospel Gems was actually registered in 1878 by the editor W. Warren Bentley (1870-1897, drawer BEM-BERK, card number 1076); Stockton's setting of "Down at the Cross" also appeared in Temperance Jewels edited by Hoffman and Tenney (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1879).
Perhaps the fact that Sweney held the copyright to his version had something to do with the creation of a second musical setting. The Stockton setting does not include a copyright statement in Gospel Gems, but in Hoffman's own Temperance Jewels it appears "by permission," a statement found in other song books in the following years. Hoffman may have had some arrangement with Stockton, or with his heirs, that was more favorable than acquiring Sweney's version; or perhaps he knew it worked better with his lyrics. More on this will follow in the "About the music" section.
Stanza 1:
Down at the cross where my Savior died,
Down where for cleansing from sin I cried,
There to my heart was the blood applied;
Glory to His name!
Refrain:
Glory to His name!
Glory to His name!
There to my heart was the blood applied;
Glory to His name!
Looking at the text of this song that I have sung for so many years, I am surprised that the question never came to my pedantic, overly literal mind before: why does Hoffman say "Down at the cross," when Christian tradition has uniformly identified the location of the Crucifixion as a hill? (The Bible is silent about the elevation of the place.) The best I can offer, after examining encyclopedias of English idiom and usage, is the description given in the Cambridge Dictionary: "To emphasize that a place is at some distance from you or from somewhere considered to be central" ("Down, adverb (FAR)"). Yet there is something more to the expression "Down at [x]," perhaps best reflected in the questions I encountered on discussion websites for English learners, who wished to know how "down" was relevant to a place that was neither "down" in elevation or in the figurative sense of being "down" in a southerly direction on a hypothetical map. There seems also to be an implication that the place spoken of is familiar, if not to both parties, at least to the speaker.
"Down at the cross," then, does not literally describe the scene of the Crucifixion, but the Cross as the locus of forgiveness. This is reinforced by the parallel in the second line, "Down where for cleansing from sin I cried." It is the place of forgiveness, as familiar and dear to the Christian as any physical location on earth. "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18). What could turn such an instrument of shame and terror into a symbol of hope and deliverance? "Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:23-24). "For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross" (Colossians 1:19-20).
"Down at the cross," Hoffman says, is the place to find "cleansing from sin." "But if we walk in the light, as [God] is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). And as Hoffman spells out more specifically, in our coming to the cross and claiming that free gift "was the blood applied;" it is offered to all, but it is only available at that single location. In summary, then, "Down at the cross" is the metaphorical place at which one submits to God's plan for extending His grace, puts their faith in the blood Jesus shed on that cross, and "obeys the gospel" (cf. Romans 10:16, 1 Peter 4:17).
In reflection on this truth, the author simply exclaims, "Glory to His name!" He might have been echoing many of the Psalms:
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness (Psalm 29:2 )
Sing the glory of His name; give to Him glorious praise! (Psalm 66:2)
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts! (Psalm 96:8)
Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your name give glory, for the sake of Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness! (Psalm 115:1)
"Glory" in these passages is כָּבַד (kābēd), originally a word denoting heaviness or hardness, as of a burden or a task. But by metaphorical extension it came to have a positive sense of being substantial, similar to our English expression that describes an important or influential person as "carrying a lot of weight." It came to be used in this sense to describe a person's authority, or accomplishments, or even simply their character. When applied to God, of course, it is all three at once.
God's name is glorious in righteousness, faithfulness, judgment, and salvation (Ps 66:2; 79:9; Isa 40:5). He is the king of glory (Ps 24:7-10), who has done gloriously. So he is not only to be honored because of his position as sovereign head of the universe, but because of his surpassing character in all realms (Theological Wordbook 1:427).
Stanza 2:
I am so wondrously saved from sin,
Jesus so sweetly abides within,
There at the cross where He took me in;
Glory to His name!
(Refrain)
The very first song recorded in Scripture, the Song of Moses in Exodus 15, speaks of the "wonders" that God did in delivering His people from Egypt: "Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?" (Exodus 15:11). Throughout the poetic books of the Bible we see the reference again and again to such divine acts, as in the first verse of the 9th Psalm, "I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of Your wonderful deeds." Simply put, a "wonder" is so called because it makes us wonder how it could be so. It is something outside of our capability and experience, so that we cannot even comprehend it happening--such as a sea parting in two but leaving dry ground in the middle. "Wonders" are the fingerprints of God, so to speak, down through the ages recorded in the Bible; and when Peter at Pentecost called on his countrymen to face the reality of Jesus of Nazareth, he described Him as "Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know (Acts 2:22). Some of the wonders were the same as found in Exodus, in fact--controlling the sea, bringing forth bread in the wilderness--and others were prefigured by the Hebrew prophets, such as healing the sick and even raising the dead.
But even as He used these signs to prove the genuineness of His claims and the authority of His words, Jesus pointed to even greater wonders hidden in plain sight.
And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when He saw their faith, He said, "Man, your sins are forgiven you." And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, "Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?" When Jesus perceived their thoughts, He answered them, "Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Rise and walk'"? (Luke 5:18-23).
The Pharisees, as they so often were in conversation with Jesus, were so close and yet so far. "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" was exactly the point. In the presence of an undeniable physical "wonder," Jesus left it to His hearers to connect the dots--He could also do the greater "wonder" of forgiving sins.
Much can be said, and much has been written, about the "wonder" of salvation. Looking at the tools I have at hand as a librarian, I see that the Dewey Decimal system reserves an entire classification number, 234, for "Salvation & grace". In the WorldCat database (the largest union catalog of library holdings), a search for this classification brings in more than 80,000 titles. Suffice to say that "of the making of books there is no end" (Ecclesiastes 12:12), and that this subject has enough depth and mystery to fill rooms full of books without exhausting the matter. I am reminded here of the cautionary words of C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity on the complexity of theories of atonement:
We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary (58).
Or as Elisha Hoffman exclaims in childlike astonishment, "I am so wondrously saved from sin!" Sometimes the simplest answers are the most accurate after all.
Hoffman rejoices in another wonder as well, that Jesus "abides within" us. Jesus first hinted at this in the "hard saying" of John 6,
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever" (John 6:53-58).
The abiding of Jesus in the Christian is parallel to the manner in which Jesus abides in the Father--a connection and communion of heart and mind so perfect that it is unthinkable for the Son to act in any way outside the Father's will: "the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise" (John 5:19). Our connection with Jesus will never be so perfect of course, but in the great "farewell discourse" of John chapters 14-17, we are given a fuller picture.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples. As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:1-11).
A branch lives, grows, and bears fruit as it receives life from the vine; the vine "abides" in the branch as the supplier of nourishment, and the branch "abides" in the vine by receiving it. In the same way, Jesus abides in us, and we seek to abide in Him--by letting His words abide in us (v. 7), and by abiding in His love through keeping His commandments (v. 9-10). What the life of Jesus can do, abiding in a Christian, is yet another wonder in which to rejoice.
Stanza 3:
O precious fountain that saves from sin,
I am so glad I have entered in;
There Jesus saves me and keeps me clean;
Glory to His name!
(Refrain)
Next to the air we breathe, water is the most essential element of human life; and given the dry-to-arid climate of much of the Bible lands, it is not surprising that water sources play such a prominent role in the Bible. The miraculous springs of water provided by God during the Exodus left a deep mental impression in Hebrew literature, leading to the poetic figures of the "fountain of life" and "living water." David speaks beautifully in the 36th Psalm,
How precious is Your steadfast love, O God!
The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.
They feast on the abundance of Your house,
And You give them drink from the river of Your delights.
For with You is the fountain of life;
In Your light do we see light (Psalm 36:7-9)
Jeremiah also spoke of the Lord as "the fountain of living water" (17:13), and Zechariah expanded the "fountain of life" metaphor by introducing cleansing and purification as an additional goal: "On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness."
Jesus took up this language in speaking to the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4 while sitting by the famous well dug by their common ancestor Jacob:
If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink," you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. ... Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:10, 13-14).
The "fountain of life" metaphor is brought to its climax in the closing chapters of Revelation: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts." (Revelation 21:6).
The "living water" is connected to salvation throughout the New Testament, from Jesus' declaration to Nicodemus of the necessity to be "born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:3) on through the Acts and the Epistles. Ananias told Paul, "And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on His name" (Acts 22:16). Paul reminded the Christians at Corinth of their forgiveness from sins, based on the fact that "you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11). Paul reminds us in Titus 3:5 that this is a source of assurance but also of humility: "He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit." In the the third line of this stanza, Hoffman also calls to mind the continual saving work of this "living water," no doubt thinking of 1 John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin."
The final stanza of this song, though widely in use elsewhere, is not found in Praise for the Lord, and its inclusion has been intermittent in the hymnals used among the Churches of Christ. It was not part of the Great Songs of the Church lineage, and though it was in Gospel Advocate's 1935 Christian Hymns "No. 1," it was omitted from the more influential No. 2 (1948). It was also omitted from Howard Publishing's Songs of the Church (1971) and Songs of Faith and Praise (1994). In my personal experience, therefore, I have never regularly sung from a hymnal that included it! It does appear in Sacred Selections (1956), however, and the broad usage of that hymnal is probably responsible for its inclusion in more recent hymnals such as Dane Shepard's Hymns for Worship (1988) and Sumphonia's Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs (2012).
Come to this fountain, so rich and sweet,
Cast thy poor soul at the Savior's feet;
Plunge in today, and be made complete,
Glory to His name!
In this stanza, Hoffman turns the song into an invitation to the unsaved. The third line's "plunge" is the language of baptism by immersion; it would certainly be worth keeping, or at least having as an option for use as an invitation song!
About the music:
John H. Stockton was born in New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1813 to Presbyterian parents, but apparently took little interest in religion before attending a Methodist camp-meeting in young adulthood. Though he was eager and was given increasing responsibilities in church work, he seems to have had persistent doubts about his abilities and did not enter into full-time work until 1852 (both his obituaries and extant genealogical records are silent about what he did for a living prior to this). After twenty years of preaching in the New Jersey Methodist Conference, by the 1870s he was increasingly in ill health and unable to fulfill regular duties. During this period of involuntary inactivity, however, he took up an apparently new avocation as a gospel songwriter, publishing Salvation Melodies (Philadelphia: Perkinpin & Higgins, 1874) and Precious Songs (Philadelphia: Association for the Promotion of Holiness, 1875). His songs were highly regarded by Ira Sankey, and Stockton participated in the Moody-Sankey revival in Philadelphia in 1875. He passed away March 25, 1877 ("New Jersey Conference," 29-30).
In addition to this setting of "Down at the Cross," Stockton is remembered for "Come, every soul by sin oppressed" (for which he wrote both words and music), which was included in Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos under the title "Only trust Him." Stockton is also credited with arranging the music for William Hunter's hymn "The Great Physician," though it is unclear from what source.- The opening phrase of Stockton's melody is more distinctive. Actually the two melodies are so similar, in the stanza at least, that one might suspect one had depended on the other; but to look at it fairly, if both of them chose to set the text in 4/4 time, the rhythm is suggested by the natural flow of the text. Both of them happened to begin on MI, the third note of the scale (almost all gospel songs of the era would begin on a note in the tonic chord, i.e. DO, MI, or SOL). But Stockton's melody incorporates a distinct stepwise descent through the scale, with a sequence of the first three notes (note, repeated note, step down) leading through the tonic note down to the 6th note of the scale (on "Sav-"), which also sets up the chord change underneath. By comparison, Sweney's opening phrase seems more static melodically, and remains in the tonic chord throughout. Since the rest of the music in the stanza is basically spinning out this opening phrase into a simple musical period, Stockton's melody is simply more memorable.
- The final phrase of the stanza in Sweney's setting ("Glory, glory, glory to His name") is overly complicated. The five notes beginning on the third "glory" are a descending arpeggio of a dominant seventh resolving to tonic (SOL FA RE TI DO), which reminds me of the tricky arpeggio drills I used to annoy my students with in music theory classes. Suffice it to say that it is much easier to sing up an arpeggio from the bottom than to start at the top and sing an arpeggio down, especially a seventh chord, and especially when the chord just changed! To the many singers who sing by ear this is not a natural melody pattern, and it would be easy to misremember it, perhaps smoothing it out to a simple scale passage (SOL FA MI RE DO). (See for example the various ways people sing the final cadence of "A wonderful Savior.")
- The first phrase of Sweney's refrain is more arpeggio exercises--an inversion of the subdominant chord (Db-F-Ab, but sung Ab-F-Ab-DB), followed by an inversion of the tonic )Ab-C-Eb, but sung Ab-Eb-Ab-C). By comparison, Stockton's refrain melody is largely stepwise motion and short leaps within the pentatonic scale (Ab-Bb-C-Eb-F-Ab), and is the stuff of folk melody.
- The second phrase of Sweney's refrain is perhaps more harmonically adventurous than is advisable in such an otherwise simple style. Sweney sets up and accomplishes a half cadence in the relative minor key (F minor to C major at the end of the phrase), then for the final phrase snaps back to the major key of Ab major. It is an interesting choice, but rather suddenly complex compared to what goes before. By comparison, Stockton's music is simple, practical and of a piece with Hoffman's text.
References:
"Down, adverb (FAR)." Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/down
No comments:
Post a Comment