Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark - Jens Christian Aaberg (best e reader for academics .TXT) 📗
- Author: Jens Christian Aaberg
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Several fine memorials have been raised to his memory, among them an excellent statue at the entrance to the cathedral at Ribe, and a tablet on the inside wall of the building right beside a similar remembrance of Hans Tausen, the leader of the Danish reformation and a former bishop of the diocese. But the finest memorial was raised to him by his son through the publication of Hans Adolph Brorson’s Swan-Song, a collection of hymns and songs selected from his unpublished writings.
The songs of the Swan-Song were evidently written for the poet’s own consolation and diversion. They are of very different types and merit, and a number of them might without loss have been left out of the collection. A few of them stand unexcelled, however, for beauty, sentiment and poetic excellence. There are songs of patience such as the inimitable:
Her vil ties, her vil bies,
Her vil bies, o svage Sind.
Vist skal du hente, kun ved at vente,
Kun ved at vente, vor Sommer ind.
Her vil ties, her vil bies,
Her vil bies, o svage Sind.
which one can hardly transfer to another language without marring its tender beauty. And there are songs of yearning such as the greatly favored,
O Holy Ghost, my spirit
With yearning longs to see
Jerusalem
That precious gem,
Where I shall soon inherit
The home prepared for me.
But O the stormy waters!
How shall I find my way
Mid hidden shoals,
Where darkness rolls,
And join thy sons and daughters
Who dwell in thee for aye.
Lord, strengthen my assurance
Of dwelling soon with Thee,
That I may brave
The threatening wave
With firm and calm endurance;
Thyself my pilot be.
And there is “The Great White Host”, most beloved of all Brorson’s hymns, which Dr. Ryden, a Swedish-American Hymnologist, calls the most popular Scandinavian hymn in the English language. Several English translations of this song are available. The translation presented below is from the new English hymnal of the Danish Lutheran churches in America.
Behold the mighty, whiterobed band[8]
Like thousand snowclad mountains stand
With waving palms
And swelling psalms
Above at God’s right hand.
These are the heroes brave that came
Through tribulation, war and flame
And in the flood
Of Jesus’ blood
Were cleansed from sin and shame.
Now with the ransomed, heavenly Throng
They praise the Lord in every tongue,
And anthems swell
Where God doth dwell
Amidst the angels’ song.
They braved the world’s contempt and might,
But see them now in glory bright
With golden crowns,
In priestly gowns
Before the throne of light.
The world oft weighed them with dismay.
And tears would flow without allay,
But there above
The Saviour’s love
Has wiped their tears away.
Theirs is henceforth the Sabbath rest,
The Paschal banquet of the blest,
Where fountains play
And Christ for aye
Is host as well as guest.
All hail to you, blest heroes, then!
A thousand fold is now your gain
That ye stood fast
Unto the last
And did your goal attain.
Ye spurned all worldly joy and fame,
And harvest now in Jesus’ name
What ye have sown
With tears unknown
Mid angels’ glad acclaim.
Lift up your voice, wave high your palm,
Compass the heavens with your psalm:
All glory be
Eternally
To God and to the Lamb.
Brorson’s hymns were received with immediate favor. The Rare Clenod of Faith passed through six editions before the death of its author, and a new church hymnal published in 1740 contained ninety of his hymns. Pietism swept the country and adopted Brorson as its poet. But its reign was surprisingly short. King Christian VI died in 1746, and the new king, a luxury-loving worldling, showed little interest in religion and none at all in Pietism. Under his influence the movement quickly waned. During the latter part of the eighteenth century it was overpowered by a wave of religious rationalism which engulfed the greater part of the intellectual classes and the younger clergy. The intelligentsia adopted Voltaire and Rousseau as their prophets and talked endlessly of the new age of enlightenment in which religion was to be shorn of its mysteries and people were to be delivered from the bonds of superstition.
In such an atmosphere the old hymns and, least of all, Brorson’s hymns with their mystic contemplation of the Saviour’s blood and wounds could not survive. The leading spirits in the movement demanded a new hymnal that expressed the spirit of the new age. The preparation of such a book was undertaken by a committee of popular writers, many of whom openly mocked Evangelical Christianity. Their work was published under the title The Evangelical Christian Hymnal, a peculiar name for a book which, as has been justly said, was neither Evangelical nor Christian. The compilers had eliminated many of the finest hymns of Kingo and Brorson and ruthlessly altered others so that they were irrecognizable. To compensate for this loss, a great number of “poetically perfect hymns” by newer writers—nearly all of whom have happily been forgotten—were adopted.
But while would-be leaders discarded or mutilated the old hymns and, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, sought to force their new songs upon the congregations, many of these clung tenaciously to their old hymnal and stoutly refused to accept the new. In places the controversy even developed into a singing contest, with the congregations singing the numbers from the old hymnal and the deacons from the new. And these contests were, of course, expressive of an even greater controversy than the choice of hymns. They represented the struggle between pastors, working for the spread of the new gospel, and congregations still clinging to the old. With the highest authorities actively supporting the new movement, the result of the contest was, however, a foregone conclusion. The new enlightenment triumphed, and thousands of Evangelical Christians became homeless in their own church.
During the subsequent period of triumphant Rationalism, groups of Evangelical laymen began to hold private assemblies in their own homes and to provide for their own spiritual nourishment by reading Luther’s sermons and singing the old hymns. In these assemblies Brorson’s hymns retained their favor until a new Evangelical awakening during the middle part of the nineteenth century produced a new appreciation of the old hymns and restored them to their rightful place in the worship of the church. And the songs of the Sweet Singer of Pietism have, perhaps, never enjoyed a greater favor in his church than they do today.
the Singer of Pentecost
The latter part of the eighteenth and the earlier part of the nineteenth century produced a number of great changes in the spiritual, intellectual and economic life of Denmark. The strong Pietist movement at the time of Brorson, as we have seen, lost much of its momentum with the death of King Christian VI, and within a few years was overwhelmed by a wave of the intellectual and religious Rationalism then engulfing a large part of Europe. Religion, it was claimed, should be divested of its mysteries and reason made supreme. Whatever could not justify itself before the bar of the human intellect should be discarded as outworn conceptions of a less enlightened age. The movement, however, comprised all shades of opinions from pure agnosticism to an idealistic belief in God, virtue and immortality.
Although firmly opposed by some of the most influential Danish leaders of that day, such as the valiant bishop of Sjælland, Johan Edinger Balle, Rationalism swept the country with irresistible force. Invested in the attractive robe of human enlightenment and appealing to man’s natural intellectual vanity, the movement attracted the majority of the upper classes and a large proportion of the clergy. Its adherents studied Rousseau and Voltaire, talked resoundingly of human enlightenment, organized endless numbers of clubs, and—in some instances—worked zealously for the social and economic uplift of the depressed classes.
In this latter endeavor many pastors assumed a commendable part. Having lost the old Gospel, the men of the cloth became eager exponents of the “social gospel” of that day. While we may not approve their Christmas sermons “on improved methods of stable feeding,” or their Easter sermons “on the profitable cultivation of buckwheat,” we cannot but recognize their devoted labor for the educational and economic uplift, especially of the hard-pressed peasants.
Their well-meant efforts, however, bore little fruit. The great majority of the people had sunk into a slough of spiritual apathy from which neither the work of the Rationalists nor the stirring events of the time could arouse them.
The nineteenth century began threateningly for Denmark, heaping calamity after calamity upon her. England attacked her in 1801 and 1807, robbing her of her fine fleet and forcing her to enter the European war on the side of Napoleon. The war wrecked her trade, bankrupted her finances and ended with the severance of her long union with Norway in 1814. But through it all Holger Danske slept peacefully, apparently unaware that the very existence of the nation was threatened.
It is against this background of spiritual and national indifference that the towering figure of Grundtvig must be seen. For it was he, more than any other, who awakened his people from their lethargic indifference and started them upon the road toward a happier day spiritually and nationally.
Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, like so many of Denmark’s greatest men, was the son of a parson. He was born September 8, 1783, at Udby, a country parish in the south-eastern part of Sjælland. His father, Johan Ottesen Grundtvig, was a pastor of the old school, an upright, earnest and staunch supporter of the Evangelical Lutheran faith. His mother, Catherine Marie Bang, was a high-minded, finely educated woman with an ardent love for her country, its history, traditions and culture. Her son claimed that he had inherited his love of “song and saga” from her.
The Grundtvigs on both sides of the family were descendants of a long line of distinguished forebears, the most famous of whom was Archbishop Absalon, the founder of Copenhagen and one of the most powerful figures in 13th Century Denmark. And they still had relatives in high places. Thus Johan Edinger Balle, the formerly mentioned bishop of Sjælland, was a brother-in-law of Johan Grundtvig; Cathrine Grundtvig’s brother, Dr. Johan Frederik Bang, was a well-known professor of medicine and the stepfather of Jacob Peter Mynster; and her younger sister, Susanna Kristine Steffens, was the mother of Henrik Steffens, a professor at the universities of Halle and Breslau, a friend of Goethe and Schiller, and a leader of the early Romantic movement, both in Germany and Denmark.
Cathrine Grundtvig bore her husband five children, of whom Nicolaj was the youngest. But even with such a large household to manage, she found time to supervise the early schooling of her youngest son. She taught him to read, told him the sagas of his people and gave him his first lessons in the history and literature, both of his own and of other nations.
It was a period of
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