Category: In Hymns & Songs

Robert Robinson

by Terry Conley

Born in England, September 27, 1735, Robert Robinson began his early education in an endowed grammar school which included the study of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Literature.  When his father died, he was apprenticed to a barber in London but he pursued his study of the classics, neglecting his business.  A life-changing event happened during his seventeenth year when he went to hear George Whitefield preach.  His text was Matthew 3:7, and in describing the occasion, Robinson later wrote that “Mr. Whitefield described the Sadducean character: this did not touch me. I thought myself as good a Christian as any man in England. From this he went to that of the Pharisees. He described their exterior decency, but observed that the poison of the viper rankled in their hearts. This rather shook me. At length, in the course of his sermon, he abruptly broke off, paused for a few moments, then burst into a flood of tears, lifted up his hands and eyes, and exclaimed, ‘ Oh, my hearers, the wrath’s to come! the wrath’s to come!’  These words sank into my heart like lead in the waters. I wept, and when the sermon was ended retired alone.  For days and weeks, I could think of little else. Those awful words would follow me wherever I went.”  Finally, he recorded that it was on December 10, 1755, he “found full and free forgiveness through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.”

Shortly before he turned 17, Robinson was released from his apprenticeship.  His employer said Robert appeared to be more interested in reading than working, and in following preachers than in attending to his customers.  He became associated with the Wesleys and their work in London and began preaching in 1758.  He also served as a pastor in several local churches but he had not formally separated from the Church of England.  Rich relatives encouraged him to leave the Wesleys and take orders in the Established Church, but he declined.  It was during this time that his personal study had raised concerns and doubts concerning infant baptism. He chose to be baptized as a believer and became a Baptist in early 1759.  He was asked to preach by the Stone Yard Baptist Chapel in Cambridge (where later Robert Hall was Pastor) but did not accept their pastoral call until nearly two years later, being ordained June 11, 1761.  By all accounts, his stay at Cambridge was a success.  He preached at the Baptist Chapel 2 or 3 times each Sunday. Members of the University and others were regular attenders. He also had 15 other locations in the area where he would preach.

In 1790 his health failed.  He died June 8 while in Birmingham, and was buried in the Old Meeting graveyard there.  Robert Hall prepared his epitaph: “Sacred to the memory of the Rev. Robert Robinson, of Cambridge, the intrepid champion of liberty, civil and religious. Endowed with a genius brilliant and penetrating, united to an indefatigable Industry, his mind was richly furnished with an inexhaustible variety of knowledge, his eloquence was the delight of every assembly, and his conversation the charm of every private circle. In him the erudition of the scholar, the discrimination of the historian, and the boldness of the reformer, were united in an eminent degree with the virtues which adorn the man and the Christian.  He died at Birmingham, on the 8th of June,1790, aged 54 years, and was buried near this spot.”

His one song we remember, ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing’, strikes a chord in our hearts with his heart-felt plea as shown in the original words of verse five:

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

 

Sources: Dictionary of Hymnology; John Julian 1892

Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Vol. 49, Editor: Leslie Stephens

 

 

Avis Marguerite Burgeson Christiansen

by Terry Conley

(October 1895 – January 1985)\

Avis Marguerite Burgeson was born on October 11, 1895, in Chicago.  Not much is known about her childhood or her education except that she spent her life in and around the northern Chicago communities.  She was a modest and retiring woman and sometimes used pen names such as Avis Burgeson, Christian B. Anson, and Constance B. Reid to divert attention from herself.  She attended the Moody Church where her pastor was Dr. Harry A. Ironside from 1929 to 1948.

Born into a Christian home where whole-hearted service of Christ was accepted as the natural thing, Avis became a Christian at an early age.  She once stated that the wonder of salvation in her own life was the source for the beautiful verses that continue to draw others close to her Savior.  As a child, Avis was very influenced and encouraged by her grandmother.  She was a strong Christian woman who loved music and would sing the old church hymns to Avis to pass the time.  Avis began writing poems in childhood with her encouragement and she wrote her first poem at age ten.

Avis joined with the Moody Church in Chicago in 1915 where she met, fell in love with, and married Ernest C. Christiansen in 1917.  He later became Vice President in charge of investments for Moody Bible Institute.  They were eventually blessed with two daughters and despite being a busy wife and mother, she continued to write poetry and hymns.  Avis once said that her hymns had come from her own life experiences with the Lord.

In addition to her many hymns and songs, Avis wrote and published two books of poetry.  The first, His Faithfulness in 1949, and Avis Christiansen’s Most-Loved Poems in 1962.  One of the greatest compliments to be paid Avis was written in the forward to her first book of poetry, His Faithfulness, by her pastor and author, H.A. Ironside: “Avis B. Christiansen is the gifted author of many of our sweetest gospel songs. By means of these, her name is known around the world, for many of the delightful lyrics have been translated into various languages. She is a modest, retiring person whom few got to know beyond the circle of her immediate family and friends. With a very keen apprehension of spiritual realities and a clear understanding of the great truths revealed in the Word of God, her hymns and poems are eminently Scriptural and soul-uplifting.”

It was her involvement with Moody Church that led to her life’s work.  She recorded that on one Sunday morning it seemed that everything that happened or was said reminded her that the talent that she was blessed with belonged to her Lord.  She developed a longing to express His love and blessing which resulted in her first two hymns. One of these was set to music by D.B. Towner, Director of Music at Moody Bible Institute.  It is titled, That Is Far Enough for Me and is based upon Psalm 103 with David praising God that he would not be dealt with as his sins required but as verse 12 states: “As far as the east is from the west, So far hath He removed our transgressions from us.” Many of her early efforts were set to music and sung by The Moody Church choir.

It was during this time that she realized her need for deeper grounding in the Word of God, so she began to study at the Moody Evening School.  Mrs. Christiansen took no credit for her poems.  She was constantly amazed that her words bore such abundant fruit.  She always credited the fact that her songs and poems were doctrinally correct from her study at the school.  This solid, fundamental background deepened her devotion to God and to the work He had given her to do.  Her testimony was: “I have been able, by His infinite grace, to pour out my soul in hundreds of songs of praise to my blessed Redeemer. He speaks through the commonplace things of life, if we are but listening for His gentle voice.  All I need to know of heaven is that Jesus will be there.”

One of her first songs that has remained popular through the years is Blessed Redeemer.  It was written in 1920 and the music was composed by Harry Dixon Loes.  He had studied music at Moody Bible Institute.  After finishing school, he served several churches in the music ministry and from 1939 until his death in 1965, he was a member of the Faculty of Moody Bible Institute.  It very seldom happens in this order, but one day while listening to a sermon about Christ’s Atonement entitled Blessed Redeemer,  Loes was inspired to compose the tune  which he named, Blessed Redeemer.  Not having any idea for appropriate words, he sent the melody with the suggested title to Mrs. Christiansen and asked her to write suitable lyrics to fit the melody.  The completed hymn first appeared in the hymnal, Songs of Redemption, in 1920.  It is one of my favorite songs and it is safe to say that the song has remained a congregational favorite through the years.

 

Blessed Redeemer! Precious Redeemer!

 Seems now I see Him on Calvary’s tree;

 Wounded and bleeding,

for sinners pleading,

 Blind and unheeding–dying for me!

 

Another of her wonderful songs, published in 1961, is How Can It Be?

 

O Savior, as my eyes behold

The wonders of Thy might unfold,

The heavens in glorious light arrayed,

The vast creation Thy hast made–

And yet to think Thou lovest me–

My heart cries out, ‘How can it be?’

How can it be? How can it be?

That God should love a soul like me,

O how can it be?

These are two wonderful, heart-felt songs to bookend her life.  In this song, she alludes to the glorious privilege given to man.  That God should love and honor such poor creations of dust, and to be the crown of God’s creation on the earth, is beyond comprehension.  The music was written by John W. Peterson.

 

Bibliography

www.hymntime.com

www.hymnary.org

www.moodymedia.org

Hymns of Our Faith, William J. Reynolds

 

 

Harry Dixon Loes lived from 1892 to 1965. He wrote and composed many songs and hymns during his career.  He was also involved in creating and writing children’s songs for Sunday School.  The man who wrote the music for Blessed Redeemer is also credited with writing the words and music for This Little Light of Mine sometime in the early 1920’s.  It became a staple of Sunday School teaching across the U.S.

 

John Willard Peterson lived from 1929 to 2006.  Peterson served as an Army Air Force pilot flying the China Hump during World War II.  After the war, he attended MBI and served on the radio staff there for several years.   He graduated from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago in 1953 and settled in Pennsylvania.  He later moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was President and Editor-in-Chief of Singspiration.  During that time, he compiled and edited Great Hymns of the Faith.  He wrote over 1000 songs, and 35 cantatas including It Took a Miracle, Over the Sunset Mountains, Heaven Came Down, So Send I You, Springs of Living Water, Jesus is Coming Again, Surely Goodness and Mercy, and This is the day that the Lord hath made.

 

 

In Hymns and Songs

by Terry Conley

The first hymn book and hymn writers in America were from England.  The hymn book which landed with the Pilgrims in 1620 was Reverend Henry Ainsworth’s version of the Book of Psalms entitled The Book of Psalms: Englished both in Prose and Metre with Annotations, published in 1612 at Amsterdam.  It is considered by many to be the foundation upon which all other American hymn books stand.  Ainsworth was an English Separatist and a pastor of the English church in Amsterdam.  His version of the Psalms was used at Plymouth, Salem, and Ipswich until the mid-1600’s.  According to historians, the first book published in the new colonies in North America was a song book, The Whole Book of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English Meter, or more commonly, The Bay Psalm Book.  This “song book”, the efforts of about 40 men, was first printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just 20 years after the Pilgrims’ arrival.  So church music had entered the new world, but it was not smooth sailing for hymns and songs in this new country.

Many works were published for and against this new liberty.  One by Reverend John Cotton (Grandfather of Cotton Mather), a treatise entitled Singing of Psalms a Gospel Ordinance, was produced to meet the objection then being made to a metrical version of the Psalms.  The current argument was that the word “singing” in the Scriptures meant nothing more than the attitude of thankfulness and joy in the heart.  Pastor Cotton insisted in his argument that the “singing of Psalms with a lively voice is a holy duty of God’s worship” (p 2).  Also, that “not only the Psalms of David, but any other spiritual songs recorded in Scripture may lawfully be sung in Christian Churches” (p 2).  Church records and writings show that during the latter part of the 1600’s into the early 1700’s music in our churches was almost entirely neglected.

During those early years, most of the congregations could only sing three or four tunes.  But even with so few, they brought about multiple problems. Congregational singing had become by all reports just a loud jumble of noise.  Thomas Walter, an early proponent of bringing order back into church music, was among the first who commented on the predicament with the current music issues in the churches.  In 1721, he published The Grounds and Rules of Music Explained: Or, An Introduction to the Art of Singing By Note. Fitted to the Meanest Capacities.  He noted that,

“the Tunes that are already in use in our churches; which, when they first came out of the hands of the composers of them, were sung according to the Rules of the Scale of Music, but are now miserably tortured, and twisted, and quavered, in some Churches, into a horrid medley of confused and disorderly noises… Our tunes are, for want of a standard to appeal to in all our singing, left to the mercy of every unskillful throat to chop and alter, twist and change, according to their infinitely divers and no less odd humors and fancies” (p 3).  He doesn’t stop there but adds “… one man is upon this note, while another is a note before him, which produces something so hideous and disorderly, as is beyond expression bad.  …and besides, no two men in the congregation quaver alike, or together; which sounds in the ears of a good judge, like five hundred different tunes roared out at the same time…” (p 5).

In an essay written in 1720, Reverend Thomas Symmes asked some questions that are still asked today: “Where would be the Difficulty or what the Disadvantage, if People that want Skill in Singing, would procure a Skillful Person to Instruct them, and meet Two or Three Evenings in the Week, from five or six a Clock, to Eight, and spend the Time in Learning to Sing?” (The Reasonableness of Regular Singing, Boston, 1720 as quoted in Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life, New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).

Thus, the industry was spawned.  Singers needed songs.  Songs needed writers.  Writers needed publishers. . .  And so it goes.