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In my research into the authors and the composers for our regular Hymn of the Week, I come upon not only attractive personalities, both men and women, but upon kinds of men and women that I do not think I have ever met in my life. It’s hard to describe them, for we learn about the unfamiliar from the familiar, yet if the distance is too great, we’re tempted to turn away, to give it up as hopeless, or to find some false term of equivalence. That’s why the Romans in the first century looked upon Christians as “hating the human race,” as Tacitus, usually shrewd but here ill-informed and uncurious, puts it. Why else would they meet in private once a week, if not for some conspiracy against the public good? Why would they disdain the amusements that everyone else delighted in? Why would they preach the words of a man whom a solid Roman official had put to death? But if we resist that temptation, if we take such unusual people on their terms and not ours, it is a little like having a new color added to your vision. It can abash you. It can also raise up your spirit and give a new direction to your thought or your work.
So I want you to imagine the author of our Hymn of the Week, Maltbie Davenport Babcock, as a young married man, a minister and doctor of divinity, saying to his wife, “I’m going out to our Father’s world,” to walk along the bluffs of the town of Lockport, overlooking Lake Ontario. Babcock has had the typical education of a learned man in his day, especially a clergyman: he is well versed in arts and letters, the classics are to him like old friends, he knows the Bible in its original languages; and he is in a small way a poet also. Lockport, by the way, got its name from the locks on the old Erie Canal, which allowed for ships on the canal to descend stage by stage to the level of Lake Ontario.
If, then, you were Reverend Babcock, who loved the still-wild landscape of the bluffs and the lake, you saw also the energetic work of man, and that too would give you pleasure. “We are not here to play, to dream, to drift,” he writes in a short hymn-poem that is still pretty well known. “We have hard work to do and loads to lift; / Shun not the struggle; face it; ’tis God’s gift.” When he went later on to Baltimore to preach to the students at Johns Hopkins, but also factory workers, tradesmen, high society ladies, and people of all classes, such sentiments endeared him to their hearts, because they wanted that sense of purpose. Here, for example, is one of his meditations, which his wife Katherine published in a book after his death in 1901, at age 42:
"Life's real loss is life unlived. The strength we pay out for a principle enriches us, though the cause may seem a failure. The strength we save through cowardice or selfishness impoverishes us. The love that is given, though it be not half returned, builds up the heart, while the love that is withheld shrivels it. Prudence may be an enemy of power, and thrift bring beggary behind it. ‘There is that withholdeth and tendeth to poverty.’”
I read that and I bow my head.
Yesterday, in our Word of the Week, August, I had occasion to bring up the fawning title the ancient Roman Senate gave to Octavian, calling him Augustus Caesar. Certainly, Augustus was not an idle man. He was a brilliant administrator. He threw himself into public works — temples, roads, harbors, aqueducts. There was not one feature of his far-flung empire that he was not interested in, and that included religion. For Augustus got himself appointed Pontifex Maximus, that is, the Chief Priest of the state cult, the bridge-builder between earth and heaven. But it all seems so foolish, so much of a blundering stage-play, when you consider how Augustus got to be where he was, and how much hypocrisy he engaged in to stay there.
This world is not the world of the politicians, the movers and shakers, the troublers of man’s poor peace. Even the human world is not so. It is not governed by an Augustus, or by a hundred million of little Augusti casting ballots in an election. It is just as Babcock said: it is our Father’s world. “The difference between iron and steel is fire,” he says in another of his meditations, “but steel is worth all it costs.” But that’s not just a celebration of effort. Of itself, effort is of no avail. Really to live in God’s world, both the natural and the human, is to bring our work under His governance. I will close with another of the Reverend Babcock’s meditations.
“Here is the demand for Christian imagination. How does life look from Heaven? Think of our discontent in lowly places, our feverish longing for great work, our love of tinsel, our chafing under discipline, our hard judgments, our cherished grievances. How would they appear to us, seen from above ? How do they look to Jesus ? Put yourself in your true place, and judge accordingly. Our citizenship is in Heaven; let our conversation be heavenly.”
Today’s hymn is sung, once again, by the congregation of Grace Community Church, in Sun Valley, California, accompanied by their immensely gifted and devout organist, Stephen Sturtz.
This is my Father's world, And to my listening ears, All nature sings, and round me rings The music of the spheres. This is my Father's world: I rest me in the thought Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; His hand the wonders wrought. This is my Father's world, The birds their carols raise, The morning light, the lily white, Declare their Maker's praise. This is my Father's world: He shines in all that's fair; In the rustling grass I hear him pass, He speaks to me everywhere. This is my Father's world, O let me ne'er forget That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet. This is my Father's world, The battle is not done, Jesus who died shall be satisfied And earth and heaven be one.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
i am struck especially by that quotation at the end … the Christian imagination as seeing things from the eyes of heaven. what a very, very beautiful hymn - and how prodigal we sometimes are with our Father’s world …
A stunning hymn--simple but exquisitely elegant. I love the use of internal rhyme in the third line of each verse, and how it complements the rest of the rhyme scheme.