Hymn of the Week: September 27, 2021

Hymn of the Week: Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above
Glory to God #645

Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above 
Text Johann Jacob Schütz 1675. Translated by Elizabeth Cox 1864
Music Bohemian Brethren’s Kirkengesang 1566. Mit Freuden Zart

Sing praise to God who reigns above,
the God of all creation,
the God of power, the God of love,
the God of our salvation.
With healing balm my soul is filled
and every faithless murmur stilled:
To God all praise and glory.

What God’s almighty power has made
God’s gracious mercy keepeth;
By morning glow or eveing shade
God’s watchful eyene’er sleepeth,
Within the kingdom of God’s might,
Lo! All is just and all is right.
To God all praise and glory.

The Lord is never far away,
but through all grief distressing,
an ever present help and stay,
our peace and joy and blessing.
As with a mother's tender hand,
God gently leads the chosen band:
To God all praise and glory.

Thus all my toilsome way along,
I sing aloud thy praises,
that earth may hear the grateful song
my voice unwearied raises.
Be joyful in the Lord, my heart,
both soul and body bear your part:
To God all praise and glory.

Frances Elizabeth Cox (1812-1897) devoted herself to the translation of hymns from the German language into English. In total, she published 56 hymns in Sacred Hymns from the German (1841, 2nd edition, 1864).

Though little is known about Cox’s life, her translations remain a testament to her accomplishments. Of the approximately 80 texts she translated, most appear in the second edition of Sacred Hymns. The Companion to the Psalter Hymnal tells us, “Her choice of hymns was often determined by her friend, Baron Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador to England.” The two best translators of hymns from the German in the 19th century are generally considered to be Cox and Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878).

Schütz, a practitioner of civil and canon law, was influenced by Philipp Jakob Spener, the father of the Pietist movement in Germany. This German Lutheran movement of the 17th and 18th centuries emphasized, according to church historian James D. Nelson, a “heartfelt religious devotion, ethical purity, charitable activity, and pastoral theology rather than sacramental or dogmatic precision.” Pietism emerged in reaction to the formality of Lutheran orthodoxy.

The Rev. Carlton Young notes that Schütz suggested that Spener should begin his influential prayer meetings (Collegia Pietatis), an activity that signaled for many scholars the beginning of the Pietist movement. Spener’s Pia Desideria (1675) proposed that a religion of the heart should replace a religion of the head. Several hymn writers were influenced by this movement including Moravian Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, whose evangelical awakenings throughout Europe and in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries had a strong influence on John Wesley and Methodism.

Rather than the distant, rigid God of orthodox Lutheranism, Cox notes in stanza two that the “Lord is never far away.” Dr. Young suggests that Cox’s translation “has skillfully maintained the hymn’s balance between the strong and powerful biblical metaphors for God and the warm pietistic [ones such as] ‘As with a mother’s tender hand’” (stanza 2).

A 21st-century sensibility would see justice in terms of the needs of the hungry, the poor and the disadvantaged, and victims of racism, sexism, and other issues—not in terms of predetermined societal structures. Thus, the words may be the same, but most likely the meaning of them is very different.

Enjoy this stirring rendition from Plymouth Church in Lincoln, Nebraska