| Show t n J J. J r i r r. r HOW FINE HYMN WAS WRITTEN Onward Christian Soldiers Composed Composed Com Com- posed for Sch School ol Festival Probably a greater hymn never had bad hada bada a more humble origin than Onward Christian Soldiers which Is one of the most popular of ot our modern hymns In the October Delineator Allan Sutherland writes writes- A great school school festival was to be beheld beheld held In a Yorkshire village village on Whit Whit- Monday 1865 and the sch scholars lars of Hor Horbury Horbury Horbury bury Bridge school ovet over ove which the Rev Hev Sabine Gould Baring d was curate were invited to attend As the place of at the celebration was some distance away vay the minister thought it would be an excellent plan to have his scholars schol ars march to the singing of an appropriate appropriate appropriate and stirring hymn Fortunately Fortunate l ly r for tor our hymnology he could could find nothing in his song books suitable for such an occasion so from sheer necessity he sat down on the Saturday evening preceding the celebration and composed this great processional hymn little dreaming that he had produced produced produced pro pro- that which would be world-wide world in its usefulness and make his name a household word Baring Gould Baring Gould a minister of the Church of England Isan Isan is isan an authority on many subjects and Is Isa Isa isa a voluminous writer having published nearly one hundred volumes In twenty ty years between 1870 and 1890 he Issued no less than forty three forty three books sixteen of which were novels During the next six years he published seventeen seventeen seven seven- teen novels A number of his works have passed down through several edi editions edl This suggests the poet Thomas Gray who was also a man of vast learning not only in literature but in all the arts and sciences of his day and although he left writings enough to form torm with his life a book of four volumes edited by Edmund Gosse it is by his one poem Elegy Written In in a Country Churchyard Churchyard that he will be ever This may ay also prove true of Baring Baring Gould The few lines hurriedly composed on a Saturday evening as a marching song for tor a band of little children will doubtless doubt less give his name greater fame tame than all the books he has ever written |
