Show HOW FINE HYMN WAS WRITTEN onward christ an sold ers corn posed for school festival probably a greater hymn never had a more humble origin than onward christian soldiers which Is one of the most popular of our modern hymns in the october delineator allan sutherland writes A great school festival was to be held in a yorkshire village on whit monday 1865 and the scholars of bior bury bridge school over which the kev sabane baring gould was curate were invited to attend As the place of the celebration was some distance away the minister thought it would be an excellent plan to have his schol ars march to the singing of an appropriate and stirring hymn fortunate 1 tor our hymnology he could find nothing in his song books suitable for such an bc casion 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 pio deuced that which would be world wide in its usefulness and make his name a household word baring gould a minister of the church of england an authority on many subjects and 1 a writer having nearly one hundred volumes in twenty years between 1870 and 18 le issued no less than forty tareo books sixteen of which were novels during the next six years he published seven teen novels A number of his works have passed down through several edi alons 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 with his life a book of four volumes edited by edmund gosse v it Is by his one poem elegy written in a country churchyard that he will be ever remembered ahls may also prove true of bareng gould the few lines hurriedly composed on a saturday evening as a marching song for a band of little ahll iren will doubt less give his name greater tame than all the books he has ever written |