Decoration days

For us June is a month full of homecomings – cemetery decoration days, and gathering funds for upkeep. In acknowledgement of that, a poem from 2010.

In a graveyard. (February 12, 2010).

1. Gone but not forgotten
Engraved upon the stone,
But the stone was broken
And lying all alone.

2. Who here beneath the ground
Sleeps in this silent tomb?
And shall we, too, be found
In such a lonesome gloom?

3. Gone and soon forgotten
As mem’ries fade away
Time goes on a-marching
And night replaces day.

4. Lying, unremembered—
Yes, O, how sad to see!
Nay, how glad unnumbered,
If God remember thee!

Say “Amen” to God

AMEN.
 
I cannot say,
Beneath the pressure of life’s cares today,
I joy in these;
But I can say
That I would rather walk this rugged way,
If Him it please.
 
I cannot feel
That all is well, when dark’ning clouds conceal
The shining sun;
But then I know
God lives and loves, and say, since it is so,
“Thy will be done.”
 
I cannot speak
In happy tone, the tear-drops on my cheek
Show I am sad;
But I can speak
Of grace to suffer with submission meek,
Until made glad.
 
I do not see
Why God should e’en permit some things to be,
When He is love;
But I can see,
Though often dimly through the mystery,
His hand above.
 
I do not look
Upon the present, nor in nature’s book,
To read my fate;
But I do look
For promised blessings in God’s Holy book,
And I can wait.
 
The above poem was published Thursday, July 6, 1893, in the Baptist and Reflector (Nashville, Tennessee), page 8. The next stanza was not printed in Baptist and Reflector. I ran across it elsewhere, when searching for information on the poem.
 
I may not try
To keep the hot tears back; but hush that sigh,
“It might have been;”
And try to still
Each rising murmur, and to God’s sweet will
Respond—“AMEN.”

Infant Sorrow

“Infant Sorrow,” by William Blake

My mother groaned, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my father’s hands,
Striving against my swaddling bands,
Bound and weary, I thought best
To sulk upon my mother’s breast.

This poem, first published in 1794, was in a series of poems in Songs of Experience.

My Friend

An interesting poem I ran across, “My Friend,” by D. J. Higgins. It is built on the motif of the condemned blaming a Christian friend who never spoke of Jesus Christ to him. I do not believe people will stand before God and point fingers at others – each must answer for his or her own sins. This is nevertheless a way to make the point “you never mentioned him to me.” Are we really friends to our friends? Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.

My friend, I stand in judgment now,
And feel that you’re to blame somehow.
On this earth I walked with you day by day,
And never did you point the way.

You knew the Lord in truth and glory,
But never did you tell the story.
My knowledge then was very dim,
You could have led me safe to Him.

Though we lived together here on earth,
You never told me of your second birth.
And now I stand this day condemned,
Because you failed to mention Him.

You taught me many things, that’s true;
I called you friend and trusted you.
But now I learned, now it’s too late,
You could have kept me from this fate.

We walked by day and talked by night,
And yet you showed me not the light.
You let me live, love and die,
You knew I’d never live on high.

Yes, I called you “friend” in life,
And trusted you in joy and strife.
Yet in coming to this dreadful end,
I cannot now call you “my friend.”

A seven year old’s poem

Young Isaac Watts, long before he was “the father of English hymnody,” at age seven wrote an acrostic poem that spelled out the letters of his name. It is as follows:

“I” - I am a vile, polluted lump of earth
“S” - So I’ve continued ever since my birth
“A” - Although Jehovah, grace doth daily give me
“A” - As sure this monster, Satan, will deceive me
“C” - Come therefore, Lord, from Satan’s claws relieve me.

“W” - Wash me in Thy blood, O Christ
“A” - And grace divine impart
“T” - Then search and try the corners of my heart
“T” - That I in all things may be fit to do
“S” - Service to Thee, and Thy praise too.

On an Infant

Most of the poems I include in my Sunday morning musings are hymns that have been set to music. As far as I know, the following poem has not. I ran across “On an Infant” while trying to confirm the hard-to-read epitaph on the tombstone of Elva Lynn Eiland at the Myrtle Springs Cemetery in Van Zandt County, Texas—Happy infant early blest; Rest in peaceful slumber, rest.

The entire poem from which the epitaph was extracted I is as follows:

1. To the dark and silent tomb

Soon I hasted from the womb,

Scarce the dawn of life began,

Ere I measur’d out my span.

2. I no smiling pleasures knew;

I no gay delights could view:

Joyless sojourner, was I,

Only born to weep and die.

3. Happy infant, early blest!

Rest, in peaceful slumber, rest;

Early rescu’d from the cares

Which increase with growing years.

4. No delights are worth thy stay,

Smiling as they seem, and gay

Short and fickly are they all

Hardly tasted ere they pall.

5. All our gaiety is vain,

All our laughter is but pain:

Lasting only, and divine,

Is an innocence like thine.

Elva Lynn Eiland was a daughter of F. L. Eiland and Minnie Valentine. Franklin Lycurgus Eiland was a gospel composer and hymn writer. He wrote the music for Jennie Wilson’s Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand. Country-and-western songwriter Cindy Walker was Eiland’s granddaughter.

Sourpuss Spotted

Oh, the look upon your face
as if you’ve sucked a lemon,
your nose disjointed from its place,
and ate a raw persimmon.

The Plan of Salvation

Excerpts from a very long poem by Jonas C. Sikes, 1929

Come all ye men of every age-
Yea, all the noble and the sage,
Let’s view the things that God hath done
The counsel twixt the Three-in-One.

Before the earth, before the skies,
Before the noble or the wise,
Yeah long before there was a man,
All things were settled in His plan.

In God’s decree which was of old,
A bleeding Lamb we do behold,
Brought forth as slain for fallen man;
All this was in God’s wise laid plan.

Faith views God’s plan before the world,
Before this rolling sphere ere whirled,
And sees that sin was just as sure,
As grace, which is sin’s double cure.

We must admit God did intend,
To execute some glorious end;
His glory was the end designed,
To which all things were predestined.

‘Tis here we see man brought to view,
With nothing good that he can do;
He cannot satisfy the law,
Hence can no blessings from it draw.

‘Tis here that Gods’ free grace steps in,
This grace doth reign much more than sin;
It reigns to free from death’s great power,
It reigns to keep us every hour.

It reigns to conquer sinful lusts,
And bow us down unto the dust;
It reigns to raise us up again,
This glorious grace doth sweetly reign.

It reigns to bring us unto God,
And make us know and love His Word;
It reigns to make His saints obey,
His laws and precepts every day.

It reigns where’er His saints are found,
It reigns more than sin doth abound;
It reigns that we may show His praise,
In time and unto endless days.

Arise my soul and ne’er forget,
This grace that cancelled all thy debt,
And reigns to guide us in the way,
And bring us blessings every day.

O glorious hope: O wondrous plan
In which is seen God’s love to man-
O give me grace to tell the story,
And magnify Jehovah’s glory.

Come then dear saints who love His name;
All whom these thoughts your souls aflame,
Come; let us join to shout His praise,
Through sin’s dark maze to endless days.

And when we all shall meet in heaven,
Where all these blessings first were given;
O then we all shall see His face,
And know the fullness of His grace.

The Little Chap Who Follows Me

“The Little Chap Who Follows Me!”

A careful man I must always be,
a little fellow follows me.
I know I dare not go astray,
for fear he’ll go the self-same way.

I cannot once escape his eyes,
what’er he sees me do he tries.
Like me he says he’s going to be,
this little chap who follows me.

He thinks that I am good and fine,
believes in every word of mine.
The base in me he must not see,
this little chap who follows me.

I must be careful as I go,
through summer sun and winter snow.
Because I am building for the years to be,
this little chap who follows me.

Author unknown; as read by former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden

Let’s get it right

“I was shocked when I learned this hymn was actually sung in Calvinist churches” – so says someone at ‘Truth and Song Christian Bookstore’ on Facebook regarding the following hymn:

We are the Lord’s elected few,

Let all the rest be damned;

There’s room enough in hell for you,

We won’t have heaven crammed![i]

But was it “actually sung” in Calvinist churches? Really? Many people seem to think so, on the scantest evidence. In Theology of the Reformers (p. 241) Timothy George calls it a Particular Baptist hymn (and many have followed his lead on that), as well as an example of “smugness and ugly exclusiveness.”[ii]

In the Holman New Testament Commentary - Acts, Kenneth Gangel calls it a cryptic poem and gives us an only slightly different version.

We are the Lord’s elected few.

Let everyone else be damned.

There is no room up there for you

We don’t want heaven crammed!

It is featured comedy in atheistic circles familiar with Christopher Hitchens. For example in his God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything Hitchens seems to indicate it is “an old English plebeian satire,” and renders it this way:

We are the pure and chosen few,

and all the rest are damned.

There’s room enough in hell for you—

we don’t want Heaven crammed!

Fact is, the hymn has been credited to Puritans, Particular Baptists, Calvinists, Exclusive Brethren, Bible Christians – take your pick or pick your poison. If by all, likely by none. The poem’s mocking tone suggests to me that it is a parody of the belief in election, reprobation, and particular redemption rather than an hymn composed and sung by such believers. I could be wrong; I have been before.

Many of the references that I found to this “hymn” simply pass off the information as valid without ever bothering to cite a source for it. An old mention I found online was from 1898. Even then the author wrote “a learned friend of mine avers” it was a hymn of the Bible Christian “sect, which, however, my own researches have failed to discover in the songs of the Bible Christian Sion.”[iii] (”What Was Primitive Christianity,” W. S. Lilly, The Nineteenth Century, Volume 44, No. 259, July-Dec. 1898, p. 503) There, as referenced by Lilly, it looks like this:

We are the sweet elected few:

May all the rest be damned.

There’s room enough in hell for you:

We won’t have heaven crammed.

I also located a secular ditty, appearing at least as early as 1893, of which the so-called “hymn” might be a parody (or vice versa, or both may have an earlier source). “We’re Saville Row’s selected few, Let all the rest be damned; The pit is good enough for you, We won’t have boxes crammed.” (The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, by Lady Isabel Burton)

Going back nearly 20 years earlier, the poem is mentioned in The Education Craze and Its Results (D. C. L., London: Harrison & Sons, 1878). Here it is credited to the Ranters – apparently meaning the Primitive Methodists – again without support. It is intriguing, though, that these two early mentions connect the “hymn” to Arminian rather than Calvinist religious bodies.

All this to say: Let’s get it right! For all the fun all y’all are having quoting this poem, let’s not claim either that this was printed in a hymn book or sung in churches, unless and until it can be shown that it was. If not, you’re possibly just passing on false information. Most likely this was satire intended to object to what is considered a narrow viewpoint.

---

[i] “Dogma Beyond Anathema: Historical Theology in the Service of the Church,” Timothy George, Review and Expositor 84, no. 4 (1987) p. 705; Describing what is said in the journal article, Peter Lumpkins tells us that  “George quotes a verse from a popular hymn sang in Particular Baptist churches.”

[ii] Which it would be if seriously intended.

[iii] Curiously, though the Bible Christians may have been exclusivists, they were not Calvinists but were Arminian in soteriology, an offshoot of the Methodists – founded by William O'Bryan (1778-1868). Their hymnbook available online – A Collection of Hymns, for the Use of the People called Bible Christians – does not include this hymn.