rtfelt praise your Lord to greet.

This hymn sometimes begins with the line, "O that I had a thousand
voices."

A Noble Hymn of Worship

Light of light, enlighten me,
Now anew the day is dawning;
Sun of grace, the shadows flee,
Brighten Thou my Sabbath morning.
With Thy joyous sunshine blest,
Happy is my day of rest!

Fount of all our joy and peace,
To Thy living waters lead me;
Thou from earth my soul release,
And with grace and mercy feed me.
Bless Thy Word, that it may prove
Rich in fruits that Thou dost love.

Kindle Thou the sacrifice
That upon my lips is lying;
Clear the shadows from mine eyes,
That, from every error flying,
No strange fire may in me glow
That Thine altar doth not know.

Let me with my heart today,
Holy, holy, holy, singing,
Rapt awhile from earth away,
All my soul to Thee upspringing,
Have a foretaste inly given,
How they worship Thee in heaven.

Benjamin Schmolck, 1715.

HOW A GREAT ORGANIST INSPIRED TWO HYMNISTS

While all the hymn-writers of Germany in the early part of the eighteenth
century were more or less influenced by the Pietistic movement, there
were some who nevertheless refused to be carried away by the emotional
extravagances of which some of the Halle song-writers were often guilty.
In the hymns of these more conservative psalmists we find a happy
blending of objective teaching and a warm, personal faith that reminds us
of the earlier hymns of Gerhardt.

The chief representatives of this more typical Lutheran school were
Benjamin Schmolck, a beloved pastor and a poet of rare ability, and
Erdmann Neumeister, creator of the Church Cantata. It was the age in
which John Sebastian Bach lived and wrought, and this prince of Lutheran
organists, whose title of "high priest of church music" has never been
disputed, gave of his musical genius to help make the hymns of Schmolck
and Neumeister immortal.

Next to Gerhardt, there is no German hymnist whose name is so frequently
found in hymn-books today as that of Schmolck. Born at Brauchitzdorf,
Silesia, where his father was pastor, he was sent to school at Lauban at
the age of sixteen. After an absence of five years the young man returned
home and was invited to fill his father's pulpit. The sermon he preached
so pleased the father t