Nearer, My God, to Thee
Nearer, My God, to Thee is a Christian hymn based on the poem Nearer, My God, to Thee the English poet Sarah Flower Adams of 1841. The poem was set to music with a different melody, the most famous is Bethany by Lowell Mason. The chorale is played mainly in the English-speaking world often at funerals and memorial services or sung.
History
The Unitarian Sarah Flower Adams headed to William Johnson Fox in ' 1841 published Hymns and Anthems total of 13 poems, including Nearer, my God, to Thee. The text is as Adams ' seals generally in a time of its origin fashionable exalted style of late Romanticism held, which already by contemporaries as ' was ridiculed spasmodic ' and already forgotten shortly after the mid-century of the 19th century. The chorale is still the most popular by far works Adams '.
The song was set to music for Hymns and Anthems with a melody from the sister of the poet. Extended to a sixth verse of Edward Henry Bickersteth, Jr., of the chorale in the United States with the melody Bethany (1856, after the biblical site of Bethany ) of the American church musician Lowell Mason and the United Kingdom with the tune Horbury (1861 ) by John Bacchus was Dykes highlighted. In this form, he became one of the most popular in the English-speaking world at funerals songs. He experienced numerous other musical settings and was soon translated into many different languages or retightened.
Special recognition and frequent association have received the chorale melody and especially Masons Bethany in connection with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912: Favourite piece of their conductor Wallace Hartley, it should have been played by the band in the sinking of the ship. At least four of the rotated about the accident movies - Titanic (1943 ), sinking of the Titanic (1953), The last night of Titanic (1958) and Titanic (1997) - follow this presentation.
The song was in the U.S., among others in honor of the assassinated President James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley, whose last words are said to have the song early in 1901, and at the funeral of Gerald Ford in 2007 intones. In addition, the opening line of the song takes on a monument of the plane crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, in which 16 passengers at arctic temperatures Andes survived for 72 days before they were rescued on December 23, 1972.
In the German translation of Erhardt Friedrich Wunderlich (1875 ) the song in 2013 was included in the new Catholic prayer and hymnal praise of God under the number 502 as a funeral song in the heading "Death and the end", although it previously under German Catholics no broad tradition to there.
Lyrics
The text refers to the history of the sky ladder in Jacob's dream in the first book of Moses, as hinted at in the second verse of the hymn. Jacob spent a restless night at Bethel. There he sleeps - a stone under his head - and dreams of a ladder to heaven on which angels ascend and descend. The story of Jacob's ladder begins as follows:
English original
The first five verses are from Sarah Flower Adams, the sixth verse was later added by Edward Henry Bickersteth, Jr..
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee! E'en though it be a cross did raiseth me, Still all my song Shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone. Yet in my dreams I'd be nearer, my God to Thee. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! There let the way Appear, steps unto Heav'n; All that Thou sendest me, in mercy givenName; Angels to beckon me nearer, my God, to Thee. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee!
Then, with my waking thoughts bright with Thy praise, Out of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise; So by my woes to be nearer, my God, to Thee. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! Or, if on joyful wing cleaving the sky, Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upward I'll fly, Still all my song Shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! There in my Father's home, safe and at rest, There in my Savior 's love, perfectly blest; Age after age to be, nearer my God to Thee. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee!
German text
Nearer, My God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! Suppresses me grief here Drohet to me Let him despite cross and pain, This be my solution: Nearer, My God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! Cancels me how Jacob there, Night in as well, I find the resting place Just a stone, Is even in a dream here My longing for and for: Nearer, My God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee!
If the narrow path, Up even steep, Lead them but skyward To my salvation. Angel so bright and beautiful Wave of blissful Höhn: Nearer, My God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! Then the night is over, Is the Sun, I Weih me out on new Before Your throne, Build my Bethel you, And jauchz with joy here: Nearer, My God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee!
I also completely covered My way here this: If only my wish fulfilled Closer to you! Then connects my pilgrimage run, I swing me blessed on Nearer, My God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee!