[Fiji Hill]

I thought he might say the music died in church the day Charles Wesley went home to glory. That’s what I would have said, but he went down the path of a lame analogy.

But church music was revived in the nineteenth century by great antebellum hymnodists such as Lowell Mason ("Joy to the World, "Nearer, My God, to Thee") and postbellum hymnodists such as P. P. Bliss ("It Is Well with My Soul"), Fanny Crosby ("Blessed Assurance") and Lelia Morris ("Nearer, Still Nearer").

The last century even produced some great hymnodists such as Alfred Ackley ("He Lives"), Walter and Civilla Martin ("His Eye Is on the Sparrow") and Wendell Loveless & Avis Christensen ("Precious Hiding Place"). However, in my opinion, the last great hymn that was ever written was "Each Step I Take", composed in 1953. Hymn-writing has become a lost art.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Those were some good ones too. I was just being a wise guy by cutting things off at Wesley.

In the Methodist Church where I grew up, we used the official hymnal , but we also had a green book called “Tabernacle Hymns.”. I liked a lot of those.