Posted on 04/09/2017 7:41:10 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
One hundred fifty-five years ago, the Atlantic Monthly published on its front cover the lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which not only is one of this nation’s most well-known patriot songs, but also, arguably, its most spiritual.
The melody was borrowed from a Civil War marching song, which paid tribute to the abolitionist John Brown, and which was popular with Union soldiers.
The song’s lyrics – “poor old John Brown is dead, his body lies mouldering in the grave” – were inoffensive to soldiers marching into battle, but deemed too coarse to be sung by the general public.
So it was, providentially, that the poetess Julia Ward Howe found herself in 1862 on Upton Hill in Northern Virginia, headquarters of Union Army command, where she attended a public review of Union Army troops.
The review was cut short by a skirmish between Union and Confederate soldiers, so she climbed aboard a waiting carriage, accompanied by the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, in route to nearby Washington, D.C., where she was staying at the Willard Hotel.
As the carriage bearing the Howe and the Rev. Clark passed by a detachment of Union troops, they heard the men singing the words to “John Brown’s Body.” Rev. Clark suggested that the poetess Howe write new lyrics for the marching song, memorializing what she experienced on Upton’s Hill.
According to Howe’s first-hand account, when she returned to her lodgings at the Willard Hotel, she went to sleep.
“I awoke,” she remembered, “in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep and forget them.’
So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of my bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”
Howe went back to bed and fell asleep. When she awoke, she said, she felt “something of importance had happened to me.”
That’s what it means to be divinely inspired. It is when the Holy Spirit uses those whom God has chosen – like the poetess Howe – to impart a message to His redeemed during a particularly momentous time in history.
Howe’s lyrics for the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” were penned against the backdrop of the Civil War, the deadliest military conflict in U.S. history, according to the Congressional Research Service.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” wrote Howe. “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.”
The poetess concluded: “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; as He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, while God is marching on.”
The lyrics of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” reportedly moved President Abraham Lincoln to tears when a soloist sung it at a large public rally he attended. “Sing it again!,” the nation’s 16th president shouted.
And Americans continue to sing again and again Julie Ward Howe’s patriotic hymn 155 years since it was first published. Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! God’s divine inspiration marches on.
Truly an inspired piece of verse.
We say this prayer to the Holy Spirit before each Bible Study:
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love.
Send forth Your Spirit, and we shall be created.
And You shall renew the face of the earth.
O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolations.
Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
I love this hymn.
“And Americans continue to sing again and again Julie Ward Howe’s patriotic hymn 155 years since it was first published. Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! God’s divine inspiration marches on.”
Reminds me of the comment made by the ranch hand in the movie Red River: “Why is it when you kill a man, you want to read the Lord into it?”
Or in this case, 600,000 men.
If anyone's interested, here's the poem in its entirety.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah! (3x)
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.”
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
Worst hymn ever.
Dixie ping
To be on or off the dixie ping list pm me
WWII Bataan version
Dugout Doug MacArthur lies ashaking on the Rock
Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock
Dugout Doug is eating of the best food on Bataan
And his troops go starving on.
Dugout Doug’s not timid, he’s just cautious, not afraid
He’s protecting carefully the stars that Franklin made
Four-star generals are rare as good food on Bataan
And his troops go starving on.
Dugout Doug is ready in his Kris Craft for the flee
Over bounding billows and the wildly raging sea
For the Japs are pounding on the gates of Old Bataan
And his troops go starving on…
It was highlighted in;
The Outlaw Josey Whales!
And yet the Republic survived, by the grace of of God. Indeed, He set Abraham Lincoln in authority over this nation during the Civil War for such a time as that. What could have been more God-inspired than Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which famously concluded:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
“...where the grapes of wrath are stored.”
Would true Christians encourage and invoke carnage on their fellow man?
You know in my line of work, you gotta be able either to sing “The Battle Hymn Of The Republic” or “Dixie” with equal enthusiasm... dependin’ upon present company.
Well, the Declaration of Independence. Start with that.
“When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another . . .”
I don't know where she read that, but it wasn't in the bible.
Was Christ born in the beauty of the lilies overseas?
I was always taught he was born in a feeding trough amid the squalor of a cow byre.
Meh. Perhaps she exercised a little poetic license. As our Pastor often says, chew on the meat and spit out the bone.
“Does it get stains out?”
Think I’ll plug in the DVD.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.