For the
moment, Horatio was tired of theory. He asked himself ‘How did one expect to
manage events – or could one, really, without making mistakes born of
temptation?’ That thought crossed Horatio Richmond Palmer’s mind in the mid-1800s,
and so he jotted down his answers in “Yield Not to Temptation”, in order to add
some practical words to what someone might conceptually offer as advice for the
person seeking to live right. Horatio was involved in many other efforts on
that day in Chicago, but something sprang into his brain without warning, and experience
taught him that the moment should not be cast aside. Musical ideas were gifts,
this musician sensed intrinsically. Was the subject one that had been stuck in
neutral, then suddenly coalesced, with the unpredictable aid of something else that
was on his plate that moment? Even Horatio might say ‘I don’t know – I just listened
to my insides.’
Horatio
Palmer was a 34-year old in 1868, who was in what he himself might have called a
midwestern interlude, surrounded by long stretches of time in the New York area.
He’d moved to Chicago after growing up and beginning his musical career in the
Rushford Academy in New York. He began singing at age seven, but perhaps another
event in his childhood further imprinted his character. His mother died when he
was three (though at some point his father re-married, giving Horatio a
stepmother), so could one say that the church and the choir directed by his
father (Anson) became a kind of surrogate family? Perhaps that was why he stayed
nearby for his further education and first position as a teacher and musical
director (also at Rushford). By 1868, he had moved to the windy city and was employing
his musical acumen at a Baptist church as its choir director. ‘Yield Not…’ came
to him quite abruptly one day as he worked on a rather tedious subject of ‘Theory’,
by his own admission. He swiftly recorded the music and first two verses, and
also a third that was later revised with the aid of a friend. Palmer offers no
other details, but we can surmise from our own experiences that what he
describes is plausible. The mind can do one thing and conjure up something else
– the two things being unrelated, seemingly. His subject, temptation, must have
been lodged somewhere inside his being, apparently just waiting for the right
nourishment. One can imagine that it had begun with a conversation, perhaps a
spiritual message, some time before without offering an immediate resolution. Was
he subconsciously mulling over this issue, some unhealthy compulsion that bothered
him or others? Could this be true, even in a church crowd where Horatio found
himself? That’s life, right? No one’s immune.
Though Horatio
had returned to New York by 1873, he’d sustained something in the Midwest that was
with him on either side of that time. He organized or directed many other
choral efforts over the following few decades, as he did first at Rushford. His
interlude in Chicago was not a departure from his musical upbringing, nor from
his deeper beliefs, we can presume. And, temptation was not something he found
just in Chicago, undoubtedly. Yet, Horatio had an epiphany there about its solution,
or at least a way to recognize it and try to avoid it. Watch out for dark thoughts
(v.1), avoid some people if necessary and keep a rein on my own tongue (v.2);
at the same time, be thoughtful, kind, and truthful (also v.2). How’s that list
rank on the difficulty scale? Try out what he said, and see if they still work
today.
See more
information on the song discussed above in The Complete Book of Hymns –
Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen
and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006. Also, see Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring
Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications,
1990.
See
biography of the composer here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/p/a/l/palmer_hr.htm
The
following website has a soundtrack and the lyrics for the song: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/y/i/e/yieldnot.htm
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