Purer Yet and Purer -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Anne R. Bennett

 

He wanted to be better than he was. Though Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was saying it in a different language (Anne Bennett would later translate his German into English), he was essentially saying ‘I’m not as good at this life as I want to be’. “Purer Yet and Purer” was only one part of eight ways in which Johann Goethe sought to express how he wanted to improve. Goethe was multitalented, which says that even the accomplished person might feel something is missing in all the various pursuits of his life. Sadly, Johann did not seem to cling without reserve to the God that Christians know, yet he said something in his poem about striving progressively as a human creation of the Divine One that spoke to those who came after him, including Anne Bennett.

 

Does it really matter that the year and the circumstances of Goethe’s poetry are not crystal clear? Poetry was but one facet of this 18^th/19^th Century German literary figure, regarded by many as a giant of his era, perhaps because of the various interests in which he engaged. He was trained in the legal profession, yet ultimately pursued poetry and other related literary interests – novels, plays, and art -- and then various scientific fields like botany, anatomy, and color, besides being involved in statecraft and politics. Perhaps it was early in his life, when he still was studying and then practicing law (late 1760s-early 1770s), and when the young Goethe reportedly wrote much of his early poetry, that he penned ‘Purer Yet and Purer’. Goethe was said to be a ‘freethinker’, meaning that he believed in parts of the Christian faith, yet was critical of church practices and even disliked the cross and its symbolism. God, for him, was more than what the Lutherans had conveyed during his childhood, and Goethe instead gravitated toward Spinozan thought – God’s attributes were evident in thought and matter, and God is a self-reliant substance. One can see how Goethe might have been seeking this God in all the variety of his life’s interests. In his poetry, it wasn’t just purity in his mind (v.1) that Johann sought, but seven other personal goals that he wanted to attain. ‘Dearer’(v.1)  – more devoted, perhaps -- he wanted to be in all he did. He wanted to be ‘calmer’ and ‘surer’ (v.2) in times of suffering, and ultimately trusting joyfully in God. Was Goethe anticipating or actually going through a more advanced stage of life when he wrote that he aspired to rise ‘higher’ and ‘nearer’ (v.3) toward something, and to run the race of life ‘swifter’ and feel ‘firmer’ (v.4) on his path toward a goal? How many of these expressions of Goethe echoed also in the spirit of the translator Anne Bennett by the mid-19^th Century, when the Goethe’s poem was first published in English?

 

Goethe was not a model Christian believer. And, he wasn’t a perfectly tuned human, despite all the acclaim he garnered by the end of his life; notably, he failed at the legal profession, the choice of profession he made early in his life. In the same period, he also experienced severe illness as a young man. Later, Goethe fathered one son out of wedlock, before marrying his mistress and fathering two other children. And, some of the works Goethe penned would be characterized as bawdy, and pushed the boundaries of social etiquette for his time, not to mention Christian values. All this says even someone as brilliant as Goethe has warts. And yet, he did say something in this one poem, something that is true for everyone. I fall short of my Creator. I can see Him off in the distance. And, I want and need Him to be closer every day that I get older. Is He getting closer for you?

 

 

See all the verses and some very brief information on the hymn here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/p/u/r/e/pureryet.htm

 

See information on the author here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe

I'll Never Forsake My Lord -- Damon Lanara Canter Snoddy

 

Just one song. If she had just one message to convey, perhaps this is the one she thought should be her life’s theme, with nothing else on the ledger of Damon Snoddy to cloud her purpose. She said “I’ll Never Forsake My Lord” as a young woman (still in her early 20s), with a lot to make her anxious, given the times she and her family were enduring.  Whether she and her young family were in north-central Tennessee, where she was born and married, or in Indianapolis, Indiana (see its flag here) where the family moved in the early 1930s, the Snoddys were probably as stricken as most others at the time because of an economic upheaval. Could that have been the impetus for her dependence on something beyond this world?

 

We don’t know a lot about Mrs. Snoddy (wife of Selton) outside of a few scant facts, though her poetry gives us insight into her life at a key moment. She was probably still learning when it came to marriage and motherhood, as she composed her four verses to express her fidelity to God. The Great Depression of the 1930s was a heavy burden on many people, but especially on those of meager resources, like the Snoddys. They reportedly left Tennessee as a consequence of losing all they had, and moved to Indianapolis hoping for a better situation. This young mother reportedly was someone who randomly scrawled poetry with a pencil and paper from her pocket as she went about daily life. Could it have been one day when her husband was at the glass factory or the lumber mill, and while Damon was at home with the small children, when she penned her four verses? You can almost hear the sighs of a tired mother and wife, struggling with the day’s events, but girded by faith in a God in whom she trusted. ‘My cross…to bear’, ‘life filled with care’, and ‘misfortune’ (v.1) were the first thoughts that welled up within Damon that day. To whom could she turn? Was it the strain of her family’s life, ever present and which could not be ignored, that spurred Damon to write about someone she needed more than anything else? Indeed, she reminded those to whom she wrote, but also to herself, that ‘…His sheltering arm’ was protecting her, despite other more tangible signs to the contrary. In her following verses, Damon cast light on the struggle outside of herself, on the ‘tempter’ (v.2) and on the One who ‘…suffered so graciously’ for her (v.3). Perhaps it was therapeutic for Damon, and put her mind more at ease, to place her burdens at His feet. When she accepted that His sacrifice outweighed the ‘tempter’s …efforts’ (v.2), that she was uncertain of her earthly ‘future’ but guided by ‘Jesus’ (v.4), did that help ease her anxiety?  We can only know that on this particular day, Damon felt reassured, and clung to the Lord with a steadfast allegiance.    

 

Millions suffered as the Great Depression ravaged their lives. But, did the effects of that era outlive or overwhelm people like the Snoddys? From what we know of Damon Snoddy, she lived out the remainder of her life in Indianapolis and was buried there in 1998, at the age of 86. Others of her generation drifted from place to place, in search of better circumstances. We can assume that Damon and her family did find some stability after moving one time, since they remained in Indiana for the next several decades. So, is Indiana where I should go if my life becomes untenable? What would Damon say if she could answer? She’d probably say seek not a place, but a person, one with a sheltering arm.   

 

 

See brief references to the author here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/n/o/d/snoddy_dc.htm

 

And here: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/61718919/damon-lanara-snoddy

 

See some key thoughts about the author here, in a fellow hymn blogger’s entry: https://hymnstudiesblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/08/ill-never-forsake-my-lord/

The Wonderful Cross -- Chris Tomlin, J.D. Walt, Jessie Reeves

 

We could say that these writers-composers had taken the words imparted by a musical ancestor and applied them, almost three centuries later. Chris Tomlin, J.D. Walt, and Jessie Reeves collaborated to write their own answer to what a six-word hymn title coaxed them to do, and summed up those thoughts in “The Wonderful Cross” in 2000. That there’s no story they tell regarding specific circumstances of the song’s birth may indicate only that they appreciated Isaac Watts’ initial effort, and wanted to echo his thoughts. Isaac had shared something pretty personal when he said out loud ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ (see the SongScoops blog entry for August 25, 2012). Had Tomlin, Walt, and Reeves considered how revolutionary Watts’ reflections were for his generation, or how unconventional their own words still are today?

 

To most lay people, particularly those who do not trust God, an implement of execution is certainly not something you would call wonderful, like Tomlin, Walt, and Reeves proposed, nor wondrous, like Watts said. A Roman cross was not only a way to carry out capital punishment in the ancient world, but also merciless in that it heaped shame on the guilty in a most public way. It was a slow, brutal death that the convicted criminal suffered, from exhaustion and suffocation. Similar to digging one’s own grave, the condemned person was often forced to carry his own cross, or at least the crossbeam, to the final place of execution. Nails might have secured the person’s limbs to that piece of wood, as scripture indicates was true in the case of Jesus Christ’s cross. So, wonderful!? Really? What Isaac and his 21^st Century brethren express, however, is the effect on us and the act of supreme love that the Messiah’s journey and submission to this form of punishment shows. Chris, J.D., and Jessie do in a similar way what Isaac first did in his 1707 hymn. Isaac says the ‘richest gain’ is a ‘loss’ (v.1) when the value of Jesus’ sacrifice is calculated; in the chorus that the 21^st Century threesome penned, I must ‘die’ in order to ‘truly live’. God reverses the consequences, though the witnesses to such an episode experience the horror, still. Perhaps that is the point God is making for you and me in this calculus. Make the apparent death so horrific, that no one but the True, the most Almighty, God Himself, could turn this incident on its head. And, that’s exactly what He has done! And, that same reversal in fortune awaits all of us at out deaths. That must be a large part of the ‘wonderful’ that Chris, and J.D., and Jessie have in mind, when they echo what Isaac said, so long ago. It’s the only way to ‘truly’ live, they say.

 

You and I can put our lives in His hands, even if they’ve been pierced, according to the above four composers who have us thinking about His cross. This is the ultimate bet that I must take a chance on making. If it’s true – this wonderful cross – my wager for it buys me everything, forever. Alternatively, if I think it’s just a hoax, and I cast this cross aside – it’s nothing but trash – I lose everything forever, if it is actually true. Nothing could be more stark in a mortal’s life. What’s the other equation look like? If death is really all that awaits me, then I really lose nothing if I bet on a cross that is false; the result of a false cross I bet on, or a dead-end death I buy instead, is the same – nothing but emptiness and hurt, and especially no God. So, why not risk it all, and count on a God saving you with a wonderful cross? Does the alternative really look better to you?  

 

  

 

 

 

See biographic information on one author here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Tomlin

 

See information here on the form of execution that the cross represents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion