From Greenland's Icy Mountains

DESCRIPTION: "From Greenland's icy mountains, from India's coral strand... They call us to deliver their land from Error's chain." "Can men whose souls are lighted With wisdom from on high, Can they to men benighted The lamp of light deny?" We'll convert the heathen
AUTHOR: Words: Reginald Heber / Muaic: Lowell Mason (source: hymnary.org)
EARLIEST DATE: 1819 (hymnary.org)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Heart-Songs, p. 201, "Missionary Hymn" (1 text, 1 tune)
ShillingSongBook3, p. 95, "Missionary Hymn" (1 text)
Roud #16915
NOTES [219 words]: Quite an aggressive song; it calls itself a missionary hymn, but I suspect the "missionaries" were armed with something a lot deadlier than Bibles. This seems to have been noticed; some of the newer printings appear to rewrite a bit, and I get the impression that it is not as common in newer hymnals as in older.
Julian: John Julian, editor, A Dictionary of Hymnology, 1892; second edition 1907 (I use the 1957 Dover edition in two volumes), p. 399, devotes a full column to this song. It quotes Reginald Heber's memoirs as saying "In the course of this year [1819] a royal letter was granted authorizing collections in every Church and Chapel of England in furtherance of the Eastern operations of the Society for Propagating the Gospel. Mr. Reginald Heber went to Wrexham to hear the Dean of S. Asaph [his father-in-law] preach on the day appointed, and at his request, and at his request, he wrote the hymn commencing 'From Greenland's icy mountains,' which was first sung in that beautiful church."
Heber practiced what he preached, more or less. In 1822 he was offered the post of Bishop of Calcutta, and accepted. Someone in that year forwarded Heber's words to the Christian Observer, which published them, and it spread from there. Various hymnals indicate that Lowell Mason's tune was added in 1823. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.0
File: ShS3095

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