The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1917-04-10
cart Thou Weary"
A Hymn Which Has Moved Humanity
for Thousand Years.
From the Kansas City Star.

From the Kansas City Star.
In his delightful book, "Along New
England Roads," W. C. Prime wrote
of going one Sunday evening to a church
in obscure little village among the
hills of New England A woman sat at
the melodeOn and the slim congregation
joined her in singing that wonderful HYMN,
Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid?"
There was something very moving, very
thrilling in the utterance of the hymn by
that group of up-country people" wrote DR..
Prime. "They were hard working men and
women of whom life is the perpetuation of
the curse-labor for bread" The touching
sentiment of the hymn entered their souls.
There was all the eloquence of which the
human voice is capable in the way they sang.
with suppressed, inquiring, almost doubling,
voice:
IF still hold closely to him,
What hath he at last?
and swelling triumph of assurance as they
poured out the response
Sorrow vanQuished, labor ended.
Jordan passed.
Christ has been raised, was written more
than 1000 years ago. 1t comes to us out
OF what we are accustomed to speak of as
the Dark Ages" which, in fact, were not
dark at all. The Dark Ages" is one of the
myths we cling to. But that period had a
brilliant literature, a glorious art and real
religion.
Mankind yearned and strove for higher
things then as now; human character was
the same, only it was a little harder then
than now for man to live differently from
the mass, to set himself apart and follow
higher ideal, and often men who chose to
do that were stoned to death To escape
that KIND of fate they often had to hide
IN caves and on high mountains Sabas was
one of those men who, nearly fifteen CEN
turles ago, to escape persecution because of
ms bellef IN Christ went to cave in the
rocky canyon walls of the River Kedron.
near the Dead Sea, in Palestine Other
Christians Joined him there and they
founded little society known as "Sabai-
ties TO tins place of refuge came many
men, and among those who came in the
eighth century was one Stephen, and he
wrote there in his perch in the rocks above
the river this same hymn which has been
translated into every language:
Art thou weary, are thou languid,
Art thou sore distressed?
Come to me-" saith one, and comine.
Be at rest
Hath He marks to lead me to Him,
If He be my guide?
In His feet and hands are wound prints,
And His side.
We know little of the man who wrote
this eXquisitely simple and beautiful song
SO many hundred years ago, but we know
he had sorrow and labor and WEAKNESS and
was heavy laden and that he sought rest
and peace, and never found it this side of
the wonderful river, else he could not have
written:
Is there diadem, as monarch
That His brow adorns?
Yes, a crown in very surety
But of thOrns.
If | find Him, if l follow,
What His guerdon here?
Many sorrow, many labor.
Many tear
And down through the ages that song
has touched the hearts of good Christians
of all lands as it thrilled the weary. men
and women of the little New Hampshire |
village, singing with the same firm and
unwavering faith as sung the hermit, |
Stephen:
If | ask Him to receive me,
Will He say me nay?
Not till earth and not till heaven
Pass away.