HIMknowledgey Ministry - Revive Us Again

HIMknowledgey Ministry - Revive Us Again: "329.......The Love Of God"

329.......The Love Of God

The Love of God, hymn #329, has three verses, the first two of which were written by Frederick Martin Lehman in 1917 in Pasadena, California. Verse number three, comes from a Jewish poem, Haddanut, written in Aramaic in 1050 by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany. The music was arranged by his daughter Claudia Faustina Lehman Mays. She was born July 15, 1892 in Griswold, Iowa. One of nine children, she harmonized many of the songs written by her father. She died February 19, 1973 in Medford, Oregon.

Lehman was working in a packing-house, lifting and moving as much as thirty tons of lemons and oranges a day which were then packed into crates for shipment. The previous Sunday, he had heard a heart-warming sermon on God's love. He could hardly contain himself. In fact, so much so, that he had found it hard to get to sleep. The next morning, the thrill of the previous evening had not left him and as he was eating breakfast, the first words to this song came to him. On the way to work, more followed. At work, during short intervals of inattention (break time), more words came which he jotted down until he had completed the first two verses. When he got home, he went to the old upright piano and composed the melody for the two verses and chorus. However, a hymn has to have three verses to be complete. As he tried to write the third, he found the words were not falling into place as had the first two. As he tried to figure out what to do, he remembered about the poem he had heard at a camp meeting. The profound depths of the lines moved him to preserve them for future use and it was not until coming to California that this urge was fulfilled. He knew that he had saved the card with the poem but where was it now? His search was soon rewarded because he had used it for a bookmark. As Lehman again read the words, his heart was thrilled just as had happened when he heard them originally. This time he noticed some smaller print that told this story, "These lines were found in translated form on the walls of a patient's room in an insane asylum after the patient's death." As he set the words to the third verse to the tune, he found they matched exactly. God knew when he had the poem, written in 1050, that it would be translated into English and brought to America at the exact time Lehman was going to need it to finish this hymn. That is 867 years from the time the words were written and they traveled half-way around the world to be joined with this song. Since then, this hymn has been translated into at least 18 languages. This hymn was first published in Songs That Are Different, Volume 2, 1919.

Frederick Martin Lehman was born August 7, 1868 in Mecklenburg, Schwerin, Germany. He came to America at the age of 4 with his family, settling in Iowa where he lived most of his childhood. He came to Christ at age 11, as he relates, "One glad morning about 11 o'clock while walking up the country lane, skirted by a wild crab-apple grove on the right and an Osage (American Indian from Missouri) fence, with an old white-elm gate in a gap at the left, suddenly Heaven let a cornucopia (abundant) of glory descend on this 11 year old lad. The wild crab-apple grove assumed a heavenly glow and the Osage fence, an unearthly luster. That old white-elm gate with its sun-warped boards, gleamed and glowed like silver bars to shut out the world and shut him in with the 'form of the forth,' just come into his heart. The weight of conviction was gone and the paeans (a song) of joy and praise fell from his lips." Lehman studied for the ministry at Northwestern College in Naperville, Illinois, and pastored at Audubon, Iowa; New London, Indiana; and Kansas City, Missouri. The majority of his life was devoted to writing sacred-songs. In 1911, he moved to Kansas City, where he helped found the Nazarene Publishing House. He died February 20, 1953 in Pasadena, California.