In a blessed hour you grew!

Eden’s flowers did not bear

Fruits that could with yours compare:

By the blood your petals staining,

I am now salvation gaining.

When I like the flower must wither,

When I wilt and fade like grass,

When the hour of death draws hither,

When I from this world shall pass,

When my heart has ceased to beat

When I face God’s judgment seat,

Then His blood, which stained the garden,

Shall procure my lasting pardon.

Kingo’s hymns on the pericopes have proved less resistant to time than most of

his other work. They are in reality brief commentaries, presenting a practical rather than a poetical exposition and application of their texts. But even so, the singular freshness of their thought and style has preserved many of them until our day. The following hymn on Matthew 8, 23-27, the stilling of the storm, furnishes a characteristic example of this group of hymns.

What vessel is that passing

Across the boundless deep,

On which the billows massing

In foaming fury sweep?

She seems in sore distress

As though she soon would founder

Upon the shoals around her

And sink without redress.

It is the storm-tossed vessel

Of God’s own church on earth,

With which the world doth wrestle,

And send its fury forth,

While Jesus oft appears

As though He still were sleeping,

With His disciples weeping

And crying out in fears.

But let the world with fury

Against the church but rave,

And spend its might to bury

Her in the roaring wave!

It only takes a word

To hush the wild commotion

And show the mighty ocean

Her Lord is still aboard.

Kingo is often called the singer of orthodoxy. His hymns faithfully present the accepted doctrines of his church. No hymnwriter is more staunchly Lutheran than he. But he was too vital to become a mere doctrinaire. With him orthodoxy

was only a means to an end, a more vigorous Christian life. Many of his hymns

present a forceful and straightforward appeal for a real personal life with God.

The following hymn may be called an orthodox revival hymn. It was a favorite

with the great Norwegian lay preacher, Hans Nielsen Hauge.

The power of sin no longer

Within my heart shall reign;

Faith must grow ever stronger

And carnal lust be slain;

For when I was baptized,

The bonds of sin were severed