And so, shortly before the great festival in 1732, he published a small and unpretentious booklet entitled: Some Christmas Hymns, Composed to the Honor of God, the Edification of Christian Souls and, in Particular, of My

Beloved Congregation during the Approaching Joyful Christmastide,

Humbly and Hastily Written by Hans Adolph Brorson.

This simple appearing booklet at once places Brorson among the great

hymnwriters of the Christian church. It contains ten hymns, seven of which are for the Christmas season. Nearly every one of them is now counted among the

classics of Danish hymnody.

Brorson seems at once to have reached the height of his ability as a hymnwriter.

His Christmas hymns present an intensity of sentiment, a mastery of form and a

perfection of poetical skill that he rarely attained in his later work. They are frankly lyrical. Unlike his great English contemporary, Isaac Watts, who held that a hymn should not be a lyrical poem and deliberately reduced the poetical quality of his work, Brorson believed that a Christian should use “all his thought and skill to magnify the grace of God”. The opinion of an English literary critic

“that hymns cannot be considered as poetry” is disproved by Brorson’s work.

Some of his hymns contain poetry of the highest merit. Their phrasing is in parts extremely lyrical, utilizing to the fullest extent the softness and flexibility that is supposed to be an outstanding characteristic of the Danish tongue; their metres

are most skillfully blended and their rhymes exceedingly varied. His masterly use of what was often considered an inconsequential appendage to poetry is extraordinarily skillful. Thus he frequently chooses a harsh or a soft rhyme to emphasize the predominating sentiment of his verse.

Brorson is without doubt the most lyrical of all Danish hymnwriters. Literary critics have rated some of his hymns with the finest lyrics in the Danish language. Yet his poetry seldom degenerates to a mere form. His fervid lyrical style usually serves as an admirable vehicle for the warm religious sentiment of his song.

In their warm spirit and fervid style Brorson’s hymns in some ways strikingly resemble the work of his great English contemporaries, the Wesleys. Nor is this

similarity a mere chance. The Wesleys, as we know, were strongly influenced first by the Moravians and later by the German Pietists. Besides a number of Moravian hymns, John Wesley also translated several hymns from the

hymnbook compiled by the well-known Pietist, Johan Freylinghausen. The

fervid style and varied metres of these hymns introduced a new type of church

song into the English and American churches. But Freylinghausen’s Gesang-Buch also formed the basis of the hymnal compiled by Johan Herman Schraeder from which Brorson chose most of the originals of his translations. Thus both he and the Wesleys in a measure drew their inspiration from the same source. The

Danish poet and his English contemporaries worked independently and mediated

their inspiration in their own way, but the resemblance of their work is

unmistakable. In poetical merit, however, the work of Brorson far excels that of the Wesleys. But his Christmas hymns also surpass most earlier Danish hymns and even the greater part of his own later work.

One’s first impression of the booklet that so greatly has enriched the Christmas festival of Denmark and Norway, is likely to be disappointing. At the time of Brorson the festival was frequently desecrated by a ceaseless round of worldly amusements. People attended the festival services of the church and spent the remainder of the season in a whirl of secular and far from innocent pleasures.

With his Pietistic views Brorson naturally deplored such a misuse of the season.

And his first hymn, therefore, sounds an earnest call to cease these unseemly pleasures and to use the festival in a Christian way.

Cast out all worldly pleasure

This blessed Christmastide,

And seek the boundless treasure

That Jesus doth provide.

But although such a warning may have been timely, then as now, it hardly expresses the real Christmas spirit. In the next hymn, however, he at once strikes the true festival note in one of the most triumphant Christmas anthems in the Danish or any other language.

This blessed Christmastide we will,

With heart and mind rejoicing,

Employ our every thought and skill,

God’s grace and honor voicing.

In Him that in the manger lay

We will with all our might today

Exult in heart and spirit,

And hail Him as our Lord and King

Till earth’s remotest bounds shall ring

With praises of His merit.

A little Child of Jesse’s stem,

And Son of God in heaven,

To earth from heaven’s glory came

And was for sinners given.

It so distressed His loving heart

To see the world from God depart

And in transgression languish,

That He forsook His home above

And came to earth in tender love

To bear our grief and anguish.

Therefore we hymn His praises here