Horatius Bonar was born in Edinburgh on December 19, 1808. In 1837 he was ordained in the Established Church of Scotland at Kelso. In 1843, under the leadership of Dr Thomas Chalmers, the Evangelical Party in the Church of Scotland withdrew from the mother church because of govermenment interference in church affairs (the Disruption), and Bonar became one of the founders of the Free Church of Scotland. In 1866 he accepted a call to Chalmers Memorial Church in Edinburgh. He died July 31, 1889, in Edinburg.
A voluminous writer of sacred poetry, "the peer of Watts and Wesley", he published ten tracts or volumes of hymns, 1843?1881, of which seven were published before his church authorized hymn-singing:
* Songs of the Wilderness, 1843-44;
* The Bible Hymn Book, 1845;
* Hymns Original and Selected, 1846;
* Hymns of Faith and Hope, first series, 1857 (second series, 1864; third series, 1867);
* Hymns of the Nativity, 1879;
* Communion Hymns, 1881.
He was for a time editor of The Border Watch, a paper published in the interest of his church. Dr.Benson writes: "While he may not have created a new type of English hymns, he had a distinctive style, a childlike simplicity and straightforwardness, a cheerful note with a plaintive undertone,?and he impressed his striking personality upon the English hymn. The appeal to his own generation was so widespread and pronounced as almost to create a cult. Fully a hundred of his hymns have been in church-use, but many are gradually passing out."
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Frisch von dem Thron des Lammes
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Gleich wie die schimmernden Sterne erblas
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When the weary, seeking rest
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