“THE SHINING SHORE.”—ITS AUTHORSHIP.
By Z. East
At the Paris Exposition in 1867—having been then several years absent, and having heard in the meantime scarcely anything in worship but Old-Country tunes, Scotch psalms and cathedral chants—the writer went on a Sabbath to “attend meeting” in the little American Chapel in Paris, situated on a “Rue,” that leads off at right angles from the Champs Elysees. Going to that resort of good Americans abroad was in some sense like going home. At the meeting a young American girl, dressed in the fashion of that fashion-setting city, sat at an American melodeon, and played while she and others sang that pre-eminently American hymn or religious song:
My days are gliding swiftly by,
and best known as “Shining Shore.” Perhaps nowhere in Europe, except in this American colony, could this American tune have been heard in church worship. And it was a very strange hymn indeed, to be heard in that pleasure-seeking city, and at a time when all the world had gathered there to partake of its pleasures, in a Vanity Fair; and to be heard pealing out from that little chapel on the grand boulevard and thoroughfare, the Champs Elysees, where at that very time, might have been seen and heard the vast tide of frivolous and fashionable society that rolled itself over the smooth broad-way, on every Sabbath, from the gay city, forth and back, from the Bois de Boulogne. Strange words were these to come forth in the melodious strains of that tune, and be poured out like unregarded incense, upon such a throng:
My days are gliding swiftly by,
And I, a pilgrim stranger,
Would not detain them as they fly,
Those hours of toil and danger;
For Oh! we stand on Jordon’s strand,
Our friends are passing over;
And just before the shining shore
We may almost discover. No looking forward among that crowd on the boulevard to any shining shore beyond the gilded edge of the fleeting moment! It was an American girl who played the melodeon, and led in the singing of that cheering song of hope in the city of Paris; one who, probably, living in fashionable city life, had nevertheless been trained in an American Sabbath-school; and it brought to mind the days of the past that glided by, of her home and her girlish companions and the privileges of her own country, to play and sing that tune, as she used to do in the prayer-meeting room, or church parlors. And nothing to be seen or heard was so pleasant to us, weary travelers, so homelike, as a breeze from fatherland, as the hearing of that national hymn and tune, in the American chapel in Paris. But who was the author of that hymn? Who constructed it into an American institution by putting its sentiment in the form of words? And who made its music? For, after all it is the music that makes most of the life of the words of our beautiful hymns and our stirring songs. The older hymn books, and those not very old at that, say of the words that they are “anonymous;” and to the tune of “Shining Shore,” G. F. Root’s name is given as the composer. Root, then, made the music, and set that melody floating through the world. Geo. F. Root is a Chicago man. While at a summer recreation at the East, at the home of his childhood, his mother brought him a scrap of a newspaper, with a piece of poetry upon it, which she said she thought was a good piece for him to set to music. The reading of it stirred a strain in his soul, and he fitted the symbols of song to the anonymous words and sent them forth from Chicago on melodious wings. Since the words were thus canonized, we see in the latter hymn books, at least in Moody’s, the name of David Nelson printed as the writer of the words. But who is David Nelson, who composed this hymn of the human heart? A hymn does not of itself tell much of the history of its writer, though it may make him a poet, and give him fame when he is known, as the elegy on the burial of Sir John Moore made its author, Rev. Charles Wolfe, a famous poet. This David Nelson was the author of a book, the “Cause and Cure of Infidelity,” which is better known for its own sake than by the name of its author. It is said to be a remarkable book, one unique in itself, as a moral medicine for the cure of a very malignant, spiritual disease, and published by the religious societies. Its authorship is stated to be David Nelson, M. D.,—doctor of medicine, writing for the cure of a disease of the soul, and not a Doctor of Divinity; and he never probably had the initials D. D. applied to him except in courtesy. Dr. David Nelson, the author of one famous book and one hymn, made more famous by Geo. F. Root’s musical genius, was born at the South, and bred a physician and practiced medicine in Tennessee or Kentucky. At what time he was born is not known to the writer; and he is not aware that any biography of him has ever been written. It was at the period of manhood a Southern slaveholder, and as to religion, an infidel; and, report says, a scoffing infidel. After he became a man of business, he was converted from his infidelity; and after that, it appears, was converted to genuine Christianity. Then it was that he wrote that celebrated book on Infidelity from his own experience. It has been a great help to many of his fellow-men, in delivering them from the entanglement of heart and thought on the subject of Divine revelation. From the rich experience of his later life came the beautiful hymn known as “Shining Shore,” which is a song of joy and exultation to every enlightened Christian heart. There is nothing in the philosophy or the eloquence of Paine or Ingersoll that will buoy the soul up like the words and spirit of this hymn, “Should coming days be cold and dark,” when men must feel the want of a higher source for light and warmth. For none can get heat or cheerfulness from the embers that come of their own combustion. While a physician to the body he became a minister of the gospel, and was settled over a Presbyterian congregation in Kentucky. He was led in the process of God’s dealings with him to see his way clear out of the darkness of unbelief, before he saw clearly his duty in regard to his own conduct and practice toward his fellow-men. “I lived,” said he, “many years without having a suspicion that there was anything wrong in holding slaves. Even after I had an interest in Christ, there seemed to be nothing amiss in it, just as pious people went on making and selling rum. Oh, that I then had had some faithful Christian brethren to rouse me, then I should not have been left to have approached the table of our Lord, with my fingers all dripping with the blood of souls.” Dr. Nelson tells us how he was converted to abolitionism. “My wife came to me one day and said that Sylvia, one of our servants, had told her we had no right to hold our fellow-beings in bondage; she had worked for us six years, and she thought that she had paid for herself.” To his wife as he said, “I gave some rough answers.” The word that first stings the conscience because it is true, will be parried as if it were a barbed spear. Again the remark of Sylvia came to his ears, that the Bible did not allow slave-holding. “Don’t mind her nonsense,” said the doctor to his wife. But Sylvia kept pelting her mistress with Bible declarations against slavery; and as she could not answer her slave, she came to her husband for instruction. The upshot of it was, that Sylvia made an abolitionist of the doctor’s wife, and the wife made an abolitionist of the doctor. As one who would be an honest Christian he soon emancipated all his slaves but one. This one he kept for some years because he thought he was too stupid to take care of himself. This was the all-setting assertion that was called argument: “They are not capable of taking care of themselves.” The doctor admitted that it applied to only one of his. But he was led to question his own sincerity in this matter. “Do you not like,” said he to himself, “to have Sam black your boots, and catch your horse, and do many things for you which he does not for himself, and which he is not so stupid in doing but that he does it to your satisfaction?” Then he called Sam to him and said to him, “I give you your freedom, as I have done to the rest.” He met him a year after riding a pony, and asked him “How do you like freedom?” “O Massa!” said he, “the sweetest thing in the world. I have a hundred and fifty silver dollars stowed away in a box.” Dr. Nelson was one of the early Kentucky Abolitionists. He was, as we intimated, a co-worker with Benjamin Lundy, aiding him in the support of his paper. He was also associated with Rev. John Rankin and Rev. James H. Dickey, father of Judge T. Lyle Dickey, who, forty years ago, was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Union Grove in Putnam Co., Ills. It was a misfortune to the South that the slaveholders there would not permit such men to reside among them. Mr. Dickey, finding his relations in Kentucky uncomfortable, came to Illinois and settled in the lower part of the State over a congregation of Southern Abolitionists, many of whom had left the South to get free from slavery, and then came to Putnam Co. Stern and stalwart men these Southern antislavery men were, and they had much to do in shaping the antislavery sentiment of the North. Some of their most conscientious men, many of them men of talent and education, came into the Northern Western States and settled, some preaching, others lecturing and writing as well as voting, against slavery. Dr. Nelson, in the early part of the period of agitation, removed to Southern Illinois, and then to Northern Missouri; having so strong a sympathy for the people of his native clime that he shrunk from leaving the South altogether. But he found his position even there, where the rigors of the slave system were somewhat relaxed, uncomfortable, and his influence circumscribed. To be known any where as entertaining sentiments hostile to slavery was to be stigmatized an Abolitionist, and that was a word, as Garrison said,
All covered o’er with shame.
And there in Northern Missouri, he was not permitted to preach, and was persecuted and driven from his home. For a time, among his own people, he, like his Saviour whom he closely followed, had not where to lay his head. Being pursued by the mob, he turned his steps toward what seemed to him the more hospitable shores of Illinois, though even here people were plotting for the death of Lovejoy. He came upon the “bottoms” of the Mississippi River in the darkness of night, hiding in the timber and the under-brush from his pursuers, opposite the town of Quincy. From his dark hiding place, with no friend to help him, and no means with which to cross the river, he saw the lights in the town of Quincy. The other side of the river seemed to him a “Shining Shore.” This was the scene that suggested to him that beautiful hymn, that has become national, perhaps immortal. There on “Jordan’s strand,” then the dark and muddy Mississippi “Bottom,” the thoughts if not the lines of that hymn were suggested, while the shining shore of the place of his hopes and his refuge he “could almost discover.” At Quincy, he found an asylum when at last he was able to pass over. Near this city, just back upon the prairie, and overlooking the dark land from which he had been driven out, he connected himself with Rev. Moses Hunter, and aided him to found the once famous “Mission Institute” of Adams county. This was probably about 1836. At this Institute that three imprisoned Abolitionists, Burr, Work, and Thompson, were educated and prepared for their admission as criminals into the Missouri State prison; for, going over the Mississippi river to aid some slaves to escape from their masters, they were caught, tried, condemned, and sent to the prison for a long term of years. One after another they were pardoned, and Thompson, graduating in this State institution, went to Africa as a missionary. Such were some of the pupils of the good Dr. Nelson. The slave-holders owed this Institute a terrible grudge, for it made Abolition missionaries. They attempted to pay the grudge by mobbing it several times, and finally burning it to the ground, and it is now no more. Dr. Nelson was a sweet-spirited Christian, and a genuine philanthropist. When Mr. Lundy came to Illinois to print his Genius of Universal Emancipation, to succeed the martyred Lovejoy, in publishing the Abolition newspaper of the West, Dr. Nelson hailed him as an old friend and co-worker, and a brother Emancipationist from the South. Dr. David Nelson died at Quincy, it is believed, about 1844. There is not so much known about his adventurous, somewhat eccentric, but eminently devoted life, as would be profitable for the world to know. It is a pity there is such a propensity to let the good of good men die, and their memory to die with them. Perhaps this sketch may awaken some new interest in this good man, whenever we sing the Shining Shore.—Z. East, in The Advance.