Freylinghausen

During all this period the hymnology of Germany 267 was almost entirely in their [the Pietists'] hands. Their chief singer was Anastasius Freylinghausen, who was married to Franke's only daughter, and was his father-in-law's successor in the pulpit and the management of the Orphan-house. He was a man of gentle, retiring disposition, liable to severe attacks of nervous pain, but of unwearied activity and a most loving and disinterested spirit. Franke used to say that his own sermons were like a waterspout, which drenched the land but soon ran off again, Freylinghausen's like a gentle steady shower, which penetrated to the depths of the soil. He wrote forty-four hymns of his own, and in 1704 published a hymn-book containing both old and new hymns, which remained for some generations the favourite collection for private reading among pious persons in Germany. It went through numberless editions, and was frequently enriched by new additions. One of Freylinghausen's best known hymns is the following. Several others have been already translated into English, and one or two have found their way into our hymn-books:--