The Mystery of the Missing Everything

The Mystery of the Missing Everything
by Ben H. Winters
Recommended Ages: 12+

When the horrible principal of Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School announces that the eighth-grade class trip is off unless someone returns a stolen trophy – pretty much the only competitive trophy the school has ever won – Bethesda Fielding realizes that it's a case made for a master detective like her. But her investigation doesn't go smoothly. When weeks go by and she still hasn't found whodunit, the rest of her class starts to blame her for scotching the trip to Taproot Valley. The new girl, Reenie Maslow, who showed all the early signs of being best friend material, seems to hate her. And trouble magnet Tenny Boyer, who became something like her best friend last year, has mysteriously returned after three weeks at a private school and refuses to talk about why he came back. Plus, someone keeps targeting her with acts of petty sabotage and leaving threatening notes, warning her to drop the investigation. When frustration and injured feelings push her to the edge of desperation, Bethesda makes everything worse.

It's a troubling case, fraught with too many suspects and not enough clues, but Bethesda gets there on time. Besides whodunit, she also learns a few things about being a better friend and accepting that there are things you're not supposed to know. Meanwhile, other characters also shine – from the music teacher, Ms. Finkleman, who reaches out to a philanthropist to help the eighth grade pay for its class trip, to an up-and-coming leader named Chester Hu, who organizes a hilarious music video to raise funds online. The cast is also crowded with goofy characters, like Braxton Lashey, whose big talent is falling down; Custodian Steve, who believes the school is haunted by a vengeful spirit; Assistant Principal Jasper Ferrars, who jumps at every growl and snarl of the school's ridiculous principal. I know exactly which character I would have been if I had done eighth grade at Mary Todd Lincoln. There might be a character for just about everybody.

It's a sweet book full of characters who'll charm the sympathy right out of you. It's a funny book, too, with gags that are both outrageous and believably human. It also drops the names of bands and composers and titles of pieces of music that you may want to get to know on your own time. My research has, disappointingly, failed to uncover any proof that such a cartoon character as Wellington Wolf really exists – Bethesda's dad is a fan, and he makes it sound fun. I was almost sure there was a similar animated TV character in the 1970s, but maybe I'm thinking of Mumbly, the trenchcoat-wearing detective dog with the wheezy laugh.

This is a sequel to The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman. Ben H. Winters is also the author of the spoof novels Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina, the Last Policeman trilogy, several other novels, collections of poems, and plays including Uncle Pirate. He is also a co-author of several books in the "Worst Case Scenario" series and the editor of a humor collection titled The Jewish Comedy Thesaurus.

The Case of the Missing Marquess

The Case of the Missing Marquess
by Nancy Springer
Recommended Ages: 12+

You probably don't know this, but besides his older brother Mycroft, Sherlock Holmes also had a younger sister named Enola – her name an anagram for "alone" – who, in the four years since her father died, hasn't seen hide nor hair of her much older siblings. Her mum has raised her to be an unconventional female for her time (1888), like herself – a bit of a bohemian artist, a bit of a suffragette (what they called feminists before women could legally vote), a religious non-conformist, a general non-wearer of corsets. Then, on Enola's 14th birthday, her mum walks out of the house and is never seen again. After a couple of days, Enola gets worried enough to call in the police and her two brothers.

Sherlock looks down on Enola with crushing arrogance, assuming she is intellectually inferior because (in the first place) she's a female and (with equal emphasis) she has a petite head. Mycroft, legally the head of the family, is horrified to discover that all the money he's been sending their mother to employ gardeners, tutors, stable boys and seamstresses, hasn't been spent on anything like that. The grounds of Ferndell Hall have grown wild; the closest thing they have to a carriage is Enola's bicycle; she runs around in bloomers and boys' shirts, reading stuff by Aristotle and Thackeray and (gulp) Mary Wollstonecraft out of the home library. She's basically Flavia de Luce, only without the chemistry lab or the habit of stumbling over a dead body at every turning.

So, off the brothers fly, almost as soon as they've landed, leaving Enola to be fitted for her first corset and the equally suffocating confines of a young ladies' boarding school. Naturally, the moment the opportunity presents, she runs for it – operating on the principle that the best plan is no plan, because that way no one will anticipate her moves and head her off. Concealing in her false bosom and bustle the wads of cash that her mother left hidden around the house for her, Enola bikes, hikes and hitches a train toward London, hoping to hide under her brothers' noses while trying to find her mum. But along the way, she stumbles into a mystery involving another missing youngster – a 12-year-old viscount or marquess (or both) named Tewksbury Basilwether, who (Enola deduces) has run away for the sea after having a bit too much of being babied by his mother. Unfortunately, while she's involving herself in this affair, she lets her disguise as a genteel widow be seen through. Even more unfortunately, she gets caught up in a kidnap-for-ransom caper involving some very bad people and, if you'll excuse the spoiler, Tewky.

After that, it's all about getting away from the villains, making sure they're caught and, trickiest of all bringing Tewky to safety without being nabbed by her brilliant detective brother. If she can manage it, perhaps Sherlock will deduce that his small-headed sister is well on her way to being his intellectual equal – if not his equal in other ways.

Women not being equal to men is a problem at the heart of this book, and presumably the series of which it is the opening salvo. Enola and her mother each, to some degree, fight it by walking the narrow line between anachronism and the radical edge of upper-class femaleness in 1888 England. For the education of readers who never lived in such an age, she helpfully narrates it in a way that draws attention to the manners, dress, social pitfalls and (especially in the London scenes) moral and mortal perils that folks of that time wouldn't have needed to explain. Her excuse is the discomfort that all these inequalities give her, and through her, us. But the most uncomfortable bit, for Enola – even heartbreaking, perhaps – is her growing suspicion that her mother isn't missing because something happened against her will.

Here's the part of my review where I'm obliged to say what I think about this book. But first I have to say, please don't think that I'm saying this because I hold any counterrevolutionary opinions about the liberation of women and whatnot. In terms of being fun to read, top marks. But I've said this before about certain books that renovated well established literary worlds created by other authors: I do not, on principle, approve of one author commandeering and repurposing the creations of another. Frank Beddor did this with L. Frank Baum's Oz; Gregory Maguire did it with Lewis Carroll's Wonderland; and now Nancy Springer is doing it with Conan Doyle's Holmes.

To be honest, I notice (when I gaze into myself) that such creative recycling doesn't annoy me so much when the original author is unknown, as in the case of re-imaginings of Arthur and Robin Hood, fairy tales and myths. Or maybe what makes the difference for me is that the authors of those books (such as Mary Stewart, T.A. Barron, Guy Gavriel Kay, Howard Pyle, T.H. White, Roger Lancelyn Green, Gerald Morris, Robin McKinley, Jane Yolen, Sam Llewellyn and more) either take pains to conceal the source of their borrowing or apply their touch-up brush with decency, fairness and respect. Beddor's and Maguire's approach, in my opinion, is hostile to and destructive of the material it takes from; it slanders and defames it, or possibly rapes and murders it. It's too late for me to warn Springer about this pitfall, since she's already done whatever she was going to do with this series (written more than a decade ago), and she's done more of the same to Arthur and Hood as well. But if I could speak backward in time to this talented author, I'd ask her to bear in mind that Sherlock Holmes is not her creation (and nor is Mycroft) and that she'd better not take a dump on beloved and even revered characters who originated from someone else's imagination. Not if she wants me to stick with her. And if that's not the sort of thing she cares about (even via time-travel telepathy), maybe she should be concerned about this: Someone else may, someday, hijack a product of her literary ingenuity and alter it out of recognition to her work, and she won't be able to stop it.

I'm not saying that's where this series goes, but after one book I see the danger inherent in the exercise and I'm almost afraid to read further. For the same reason this photo, which I shot recently at a Walmart in Yankton, S.D., makes me angry – as do similar movie studio cashing-in-on-merchandising-rights novelizations of films that were themselves based on novels, such as ones I've seen based around Planet of the Apes and The Tale of Desperaux – I feel it like a knife in my guts when I see an author lose control of their work to the extent that somebody else rewrites it into something else, and the world goes on undisturbed. Somebody should fight it and if nobody else will, I will.

End of rant. Not a bad book. Actually pretty fun to read, as I said. But I'm watching you, Springer.

This is the first installment of the Enola Holmes mysteries, which is apparently going to become a film (or possibly series of films). The titles of its five sequels all start with "The Case of the" and conclude, respectively, with Left-Handed Lady, Bizarre Bouquets, Peculiar Pink Fan, Cryptic Crinoline and Gypsy Goodbye. Besides these books, Nancy Springer has written more than 50 novels in a career reaching back to the late 1970s, including the five-book "Book of the Isle" series, the "Sea King" quartet," two "Tale of Camelot" books (I am Mordred, I am Morgan le Fay), five Rowan Hood books (Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest, etc.), and such standalone or loosely grouped titles as The Hex Witch of Seldom, They're All Named Wildfire, Damnbanna, Needy Creek, The Most Mauve There Is, The Boy Who Plaited Manes, Drawn into Darkness and The Oddling Prince, as well as many short stories. She won two Edgar Awards in the 1990s, for the young adult novel Toughing It and in the juvenile category for Looking for Jamie Bridger.

Humorists

Humorists
by Paul Johnson
Recommended Ages: 14+

This book of essays spotlights several people whose wit – sometimes refined, sometimes downright bawdy – illuminated (mostly) English-speaking society from the 18th century to the 20th. Some of them told jokes; others brought smiles, chuckles and flashes of clarity (mingled with a touch of hilarity) to their subject matter by delivering pithy sayings, drawing antic pictures or cartoons, writing inimitable books and creating gags for the stage and screen. Paul Johnson distinguishes between comedians of chaos and of character and even finds sources of merriment in people who were not, personally, barrels of laughs.

His main subjects include authors Charles Dickens, G.K. Chesterton, Damon Runyon (Guys and Dolls) and Nancy Mitford; artists Hogarth, Rowlandson and Toulouse-Lautrec; comedians W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers; such multi-disciplinary geniuses as Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, Noel Coward and (by virtue of being both a cartoonist and a writer) James Thurber. He also touches on Shakespeare, P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy Parker, Charles Addams, Charles Lamb, the "U" (as in "upper class") vs. "non-U" class politics of mid-20th century Britain, the gender warfare humor that made The New Yorker a success; and many other figures, acknowledged in passing. (I find Mark Twain to be a bizarre omission; maybe I've missed something about Johnson's central thesis.)

Johnson writes engagingly, not only assimilating what appears to be an enormous amount of research but also, in a surprising number of instances, able to report that he personally spoke to some of the characters named – from Jean-Paul Sartre to Coward, Mitford and Groucho Marx. He doesn't overtax you with thoroughness, though; for example, I had examples in mind from Dickens' works that he could have cited, but didn't. On the other hand, he digresses freely, sometimes abandoning his initial subject (as in the case of Thurber) and moving on to other people by casual association. At the same time, he draws attention to a golden vein of humor running through modern arts and letters that you might never have previously noticed, and will now most certainly be interested in seeking out.

Johnson's introduction even furnishes us with a reasoned essay about the history of laughter, concluding that his study of comics may be more valuable even than those of history's great creators, heroes and intellectuals, because

The world is a vale of tears, always has been and surely always will be. Those who can dry our tears, and force reluctant smiles to trembling lips, are more precious to us, if the truth be told, than all the statesmen and generals and brainy people, even the great artists. For they ease the agony of life a little, and make us even imagine the possibility of being happy.

Judging by the author's preface, this book is part of a series of collections of essays about cultural figures organized under such titles as Creators, Heroes and Intellectuals. A long-time journalist and a prolific author, he has (I understand) moved from the left to the right in his politics, which figure in his appraisal of his essay subjects. So, I suppose you'll have to check out the dates of his works if you want to know what angle he's coming from. Anyway, a very incomplete list of his books includes Enemies of Society, To Hell with Picasso and Other Essays, Civilizations of the Holy Land, A History of Christianity, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, The Renaissance, The Papacy, and many works of history and biography. Whether his biographies and histories are at all important might be guessed, perhaps, from the soundness of his judgment on other authors' books about the people portrayed in this book. Whatever else you may say about him, though, Johnson provides an intriguing list of recommended reading about his subjects.

Three middling-cheap DVDs

One day last week, I was hoping to find some cheapo ($3.78 to $5) movies that would interest me in the DVD bins at Walmart. However, all of the "newish" titles that I did find intriguing were on a rack of films priced in the $10 to $13 range. I actually told the store employee who was stocking the rack nearby that I thought they were movies that should have been in the bargain bin – titles I had never heard of, probably made for TV or direct to video, with this one exception at the top. Because they were twice as expensive as what I wanted to pay for them, I only bought half of the ones that kind of interested me. And so, here they are.

Enter the Fat Dragon, whose title (of course) is a riff on the Bruce Willis classic Enter the Dragon, features Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen as a sad-sack cop who can only seem to catch bad guys at the cost of demolishing an entire neighborhood and bringing embarrassment to the department. In the opening sequence, for example, he stops at a bank while wearing his wedding tuxedo en route to a pre-wedding photo shoot with his fiancee, only to get caught up in an armed robbery caper. His plan is to snatch a toy truck out of a nearby child's fist, use it to disable one of the robbers and take control of the situation. The reality is, the kid refuses to let go of the toy, the child and its mother raise a ruckus drawing attention to the cop (improbably named Fallon), and all hell breaks loose. As a direct result of this stumble, the bank gets blown up and Fallon finds himself fighting a martial arts melee in the back of the getaway vehicle, which was hijacked from another cop. The entire, ridiculous fight plays out right in front of the lenses of TV journalists – in fact, their cameras become weapons at some point – and it all ends with the van plunging through the front entrance of the police precinct and stopping inches short of crushing the police chief.

As a reward for catching the robbers, the cop whose van was hijacked – and who was of pretty much zero use in the fight – gets a big promotion, while Fallon, naturally, is busted down to evidence room clerk. Everybody takes it out of him for being too heroic, working overtime (and forcing other officers to do likewise) trying to "stop the world turning," like Superman. Even his fiancee (a struggling actress named Chloe) dumps him, in what must be one of the most exquisite man-vs.-woman argument scenes in film history, illustrating the vast difference between their thought processes. Baffled, depressed, Fallon spends the next six months eating vending-machine junk and putting on 105 pounds. Then, to put him on the way to redeeming himself, his friend – the one who got promoted over him – sends him to Tokyo with a Japanese pornographer who is being extradited back to his homeland. To cut this synopsis short, I'll just say he quickly loses control of what is supposed to be an easy assignment. The prisoner gets away, then turns up dead. The Tokyo police prove to be totally corrupt, the language barrier difficult to cope with, the Hong Kong expat neighborhood he's staying in cowed by organized crime, and Chloe, still beautiful, somehow mixed up in it. Even though she still professes not to want to be with a guy who thinks he's got to stop the world, she definitely needs saving before it's all over.

So, it's a martial arts comedy full of laughs and brilliant fight scenes, often both combined. It features a variety of zany characters, makes full use of a set designed to allow movement in all three dimensions, pulls off hysterical and sometimes breathtaking stunts, and explores some juicy emotional and moral-ethical issues. Also, the fact that the dialogue switches between Cantonese, Japanese and Engrish (not to mention a Japanese boss villain, with pop-star good looks, who speaks English with a flawless American accent) isn't a big deal, because having to read the subtitles gives you an excuse to rewind and watch the fast-paced action again, and appreciate the hilarious dialogue as well.

Yen, as Fallon, has a highly mobile face, and I think he could be a really good actor and comedian. The fat suit makes the whole movie a running joke about a fitness freak, Bruce Lee wannabe who lets himself go for a while, before he is forced to prove that he's still got it. And to be fair, the joke kind of works. The drawback of putting Yen under prosthetics to appear 105 pounds heavier than he really is, is simply that it covers up that expressive face. He still manages to say a lot with his eyes, but I missed some of the communicative power of his real-life mug (glimpsed only during the opening sequence) throughout the remainder of the movie.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Of course, the opening chase/fight sequence, in which Yen and the bank robbers cut a swath of destruction across Hong Kong. (2) The street fight where Fallon and friends have to keep a piece of incriminating evidence out of the bad guys' hands. (3) The scene in which the boss bad guy extorts a signature out of his "grandfather" (?), then kills him. The guy's whoop of exhilaration is, at the same time, thrilling and disturbing. He's obviously a psychopath, and when Chloe has the bad luck to walk on this moment of sick triumph, she is suddenly in the kind of danger that brings out the would-be superhero in her ex-fiance.

So, it's a pretty entertaining movie, and shows all the signs of being a generously budgeted theatrical feature – with just a couple of exceptions. One thing that "un-made" it for me is the scene where a dog attacks Fallon's friend Thor in a suspect's apartment. The dog is so obviously fake that even very clever editing doesn't save the scene from looking like a cheap shortcut.

Speaking of cheap shortcuts, A Killer Next Door – based on the real-life hunt for murderer and fugitive John List, which came to a head when the case was featured on the TV program America's Most Wanted – has the distinct look of a made-for-TV movie or maybe even a student film. In spite of the middling to poor acting (except for a couple of cast members), Welsh-born producer-writer-director-editor Andrew Jones' wholly uninspired camerawork and the strange fact that the movie had to change the name of the TV program and its host, it's actually a pretty effective little thriller with a couple scenes of absolutely stifling suspense.

The movie focuses on a girl, kept at home by a broken leg, who does the whole James-Stewart-in-Rear Window thing (with binoculars) and recognizes the up-tight, churchgoing guy next door as a killer who has eluded capture for 18 years after murdering his mother, wife and three children. Unfortunately, the hero girl is played by an actress who brought nothing interesting to the role. I do, however, want to give a couple cast members credit for actually putting some good work into this picture. Playing the girl's father is one Patrick O'Donnell, who emoted almost to the point of overacting, but whose full commitment to the part elevates the picture as a whole and is actually quite touching. Then there's the girl's boyfriend, played by Derek Nelson, who has a candid and expressive face and a good-natured energy that lightens the atmosphere nicely. The killer, played by William Meredith, is definitely spooky in an understated way, although the director might have gotten that performance simply by asking his actor to do less; and his cowed but unsuspecting new wife (who, in real life, survived to get a divorce when the law caught up) gets a sympathetic treatment from Tessa Wood. Other than that, the cast generally fails to draw my attention away from the cheap and repetitive background imagery.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Where the boyfriend, Danny, breaks into the killer's house after List and his wife leave for church. Naturally, he then has to hide under a desk when List makes a surprise entrance. I actually had to watch this scene on fast-forward because the suspense was killing me. Later (let's call it an extension of this scene) List surprises Danny in his car and puts the frighteners on him – providing an opportunity for Nelson to do some of the best acting in the movie, as he lets out the breath he's been holding the whole time List was in his car. (2) The host of the TV show (described in the script as John Wesley although we all know he's really John Walsh) tells the detective about his experience losing a son and how that led him to devote his life to catching fugitives. (3) List browbeats his wife for wearing a too-form-fitting dress; I thought she was done for right then and there. Bonus moment: The dad's reaction when he sees the age-progressed bust of List on the TV show ("Holy ****!")

While this movie had some successful moments in it, I don't think it succeeds overall. It could have made more of a virtue of being an independent film by doing something daring or original with the material, but it didn't. In fact, it seemed somehow to have had a certain amount of vitality bled out of it, in spite of the sensational underlying material. I definitely felt that I got a bad deal, paying non-bargain-basement prices for a bargain-basement movie.

Survive the Night is a film headlined by Chad Michael Murray and Bruce Willis that somehow I'd never heard of before it appeared on the Walmart DVD rack. They play a disgraced doctor and his retired sheriff dad whose family is threatened when two brothers, fleeing from a convenience store robbery turned shootout, invade their home in the middle of the night and demand medical treatment for a serious gunshot wound. Funnily enough, several of the cast members are known for roles in 2018's Gotti – including Lydia Hull as Murray's wife, Tyler Jon Olson as the wounded brother, and Shea Buckner as the one who does all the killing and just won't stop, in spite of his brother's efforts to restrain him.

It's obvious from the get-go that everyone on at least one side of this duel between families is going to die. The lengths Murray, Willis and Hull go to in hope that they will "survive the night" are the makings of an explosive, yet at the same time somewhat claustrophobic, thriller. Surviving this together also seems to be the key to solving all their family issues. Funny how that works out.

Full marks go to Olson and Buckner for delivering emotionally powerful performances, almost making their characters sympathetic in spite of their (especially "Jamie's") criminal insanity. In fact, the two top-billed stars only manage to keep up by seeing their characters convincingly, and painfully, injured – Willis by being stabbed, Murray by being shot. Murray's character actually earns a lot of respect from his dad in one scene where he performs surgery on himself. That had to hurt.

So, I'm pretty satisfied with this movie. It ticks off all the usual, expected boxes and added a few I didn't expect to find on the checklist – like that moment of classical catharsis, before Murray shoots Buckner dead, when your heart goes out to the guy. It's kind of, secretly, a Greek tragedy. What do you think of that?

I've already given up two of the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Murray sewing up his own bullet wound and (2) Buckner's death scene (sorry, spoilers). For (3) I think it would have to be the one where Rachel, the wife of Willis' character, is cuddling him in bed and jokes to the effect, "You'd be lost without me," after which very promptly she becomes the next fatality in the fugitives' rolling rampage. With so much of the movie taking place in and around one house, and all of it within about 24 hours – not quite observing the Aristotelian unities – along with the effective use of a pretty small cast – there is something of the stage about this film, but it doesn't feel stagy. It feels like a movie that might have knocked audiences' socks off, if it hadn't been released during COVID-19.

Tacky Hymns 75

Again I repeat:

We continue our run-through of the hymns in The Lutheran Hymnal (Concordia Publishing House, 1941) with emphasis on three types of hymns: (1) instances of bad judgment by the folks who selected hymns for the book, judged on the basis of historic, confessional and liturgical Lutheranism; (2) noteworthy quirks of hymn-tune pairing; and (3) wonderful hymns that I think should receive more play time (by which I mean singing time) in confessional Lutheran congregations, even if it means undertaking a challenging process of getting acquainted, because of their precious spiritual and artistic value.

(352) O Savior, precious Savior is a hymn by Frances Ridley Havergal (1870), set to the tune ANGEL'S STORY by Arthur H. Mann (1851). This is the first appearance in TLH of a hymn by Havergal, an Anglican vicar's daughter who only lived 43 years. Five hymn texts and one hymn tune by her appear in TLH, including the ubiquitous "Take my life and let it be," "I am trusting Thee, Lord Jesus" and "Now the light has gone away." There is a certain soft-focus romanticism in her style. I raise no particular objection to her text in this instance – I'll save that for TLH 405 – but I do think Mann's tune – originally written for a piece by another female hymn writer – has an overly popular ring to it, with a smarm factor that some hymnals ramp up by adding a chromatic passing note to the melody, right at the start of the chorus.

(353) Lord Jesus Christ, my Savior blest is a "Type 3" hymn I want to highlight because I don't think I heard much of it during my German-American centered Lutheran upbringing. With lyrics translated from 16th century Danish and a tune by Ludvig M. Lindeman (1874), of whom I have previously voiced admiration, it's a Scandinavian Lutheran treasure that deserves to be better known outside lutefisk eating circles. Hans Sthen's poem expresses deep trust in Christ and His word, using a striking and unusual meter, while Lindeman's music is richly expressive, in a register of Romanticism that hews closer to fine-art music than the syrupy trash that clogs all too many collections of 19th century hymnody.

(356) Jesus, Savior, come to me is the first of four hymns by Johann Scheffler (a.k.a. Angelus Silesius) in TLH – the others are "O Love, who madest me to wear," "Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower" and "Come, follow Me, the Savior spake." They're all more or less good hymns (and this one, at least, isn't hurt by being translated by Matthias Loy), but there is something (I think) remarkable about Lutherans buying into the work of a sometime Lutheran mystic who fell into heresy and later became a Catholic priest who (I forget what authority I have this on) wrote polemics against Lutheranism. I guess anything can be forgiven if you write something good. What strikes me as especially interesting about this hymn is that you have to defend it against the charge of decisionism or semi-Pelagianism – as if you have to invite Christ into your heart to be saved – by underscoring that Scheffler's text expresses the sentiments of one who is already a believer. It does, however, place a warm emphasis on religious feelings that wouldn't sound out of place in a Pietistic context. On a "Type 2" note, although TLH sets this hymn to the 18th century chorale GOTT SEI DANK, multiple hymn tunes have (to judge by their titles) been written expressly for this hymn, including Lindeman's JESU, KOM DOG SELV TIL MIG, a tune by Norwegian composer Jacob Hveding Sletten (1923) titled JESUS, COME TO ME (cf. The Concordia Hymnal, hymn 341), and a German chorale, JESU, KOMM DOCH SELBST ZU MIR.

(362) My soul's best Friend, what joy and blessing is a prolix, shmaltzy and not particularly inspired combination of late 17th century words by Wolfgang Dessler and the tune WIE WOHL IST MIR (1704) from that hotbed of Pietism, Halle. Other than a couple references to "Savior" it doesn't actually name Jesus, but it isn't a big leap to guess that's who is being addressed. Already in the first line you can see where its spiritual/theological emphasis lies. In stanza 1, it depicts Him as one into whose arms for rest I flee, whose love banishes all anguish, pain and fear from my heart, and who is always lovingly near so that I can say "Yea, here on earth begins my heaven." Stanza 2 renounces the world, personifying her as a deceitful woman, and confiding rather in His loyalty. Stanza 3 depicts Him as leading us "thro' deserts of the cross," where He produces food and water, and whose way is to be trusted "howe'er distressing." Stanza 4 professes contentment to rest in His breast, where "by sin no more am I tormented," and describes His grace as "a foretaste ... of heaven." It concludes, "Away, vain world, with fleeting pleasures; In Christ I have abiding treasures" – at last it comes that close to naming Him! – "O comfort sweet, my Friend is mine!" For the most part, all this can be read as a personal profession of faith – but it's so very personal. Also, for all its vastness of scale, it doesn't find room to locate Jesus' presence, grace, the food or drink he gives along the cross-shadowed way, etc., specifically in word and sacrament. All the spiritual transactions tallied up in this account are of a touchy-feely, emotional variety, verging on romantic. And if there's one line to which the stench of Pietism clings, surely it is the one about no more being tormented by sin – an expectation that a well catechized Lutheran would only pin on the life to come.

(366) One thing's needful; Lord, this treasure is a hymn about the sufficiency of Christ's word, based on the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10, with words by Johann H. Schroeder (1697). Maybe I think it's a more important hymn that in it really is, because it was a regular part of the town-gown tradition of my alma mater, Bethany Lutheran College, and its sister church down the street, Mount Olive (ELS) – both of which were big on the Mary and Martha story. (Old Main has a stained glass window depicting the story, and the college's seal depicts the words "One Thing Needful" in biblical Greek.) TLH sets it to Friedrich Layriz's 1849 tune EINS IST NOT, which was apparently written for it – both the hymn and the tune being of a rather peculiar meter. However, it isn't the only tune written for this hymn, nor the most popular. Among the American Lutheran hymnals I've studied, only ELHb, TLH and CW have Layriz's tune, while LHy, LW, ELHy, LSB and at least two more have Adam Krieger's 1657 tune of the same name, which, according to the TLH Handbook, even Layriz ultimately preferred. The later composer's serious sounding, Phrygian-mode melody is certainly an interesting alternative, but I think if given the choice, most anyone will choose Krieger's tune.

(370) My hope is built on nothing less is probably one of those hymns about which that lady, of whom I have previously written, complained that the tune in ELHy or TLH was the wrong tune, as opposed to the right tune that was in SBH. (You may recall, she was the only alum of an SBH church in that particular congregation, so nobody really sympathized with her point of view.) Well, TLH pairs this hymn by Edward Mote (1834) with John Stainer's warm, richly harmonized tune MAGDALEN, a.k.a. REST (1873), and it isn't alone in doing so: ELHb, CW, LW and ELHy also make the same pairing, while CSB and LHy each use it with another hymn. Meanwhile, CSB, SBH, LBW and at least one other hymnal opt for John B. Dykes' tune MELITA (you'd know it as the tune to "Eternal Father, strong to save"). This more or less divides the hymnals' choice of MAGDALEN vs. MELITA along the lines of fellowship between what used to be the Synodical Conference and what is now the Ev. Luth. Church in America. Meanwhile, LBW has as an alternate tune William Bradbury's THE SOLID ROCK (apparently written for it, considering the hymn's refrain), which I guess represents the taste of American Protestants outside of Lutheranism. Strangely, LSB chooses MAGDALEN and THE SOLID ROCK as its alternatives for this hymn, so my dear SBH-loving lady will be denied satisfaction there.

(371) Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness continues a streak of "Type 2" mentions, with words by Ludwig von Zinzendorf, here set to George J. Elvey's tune ST. CRISPIN (1862). I think Zinzendorf's text sounds much more impressive when paired with the B. Gesius tune HERRNHUT, as it is in LHy, SBH, ELHy and at least one more. (I keep saying "at least one more" because I've forgotten which book an acronym stands for in my copious notes, and I'm too lazy to dig through years worth of paper to refresh my memory. Clearly, I'm going to have to re-do a lot of work before ever I can publish my authoritative tome on all this.) Anyway, ST. CRISPIN is nice, but HERRNHUT is more the thing for a hymn rich in devotional thought and majestic, atonement theology.

(376) Rock of Ages, cleft for me, the quintessential English-language hymn by Augustus Toplady (1776), is set here (and most everywhere else, these days) to Thomas Hastings' 1830 tune TOPLADY. Unfortunately, it's also one of those hymns that I always hear (at least in my mind's ear) being sung and played badly, making me want to stand in front of the folks performing it, scowling fiercely and smacking a stout yardstick against my palm to drive home how very strongly I feel the importance of clearly articulating the 3/2 time signature and not shlurping between notes. As for the lyrics (not to mention the associations with a shapeless, nameless branch of Protestantism) – well, I give up.

Stanza 1 calls upon "the water and the blood From Thy riven side which flowed" to "be of sin the double cure." I've been told by one highly esteemed theologian, who is now in glory, that this "double cure" bit makes this the most profoundly Lutheran of hymns by tying in the sacraments of baptism and communion with Jesus' atoning sacrifice and applying it to both the forgiveness of sin and freedom from bondage to it, as evidenced by the concluding line, "cleanse me from its guilt and power." Then again, I've been told by an equally well-qualified expert that the phrase "double cure" refers to a doctrinal tenet of early Pentecostalism, which stressed that Jesus both heals and forgives through the redeeming power of His blood (from which follows the whole faith-healing racket). I sniffed around on the Internet just now and found that there are Pentecostals around today who support this. Obviously, this is a case of people seeing what they want to see, or of the adherents of opposing doctrines finding confirmation of their opinions in exactly the same evidence. So, let me ask you this: Do you really suppose Toplady – an Anglican preacher who went through a Wesleyan Methodist conversion experience, only to end up defending Calvinism against John Wesley's Arminianism – had it in him to think baptism and communion when he said water and blood?

(377) Salvation unto us is come is a great hymn by Paul Speratus about the atonement and justification, dating from early in the Lutheran Reformation (1523) and set to the amazing chorale ES IST DAS HEIL, one of the best-known examples of Mixolydian melody in Lutheran hymnody. (I'm referring to the persistent C-natural in the tune, despite its D-major key signature, which has a C-sharp.) It lends just that little bit of oddness to an already strong, confident and energetic tune, making it an unforgettable vehicle for Speratus' summary of salvation history.

(383) Seek where ye may to find a way is a fine hymn whose rhyme scheme chops it up into a lot of short, four-syllable lines. TLH sets it to an arrangement of Johann Stobaeus' tune SUCH, WER DA WILL that heightens the tedium of this pattern. I strongly recommend substituting the version of the same tune used in LW 358, which has more rhythmic drive. Unfortunately, LSB 557 rolled it back to the TLH version of the tune – another example of the latest Missouri Synod pew hymnal's tendency to fix what ain't broke, or perhaps more aptly put, to re-break things that LW fixed.

(384) Oh, how great is Thy compassion, with words by Johann Olearius (1671) and the chorale tune ACH, WAS SOLL ICH (1653), is my favorite hymn ever. I'm not kidding, even though I've already said that of at least three hymns in this book.

(386) My Savior sinners doth receive, however, is one I'm not overly fond of. It's not to be confused with Erdmann Neumeister's "Jesus sinners doth receive" (TLH 324) – a 1718 hymn whose eight shapely stanzas succinctly yet thoroughly apply gospel medicine to the sinner's afflicted conscience. In contrast, this 1731 text by Leopold Lehr sprawls in tedious prolixity, compressing Law and Gospel into three stanzas (albeit long-winded ones), then spends stanza 4 on an altar call ("O trembling sinner ... to Christ draw near. Come now ... Accept His mercy") before finally addressing Christ in prayer. I could have done without 10 lines of anxious bench cajolery, thank you.

(387) Dear Christians, one and all, rejoice is that hymn by Martin Luther – the one that, in 10 stanzas, recalls the agony of an individual conscience soiled by sin, then weaves that into a dramatic dialogue between God the Father and the Son, taking counsel about their plan of salvation, before finally turning the floor over to Christ speaking to the sinner with strong words of encouragement to trust in His atoning work and His admonishment to hold firmly to His gift of salvation. Like Bonar's "I heard the voice of Jesus say," it could be read as a bit of spiritual autobiography. But unlike that other hymn, its focus is increasingly tight on the cross of Jesus and its deepest implications for every sinner who seeks a gracious God. It is also an example of Luther's powerful directness as a hymn writer. While heeding my "Type 3" advice to see to it that you and your congregation know this hymn well and sing it often, with gusto – maybe spreading the stanzas out over different parts of the service – I should also hint, in a "Type 2" vein, that the TLH tune NUN FREUT EUCH (Wittenberg, 1524) isn't the only chorale you might find under that name. If you're an organist, and you're scrambling for a sight-readable chorale prelude on NUN FREUT EUCH to play when this hymn sneaks onto the number-board, you might be a little put out to find that Buxtehude, for example, calls ES IST GEWISSLICH (Wittenberg, 1535) by that name.

(388) Just as I am, without one plea is a hymn that I've dished on before. In that previous mention, I took out on it a bit of my frustration lingering from an incident, many years ago, that involved this exact number in this exact hymnal, with exactly these two tunes, ST. CRISPIN and WOODWORTH. It's one of those moments that reminds me, when I become frustrated with the vicissitudes of being an organist, how much rather I would be the organist (who only has to play the hymns chosen for worship, teeth clenched if necessary) than the pastor (who has to make decisions about what hymns to use in worship and then, as it were, face the music).

I've made it through several topical divisions of TLH's hymns in this post. I now see a new heading, "Sanctification (The Christian Life)," looming over Hymn 393, which I think is my cue to knock this off for the night. Flee tackiness, brothers and sisters!

275. Forward Hymn

I had an idea to write this hymn a long time ago – maybe more than a year – but it got buried so deep under other projects that I just about forgot what I meant to do with it. So, upon updating my hymn-book in progress with earlier today's "Wounds of Christ" hymn, I opened up the place-holder I had created there for the following hymn, which I hope does justice to the brilliant idea I thought I had my finger on when I left that note for myself. I'm recycling the tune I wrote last year for this hymn – coincidentally, the one original hymn on this blog numbered below 201 that wasn't included in my first hymn-book, Useful Hymns. So, with God's blessings, both hymns with this tune will appear in the sequel, working title Edifying Hymns (because, uh, what acronyms are more inspiring than "UH" and "EH," eh?)

Lord, lead us forward from the dark!
Free mind and will from their first prince;
Impress on them Your fadeless mark.
Our souls of sin and grace convince;
Lord, forward turn our minds!

Lord, lead us forward from our sin!
Grant us repentance day by day,
Lest looking back, our eyes begin
To draw our hearts and feet astray.
Lord, forward turn our eyes!

Lord, lead us forward in your word!
Build up our faith through teaching pure;
And make the gospel we have heard
Through holy sacrament more sure.
Lord, forward turn our ears!

Lord, lead us forward all life long!
To serve the needy make us keen;
To bear each other’s burdens, strong.
Till in our lives Your love is seen,
Lord, forward turn our hands!

Lord, lead us forward in the cross!
Let meekness in our hearts abide,
Complaining not of pain or loss
But lifting up the Crucified.
Lord, forward turn our hearts!

Lord, lead us forward to our crown!
As worlds dissolve, allay our fears.
With healing in Your wings come down;
Abolish death and dry all tears.
Lord, forward lead our way!

Tune: HOLY ONES

274. Hymn on the Wounds of Christ

I wasn't planning to write this hymn. It just started to write itself in my mind today, while I was driving from my parents' house to church – a trip of 45 minutes to an hour – while listening to Michael Barone's "Pipe Dreams" on public radio. For some reason, I found myself thinking about the thread running through Jesus' wounds (ew), connecting His obedient life, sacrificial death, rest in the tomb, and glorification with our hope of justification, sanctification and final victory. Again, it's been a little while – since late June – since my last fit of hymn writing. But at least that's a narrower gap than the last one! The tune I'm putting with it is one that I wrote in May for a text by another hymn writer who, as of the last I heard from him about it, wasn't satisfied with it. So, this way my work doesn't go completely to waste. (And by work I mean actually composing two harmonizations of it; see below). The tune is titled SERVICE.

Dear Christ, against whose glory heaven pales:
Our reason, our imagination fails
That You bared brow to thorns, Your back to flails,
Your breast to spear, Your hands and feet to nails!

You were the One who kept the Law's demands,
Who in good faith bore Satan's fiery brands
With upright heart, with wonder-working hands,
With feet soiled by the dust of thankless lands.

Once for all sin, all wrath laid up in store,
Our chastisement, our total debt You bore.
Not lightly struck, but pierced into the core,
Your temple fell; Your flawless cover tore.

Deep in the earth, still lay Your sacred heart,
Your wounded head and members, past all smart;
Yet 'neath the shroud and door-seal set apart,
You opened life to us with secret start.

Do You now, in Your risen glory, keep
The wounds that griped Your death, that marred Your sleep?
Do You now bid Your stubborn, doubting sheep
Into the marks of nail and spear to peep?

Yes, Lord! So may each heartsick sinner hide
His guilt and grief in You, the Crucified;
His impure heart wash in Your flowing side;
His falt'ring hands and feet find Yours spread wide.

How, then, shall we of such wounds be ashamed?
For on Your palms, that heathen nails have maimed,
We have been tallied, notarized and named –
By Triune witness ransomed, loved and claimed.

So let Your wounded hands, Your feet, Your side
Be of our works, our ways, our hearts the guide.
Fit us to live as souls for whom You died:
Your death our life, Your cross alone our pride.

Onward, dear Lord, Your heel bruised in the fight,
Lead us, although we stumble, toward Your light,
Held to Your riven bosom through the night,
Till Your unblemished beauty floods our sight.