99 I Know Not How That Bethlehem’s Babe
Harry W. Farrington, 1880-1931
A Christmas song written in 1910, while the author was a graduate student at Harvard University. It was awarded the prize which had been offered for the best Christmas hymn written by a student. Though simple and unpretentious, Professor George Herbert Palmer declared it “a perfect poem.” The few lines encompass a vast body of Christian truth.
The author, Harry W. Farrington, 1880-1931 (date of death printed erroneously as 1911 in earlier editions of the Hymnary), was educated at Harvard and then became a Methodist minister. He was greatly interested in work among children and inaugurated the Week Day Church School at Gary, Ind., in 1914. After returning from service in World War I, he became widely known as a speaker for children and it is estimated that he addressed more than two million children in the public schools of America. He is the author of several volumes of poems and has written books on Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
MUSIC. ES IST EIN BORN, also named “I Do Believe,” and “Camp-meeting,” is an early American camp-meeting chorus sung to:
I do believe, I now believe,
I can hold out no more;
I sink by dying love compelled
And own Thee Conqueror.
It is used in the Gesangbuch mit Noten to the words “Es ist ein Born, d’raus heil’ges Blut.”