THE LITURGY AND HYMNS OF THE AMERICAN PROVINCE OF THE UNITAS FRATRUM, OR THE MORAVIAN CHURCH. M. avian Chad BETHLEHEM: MORAVIAN PUBLICATION OFFICE. 1900. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by THE BOARD OF ELDERS OF THE NORTHERN DIOCESE OF THE CHURCH OF THE UNITED BRETHREN IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. The Unitas Fratrum was the first among Protestant Churches to publish a Hymn-book. It appeared in the Bohemian language, at Jungbunzlau, in Bohemia, in the year 1505, and contained versions of old Latin hymns, together with many original compositions, mostly by John Hus and Bishop Luke of Prague. The latter was its editor. In 1531 it was followed by a German, and in 1554 by a Polish, Hymn-book. All these Collections were subsequently revised and enlarged, the Bohemian in 1561, the German in 1566, and the Polish in 1569. In this new form, they remained in use until the overthrow of the Ancient Unitas Fratrum, about the middle of the seventeenth century. The tunes, printed in full at the head of each hymn, were partly Gregorian, partly borrowed from Germany, and partly original. Many of the original ones consisted of popular melodies adapted to the uses of the sanctuary. The hymns of the Brethren were a power in the Church and the land. They gave life to public worship; they were familiarly sung in the homes of nobles and of peasants; they set forth the pure Gospel in strains that captivated thousands of hearts in the Roman Catholic Church and brought them to a knowledge of free grace in Christ Jesus. But few copies of the old Hymn-book remain. Most of them were destroyed in the Bohemian Anti-reformation. A modern selection, however, in the German language, with the tunes prefixed, was published at Nuremberg in 1875. The Renewed Unitas Fratrum inherited the hymnological |