If you get there before I do,-- _I am bound for the land of Cana-an!_ Look out for me, I'm coming too-- _I am bound for the land of Cana-an!_
And then hymn and tune took possession of the assembly and rolled on in a circle with--
O Cana-an, bright Cana-an! I am bound for the land of Cana-an; O Cana-an it is my hap-py home, I am bound for the land of Cana-an
--till the voices came back to another starting-line and began again. There was always a movement to the front when that tune was sung, and--with all due abatement for superficial results in the sensation of the moment--it is undeniable that many souls were truly born into the kingdom of God under the sound of that rude woodland song.
Both its words and music are credited to Rev. John Maffit, who probably wrote the piece about 1829.
This hymn of Charles Wesley was often heard at the camp grounds, from the rows of tents in the morning while the good women prepared their pancakes and coffee, and
was invariably old "Kentucky," by Jeremiah Ingalls. Sung as a solo by a sweet and spirited voice, it slightly resembled "Golden Hill," but oftener its halting bars invited a more drawling style of execution unworthy of a hymn that merits a tune like "St. Thomas."
Elder John Leland, born in Grafton, Mass., 1754, was not only a strenuous personality in the Baptist denomination, but was well known everywhere in New England, and, in fact, his preaching trip to Washington (1801) with the "Cheshire Cheese" made his fame national. He is spoken of as "the minister who wrote his own hymns"--a peculiarity in which he imitated Watts and Doddridge. When some natural shrinking was manifest in converts of his winter revivals, under his rigid rule of immediate baptism, he wrote this hymn to fortify them:
Christians, if your hearts are warm, Ice and cold can do no harm; If by Jesus you are prized Rise, believe and be baptized.
He found use for the hymn, too, in rallying church-members who staid away from his meetings in bad weather. The "poetry" expressed what he wanted to say--which, in his view, was sufficient apology for it. It was sung in revival meetings like others that he wrote, and a few hymnbooks now long obsolete contained it; but of Leland's hymns only one survives. Gray-headed men and women remember being sung to sleep by their mothers with that old-fashioned evening song to Amzi Chapin's[23] tune--