XIII.
Sternhold and Hopkins' Version of the Psalms.
The metrical translation of the Psalms known as Sternhold and Hopkins'
Version was doubtless used in the public worship of God in many of the
early New England settlements, especially those of the Connecticut River
Valley, though the old register of the town of Ipswich is the only local
record that gives positive proof of its use in the Puritan church. In
1693 an edition of Sternhold and Hopkins was printed in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. It was not a day nor a land where a whole edition of such a
book would be printed for reference or comparison only; and to thus publish
the work of the English psalmists in the very teeth of the popularity of
"The Bay Psalm Book" is to me a proof that Sternhold and Hopkins' Version
was employed far more extensively in the colonial churches and homes than
we now have records of, and than many of our church historians now fancy.
Certainly the familiar English psalm-books must have been brought across
the ocean and used temporarily until the newly landed colonists could
acquire the version of Ainsworth or of the New England divines.
An everlasting interest attaches to this metrical arrangement of the
Psalms, to Americans as well as to Englishmen, because it was the earliest
to be adopted in public worship in England. According to Strype, in his
Memorial, the singing of psalms was allowed in England as early as 1548,
but it was not until 1562 that the versified psalms of Sternhold and
Hopkins were appended to the Book of Common Prayer.
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