I like the hymns of Ebenezer Beesley.
I like the graceful, buoyant touch he shows in "Tis Sweet to Sing the Matchless Love," "Welcome, Welcome, Sabbath Morning" and "High on a Mountain Top."There's a touch of Mozart in Beesley.
Just as there's a touch of Ebenezer Beesley in Elder Neal A. Maxwell.
Elder Maxwell's ability to "float" weighty matters on billows of spirit is not unlike Beesley's gift with melody. So it seems fitting he would build a book around a Beesley hymn, "Sing We Now at Parting," with a text by George Manwaring.
Like the hymn, we are told the book, "One More Strain of Praise" (Bookcraft; $16.95), will be a closing song.
One hopes not.
Yet whether it is or not, it is obviously a book of song. It is a prose psalm, a collection of "kind words" and "sweet tones of the heart" -- to use another Beesley hymn.
Over the years, when I've met with Elder Maxwell, his conversation has been buoyant and inventive as well. Each time, "sweet tones of the heart" have been sung.
Yet I've come to realize that anyone who thinks such encounters form an "insider's" exclusive relationship with the man is only half right. The relationship is wonderfully intimate, no question.
But it is far from exclusive.
He forges such relationships daily -- with neighbors and colleagues, with those who come under his care and those whose care he comes under. Elder Maxwell's life -- to use his own word -- is a grand array of "intertwinings."
And the richness of his writing comes from the richness of his relationships, with both God and man.
In one conversation some time ago, he mentioned he was working on a book -- an attempt to reconcile the ever-changing nature of our mortal lives with the unchangeable nature of eternal truth.
To me, it sounded like a massive text, a 1,000-page dissertation.
But "One More Strain of Praise" turned out to be a high-minded manual -- a testimonial that reads like the urgings of a brilliant Sunday School teacher.
"The true preacher," Emerson wrote, "deals out to the people his life -- life passed through the fire of thought."
Emerson's line is a review of the book.
And just as scholars speak of things "Emersonian," LDS readers will come away here speaking of things "Maxwellian": the coined terms, for instance ("customized suffering," "the pulpit of memory"), the refusal to pander and patronize (it's assumed readers can deal with expressions like "the tether and pang of the particular").
And, of course, the book is filled with the winking analogies that are Elder Maxwell's signature. (Can any Mormon read the line, "The daily quizzes matter along with the final exam," and not know the source?)
In the final chapter, "For Unnumbered Blessings," Elder Maxwell offers some biographical notes. But, of course, the chapter is more about others than himself.
And reading that chapter brought to mind the day he told me of the woman whose family had been plagued by cancer, including herself. I remember Elder Maxwell saying, with admiration, "And there's no guile in her, Jerry. No guile at all."
It didn't occur to him -- and never would -- that millions of others were looking at him with that same admiration, mouthing those same words.
In "Lord, We Ask Thee Ere We Part," another Beesley hymn, George Manwaring's text looks back from the end of the day in prayer. "Bless the teachings of this day," Manwaring writes, "Plant them deep in every heart, that with us they'll ever stay."
In his customary, buoyant style, Beesley ends the "farewell hymn" with a bright, warm, major chord.
For Elder Maxwell -- and those of us who measure ourselves against him -- "One More Strain of Praise" is filled with teachings that "will ever stay."
It sounds that bright, warm, major chord.