A more complete history

Here is a lovely and worshipful hymn:

Lord, with glowing heart I'd praise thee

For the bliss thy love bestows,

For the pard'ning grace that saves me,

And the peace that from it flows;

Help, O God, my weak endeavor;

This dull soul to rapture raise;

Thou must light the flame, or never

Can my love be warmed to praise. . . .

Praise thy Savior God that drew thee

To that cross, new life to give,

Held a blood-sealed pardon to thee

Bade thee look to him and live;

Praise the grace whose threats alarmed thee

Roused thee from they fatal ease,

Praise the grace whose promise warmed thee,

Praise the grace that whispered peace.

There are two more verses, each as soul-stirring as these two.

They don't teach you everything in school these days. And my objection to the educational institution I came up in (religious) and the ones I sent my children to (public) is that they were rather two-dimensional, to say the least. No one, for example, would ever know that the person who wrote the hymn above was the same person who gave us the following:

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? . . .

And no elementary school teacher ever bothered to tell us that Francis Scott Key served as vice president of the American Bible Society from 1817 until he died in 1843. Or that he published a book titled The Power of Literature, and Its Connection with Religion (1834). That must be an interesting read. I wonder if the state of California would consider including it as it presently revamps its school curricula to redress what it considers imbalances in traditional American history.