And it shall be given thee, also, to make a selection of sacred hymns, as it shall be given thee, which is pleasing unto me, to be had in my church. For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.[1]
Initially, it seems that this revelation was interpreted to mean that Emma Smith was commanded to select which hymns were appropriate for use in the worship services of Latter Day Saints and not necessarily to compile a hymnbook.[2] Due in part to this ambiguity in the revelation and in part to persecutions and the constant uprooting of the church in those early days, she was not able to compile a hymnbook for several years. However, in the meantime, other followers continued to write, arrange, and collect hymns.
The first Latter-day Saint hymns were published by W. W. Phelps in June, 1832 in Independence, Missouri. These appeared as text only (no music) in The Evening and the Morning Star, the church's semimonthly newspaper. Many of these lyrics were written by Phelps, while others were borrowed from various Protestant sources and edited by Phelps. The first of these hymns published by Phelps was "What Fair One Is This".
On July 20, 1833, a mob destroyed the church's printing office in Independence, and the publication of the Star was moved to Kirtland, Ohio – the headquarters of the church at that time. In December, 1834, The Evening and the Morning Star was replaced by a new publication: The Messenger and Advocate. Phelps continued to write and collect hymn texts, with assistance from Frederick G. Williams and others.
Collection of Sacred Hymns
On September 14, 1835, at a meeting of the high council and the First Presidency at Kirtland, Emma Smith was again counseled to begin compiling a hymnbook in a joint effort with W. W. Phelps:
It was further decided that Sister Emma Smith proceed to make a selection of Sacred Hymns, according to the revelation; and that President W.W. Phelps be appointed to revise and arrange them for printing.[3]
Emma Smith selected 90 hymn texts for the hymnal, 35 of which were written by Latter-day Saints. Many of these texts were revised or corrected by W. W. Phelps to fit with the theology of the early Latter Day Saint church.
The title page states 1835 as the publication date, but because of the printing of the Doctrine and Covenants the same year, printing of the hymnal was not completed until February 1836.[4]
The book is small – just 3" by 41⁄2" in size. An indication of the poverty of the church members in Kirtland at that time is that the hymnal was published in "sexadecimal" form, the least expensive publishing format for books in those days: sixteen pages were printed on both sides of a single sheet, which was then folded, cut, and sewn into the leather binding. Thus, the entire hymnbook could be printed on just four large sheets of paper. The completed hymnal contained ninety hymns, but only the words were included. As a result, today it is difficult to determine which tunes were used with many of the hymn texts.
Although the book was printed in 1836, it is still referred to as the "1835 hymnal" because of the publication date on the title page. The Kirtland printing of the hymnbook was probably very small – perhaps 500 copies at most. Today, original copies of this hymnbook are extremely rare; less than a dozen are known to exist. On December 5, 2006, an original 1835 hymnal was sold at Christie's Auction House in New York City for $273,600.[5]
Many of the hymns which had previously been published in The Evening and the Morning Star were inserted into the 1835 hymnal as a block, almost exactly in the same order as their earlier publication. Eleven of the hymns were also published in The Messenger and Advocate between December 1834 and January 1836:
