The world looks very beautiful

The world looks very beautiful. Anna Bartlett Warner* (1827-1915).  This hymn is dated in JJ (p. 1234) ca. 1860, but it was not included in Warner’s Wayfaring Hymns, original and translated (New York, 1869). The first page scan in Hymnary.org is from The Diadem: a collection of tunes and hymns for Sunday school and devotional meetings (New York, 1865), edited by Silas J. Vail (1818-1884).  It is a hymn that was written for children but which also includes the idea of pilgrimage. The idea for the ‘little pilgrim’ image (stanza 3) may have come from a religious periodical, The Little Pilgrim, published in Philadelphia from 1853 to 1869. It had four stanzas, with (in some books) a refrain:...