CHAPTER I

THE

SINGING CHURCH

THE HYMNS IT WROTE AND SANG

By

Edmund S. Lorenz, LL.D., Mus. Doc.

AUTHOR OF

MUSIC IN WORK AND WORSHIP

PRACTICAL HYMN STUDIES

PRACTICAL CHURCH MUSIC

CHURCH MUSIC

COKESBURY PRESS

NASHVILLE

THE SINGING CHURCH

Copyright, MCMXXXVIII

By WHITMORE & SMITH

All rights in this book are reserved. No part of the text may be

reproduced in any form without written permission of the publishers,

except brief quotations used in connection with reviews in a magazine

or newspaper.

_Set up, electrotyped, printed, and bound by the Parthenon Press at

Nashville Tennessee, United States of America_

“_Be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and

hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart

to the Lord._”

(Eph. 5: 18, 19.)

PREFACE

In preparing this discussion of the Christian hymn, it has been my

ambition, not to be pre-eminently scholarly, but rather to be

pre-eminently helpful. The current treatment of this phase of church

worship is quite sufficiently thorough in its literary analysis and

historical research; there is nothing but praise for this aspect of

the study of the hymn in the many excellent treatises in America as

well as in England.

The fathers of American hymnology, Professors Austin Phelps and

Edwards A. Parks and Rev. Daniel L. Furber, set a good example to

later hymnologists in their _Hymns and Choirs_ in laying stress on the

thought and sentiment of the hymns and in devoting nearly one-third of

their study to “The Dignity and the Methods of Worship in Song,”

discussing choirs, congregational singing, organs, and many other

practical phases in the use of hymns. They gave little consideration

to the historicity of individual hymns; that viewpoint had not risen

above the horizon.

Later works have given more attention to the historical background.

The work of Dr. Louis F. Benson, the greatest hymnologist America has

produced, cannot be too highly commended for its scholarly

thoroughness and indefatigable research. His _The English Hymn_ and

_The Hymnody of the Christian Church_ should be found in the library

of every minister. Other valuable American treatises on hymns are

Ninde’s _Story of the American Hymn_, Gilman’s _Evolution of the

English Hymn_, Reeves’ _The Hymn as Literature_, Marks’ _Rise and

Growth of English Hymnody_, and Tillett’s _Our Hymns and Their

Authors_, all of which are most helpful and illuminating discussions

bearing on the literary and historical aspects of Christian hymns. On

the other side of the sea are other most valuable studies of the hymn.

Horder’s _The Hymn Lover_ is particularly fresh and inspiring. Others

are instructive regarding the individual hymns, such as Josiah

Miller’s _Singers and Songs of the Church_, John Telford’s _The

Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated_ and _Evenings with the Sacred Poets_,

and W. T. Stead’s _Hymns That Have Helped_. Supreme above them all is

Julian’s _Dictionary of Hymnology_, which is a stupendous work of vast

comprehensiveness and indefatigable industry, the last word in the

history and critical study of Christian hymns of all lands and all

Christian ages.

The justification of another survey of the field lies in the fact that

all these admirable books confine themselves to the purely literary

and historical data regarding each hymn, with side glances in only a

few cases at the practical values involved. While the fundamental urge

of expressing religious emotions back of Christian hymns is not denied

or even deprecated, the emotional values are not developed or

stressed.

In order to assure this lacking element of practical helpfulness, this

discussion includes four chapters on the purposeful use of hymns in

the work of the Church.

It is proper that I should recognize the sympathetic and cordial

helpfulness in an advisory way of Professor Herman von Berge, my

editorial associate in the musical work to which I have devoted the

larger part of my life. His scholarship and wide practical experience,

both as pastor and theological seminary professor, have helped me

solve some problems that rather daunted me. Acknowledgment is also due

to my son, Rev. Edward H. Lorenz, and to Mrs. F. C. Goodlin, my

private secretary, in typing and proofreading my longhand manuscript.

Last but not least, the co-operation of my brother, Dr. D. E. Lorenz,

organizer of the church of the Good Shepherd in New York City and its

pastor for thirty-four years, in the indexing and proofreading, calls

for grateful recognition. Only an experienced author can fully measure

the value of such efficient helpers.

E. S. L.

Dayton Ohio.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 17

THE PLACE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE HYMN.

The Impulse to Sing Is Constitutional in Man.

Biblical Authority for the Singing of Hymns.

The Use of Hymns in the Development of the Christian Church.

Cultural Value of Hymns.

Spiritual Value of Hymns.

The Value of Singing Hymns Too Often Overlooked.

The Need of Emphasis on Efficient Use of Hymns.

PART I

THE CHARACTER OF THE HYMN

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS A HYMN? 25

I DEFINITION OF THE HYMN.

Importance of Accurate Definition.

Inadequate Definition.

Definition Must Be Based on Practical Considerations.

Types of Hymns.

Definition of the Congregational Hymn.

II THE HYMN MUST BE POETRY.

To Be Poetry, It Must Be Emotional.

It Must Have Poetical Form.

It Must Be Poetic in Spirit.

The Hymn Must Have Unity.

The Poetical Element Is Contributory Only.

III THE CHRISTIAN HYMN MUST BE DISTINCTLY RELIGIOUS.

Poems of Semi-religious Fancy Are No Hymns.

Mere Moralizing Will Not Serve.

Special Propaganda Is Not Admissible.

Christian Hymns Should Be Genuinely Christocentric.

IV SCRIPTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE HYMN.

Hymns Based on the Scriptures.

Use of Scriptural Forms Desirable.

V THE HYMN MUST BE FITTED FOR MASS SINGING.

Congregational Singing Is a Pronouncedly Christian Exercise.

Meter Essential to Mass Singing.

VI PRACTICABILITY FOR ACTUAL USE.

Ideas Must Be Plainly Evident.

Hymns May Not Be Extremely Individualistic.

Distracting Figures and Forms of Expression.

Verses Must Be Complete in Themselves.

Musical Limitations.

Outworn Hymns.

Mistaken Objections to Some Hymns.

CHAPTER II

THE PURPOSE AND VALUE OF HYMNS 40

I THE IMPULSE TO WRITE HYMNS.

II PURPOSE IN WRITING HYMNS.

The Influence of Purpose.

The Purpose Must Affect Only the Practical Aspects.

III PURPOSE OF THE USER OF HYMNS.

IV PURPOSES SERVED BY SINGING HYMNS.

Hymns Unite Christians in Worship and Christian Activities.

Hymns Concentrate Interest and Attention.

Hymns Afford a Means of Expression for the Congregation.

Hymns Provide Help and Comfort in Dark Hours.

Hymns Afford Clear Expression of Christian Truth.

Hymns Give Opportunity for Active Participation by All.

Hymns Provide Variety.

Hymns Create a Religious Atmosphere.

Hymns in the Home.

Hymns in Personal Work.

V REASONS FOR THE MINISTER’S APPRECIATION OF HYMNS.

Hymns Are Evidence of the Effect of the Bible.

Hymns and Psalms Affected the Life of Church.

Hymns in Personal Christian Experience.

Hymns as Stimulating the Spiritual Life of the Minister.

Hymns Approved by Paul.

Hymns in the Early Church.

Hymns Prepared the Church for Periods of Marked Progress.

VI STRANGE INDIFFERENCE TO HYMNS.

The Minister’s Indifference.

Indifference of the Congregation.

CHAPTER III

THE LITERARY ASPECT OF HYMNS 53

I WHAT MAKES THE HYMN LITERATURE?

Its Character as a Transcript of Life.

Its Wide Distribution.

Its Acceptance Through Many Generations.

Its Profound Influence.

II OBJECTIONS TO RECOGNIZING ITS LITERARY CHARACTER.

Due to Narrow Definition of Literature.

Due to Failure to Realize Limitations of Hymns.

Some Critics and Their Criticisms.

III THE WRITING OF HYMNS.

The Handicap of Thought and Diction.

The Handicap of Meter.

IV LITERARY QUALITY NOT TO BE OVERESTIMATED.

Literary Quality Not the Supreme Consideration.

Literary Quality Should Be Subconscious.

CHAPTER IV

THE EMENDATION OF HYMNS 63

I THE CHANGES IN OUR HYMNS.

Early Changes.

The Abuse of the Editorial Revision.

The Return to the Originals.

II PRINCIPLES OF EQUITY INVOLVED IN THESE CHANGES.

The Rights of the Original Writer.

The Limits of the Author’s Rights.

III EFFECT OF CHANGES ON QUALITY.

Loss of Original Writer’s Vision.

Biblical Precedent.

IV ANALYSIS OF CHANGES MADE.

The Omission of Verses.

Reconstructing and Rewriting Faulty Hymns.

Minor Felicitous Changes.

CHAPTER V

THE CONTENT OF THE HYMN 76

I ITS RELATION TO GOD.

Thanksgiving.

Prayer for Future Blessing.

Adoration.

The Hymn of Communion.

II RELATION TO THE SINGER.

The Hymn of Emotion.

The Hymn of Inspiration.

The Hymn of Personal Experience.

The Hymn of Meditation.

The Hymn of Exhortation.

The Didactic Hymn.

The Doctrinal Hymn.

The Homiletical Hymn.

The Hymn of Propaganda.

Hymns of the Social Gospel.

Special Hymns.

The Great Hymnic Themes.

CHAPTER VI

THE GOSPEL HYMN 89

Lack of Discrimination.

Wrong Assumptions of the Opposition.

Unfairness in Comparisons Made.

Criteria for Evaluation.

Gospel Hymns and the Unsaved.

Gospel Hymns and the Demands of Worship.

Gospel Hymns in the Preparatory Service.

Gospel Hymns in the Laboratory.

The Advantages of Gospel Hymns.

Discrimination in the Use of Gospel Songs Needed.

PART II

HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN HYMN

CHAPTER VII

APOSTOLIC ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 103

SACRED SONG IN THE NEW CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

The Rise of Sacred Song in Apostolic Times.

Apostolic Emphasis of Sacred Song.

Traces of Hymns in the Epistles.

The Hymns of the Apocalypse.

“The Odes of Solomon.”

The Failure of Apostolic Spiritual Songs to Survive.

CHAPTER VIII

THE POST-APOSTOLIC HYMN 109

The Post-Apostolic Church a Singing Church.

The Earliest Surviving Hymns.

The Relation of Hymns to Psalms and Canticles.

The Hymn as Propaganda.

CHAPTER IX

THE GREEK HYMNODY 114

Introduction. THE SYRIAC HYMN-WRITERS.

I EARLY GREEK HYMNS.

II THE LATER GREEK HYMNS.

CHAPTER X

THE LATIN HYMNODY 119

I THE BEGINNING OF LATIN HYMNODY.

II EARLY LATIN HYMN-WRITERS.

III GREAT LATIN HYMNS.

IV MEDIEVAL DEVOTIONAL POEMS.

V MEDIEVAL POPULAR HYMNODY.

CHAPTER XI

LUTHER AND THE GERMAN HYMN 130

I PRE-REFORMATION VERNACULAR HYMNS.

II LUTHER’S RELATION TO GERMAN HYMNODY.

CHAPTER XII

THE LATER GERMAN HYMNODY 137

I THE RISING STANDARD OF LITERARY VALUES.

II THE GOLDEN AGE OF GERMAN HYMNODY.

III THE PIETISTIC HYMN-WRITERS.

IV GERMAN REFORMED HYMNODY.

V TRANSITION TO RATIONALISTIC HYMNS.

VI RATIONALISM IN HYMNODY.

VII HYMNS OF RENEWED RELIGIOUS LIFE.

VIII HYMNS OF PIETISTIC TYPE.

CHAPTER XIII

METRICAL PSALMODY 148

I CALVIN’S CONCEPTION OF CONGREGATIONAL SINGING.

II CALVIN’S FOLLOWERS MORE EXTREME.

III MAROT’S SUCCESSFUL VERSIONS.

IV DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENEVAN PSALTER.

V ENGLISH PSALM VERSIONS BEFORE STERNHOLD.

VI VERSION OF STERNHOLD AND HOPKINS.

VII THE SCOTCH VERSION.

VIII ROUS’ VERSION.

IX TATE AND BRADY’S “NEW VERSION.”

X AMERICAN PSALMODY.

XI THE VALUE OF THE PSALM VERSIONS.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ENGLISH HYMN BEFORE WATTS 158

I THE EARLIEST ENGLISH HYMN.

II ENGLISH HYMNODY SUBMERGED BY REFORMED PSALMODY.

III ENGLISH LITERARY IDEALS UNFAVORABLE TO HYMN-WRITING.

IV THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIC OF WRITING SINGING HYMNS.

V THE IDEAL OF THE SINGING HYMN REALIZED.

CHAPTER XV

ISAAC WATTS AND HIS PERIOD 168

I THE HYMNIC NEED OF THE TIME.

II THE LIFE OF WATTS.

III WATTS AS A HYMN-WRITER.

IV WATTS’ ARGUMENT FOR THE HYMN.

V WATTS’ INSISTENCE ON PRACTICABILITY.

VI THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF WATTS’ HYMNS.

VII CONTEMPORARIES OF WATTS.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WESLEYS AND THEIR ERA 180

I THE INFLUENCE OF WATTS ON THE WESLEYS.

II THE HOME OF THE WESLEYS.

III THE MORAVIAN INFLUENCE.

IV JOHN WESLEY.

V CHARLES WESLEY.

VI CHARLES WESLEY’S HYMNS QUITE SUBJECTIVE.

VII WATTS AND CHARLES WESLEY.

VIII ISSUES OF THE WESLEYAN HYMNS.

IX THE METHODIST TUNES.

X INFLUENCES OPPOSING THE WESLEYAN HYMNS.

XI OTHER METHODIST HYMN-WRITERS.

XII CALVINISTIC-METHODIST HYMN-WRITERS.

XIII BAPTIST HYMN-WRITERS.

CHAPTER XVII

HYMNS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 193

I RISE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

II EARLY COLLECTIONS OF EVANGELICAL HYMNS.

III EVANGELICAL HYMN-WRITERS.

IV HYMN-WRITERS OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.

V CONTEMPORARY HYMN-WRITERS.

VI MINOR HYMN-WRITERS.

VII THE HYMNS OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.

CHAPTER XVIII

AMERICAN HYMNODY 209

I THE TRANSITION FROM PSALMODY TO HYMNODY.

II THE INTRODUCTION OF WATTS’ HYMNS.

III THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN HYMNODY.

IV COLLECTIONS OF AMERICAN HYMNS.

V EPISCOPAL HYMN-WRITERS.

VI UNITARIAN HYMNODY.

VII LATER ORTHODOX HYMN-WRITERS.

PART III

PRACTICAL HYMNOLOGY

CHAPTER XIX

THE STUDY OF HYMNS 229

I IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY OF HYMNS.

II PERSONAL ADVANTAGES OF SUCH STUDY OF HYMNS.

Literary Pleasure.

Literary Culture.

Development of Emotional Nature.

III THE PRACTICAL VALUES OF INDIVIDUAL HYMNS.

Classifying Hymns by Their Nature.

Classifying Hymns by Their Fitness for Definite Purposes.

IV THE MINUTE STUDY OF HYMNS.

Analysis of the Hymn.

The Background of the Hymn.

Making a Hymnal of His Own.

Memorizing Hymns.

V A STUDY OF METHODS OF USE.

Using Hymns in Sermons.

Studying Responsiveness of the Congregation.

Studying Methods of Announcement and Securing Participation.

Studying Use of Hymnal for Specific Purposes.

VI A STUDY OF THE TUNES.

CHAPTER XX

THE PRACTICAL USE OF HYMNS 248

I THE HYMN AS A MEANS TO AN END.

II ANALYSIS OF PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF HYMNS.

III THE USE OF HYMNS FOR CREATING RELIGIOUS INTEREST.

IV THE HYMN AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR TEACHING TRUTH.

V HYMN SERMONS AND HYMN SERVICES.

VI THE USE OF HYMNS IN EMERGENCIES.

CHAPTER XXI

THE SELECTION OF HYMNS 256

I SELECTION SHOULD SECURE UNITY OF SERVICE.

Narrow Conception of Unity.

Broader Conception of Unity.

Unity Based on Purpose.

II SUGGESTIVE SELECTIONS OF HYMNS.

Hymns for Service on God’s Omnipotence.

Hymns for Service on God’s Love.

Hymns for a Missionary Service.

III IMPORTANCE OF THE TUNES.

CHAPTER XXII

THE ANNOUNCEMENT AND TREATMENT OF HYMNS 266

I THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF HYMNS.

II THE TREATMENT OF HYMNS.

EPILOGUE 274

REFERENCES AND NOTES 277

GENERAL INDEX 285

INDEX OF HYMNS 291

INTRODUCTION

THE PLACE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE HYMN

The Church of God has been and is a singing church. This was true in

the antediluvian centuries, which was its seminal period, for some of

its canticles have survived. In its pupal stage, the Old Testament

church life developed both the form and the content of the future

hymnody.

To the solo forms of the preceding period, the Mosaic social and

religious organization now adds both the choral and the congregational

forms of vocal worship. To the fear and awe of previous generations,

the Christian development of the Church of God has added the intimate

phases of adoration, of gratitude, of love, based on consciousness of

communion with the Triune Deity.

Outside of the Israelitish Church and its Christian consummation,

there has been little or no song in religious worship. The heathen

deities were honored only with rude vocal and instrumental noises made

by temple singers and players. It is the Church of God under all

dispensations which was a singing church. To this day the voice of

sacred song is practically absent from heathen temple.

_The Impulse to Sing Is Constitutional in Man._

In the beginning, song was a spontaneous expression of feeling, being

based on man’s original constitution as fully as breathing or

speaking. Its exercise did not rise high enough in the consciousness

of men, nor so conspicuously affect the current of events, that

account should be made of it in the sketchy outlines of the early

history of the race. None the less do we hear unrelated echoes from

Lamech and Jubal,[1] and from Laban’s complaint that Jacob gave him no

opportunity to bid farewell “with songs, with tabret, and with harp.”

[2] During the great Exodus, these echoes multiply and become more

articulate at the Red Sea,[3] at the digging of the well at Beer,[4]

about the walls of Jericho,[5] Deborah,[6] Barak,[7] and Hannah,[8]

and the school of the prophets,[9] developing a grand _crescendo_

which culminates in the full-voiced chorus and orchestra of the times

of David and Solomon.[10] Undoubtedly all these were surviving

manifestations of the unbroken tide of social and religious song that

flowed on through the ages. The Hebrew church carried on the model

constructed by the organizing instinct of Samuel and the musical and

literary genius of David, through the succeeding ages, and passed on

the devotional impulse to the Christian Church.

_Biblical Authority for the Singing of Hymns._

If any authority for the use of hymns were needed beyond the unfailing

urge of a sanctified soul to find expression for its spiritual

experiences and to persuade other souls to seek a like blessed

privilege, there would be ample provision in the development of

religious song in the Jewish church, in the participation of Jesus in

such a song at so high a peak of religious solemnity as the

institution of “The Lord’s Supper,”[11] in the use of song by the

Apostles in their private meetings and in unusual personal experiences

from the very beginning,[12] in the exhortations of Paul[13] and

James,[14] and in the choral scenes of the great Apocalypse.[15]

_The Use of Hymns in the Development of the Christian Church._

But the use God has made of song through the succeeding centuries of

the development of the Christian Church, is an even more striking

indication of the high importance placed upon sacred song by the

divine mind.

The results of the thoughtful use of song, both in ancient times and

the recent past, abundantly illustrate its value and are genuine

laboratory proof of its power in deepening the spirituality of

individuals, of communities, and even of nations. The hymns of Huss

and of Luther, the psalmody of Calvin and of Knox, the preparatory

effect of the hymns of Watts for the great Second Reformation in

England and its intensification by the hymns of the Wesleys, the

joyous singing of rudely fashioned psalms and the newly introduced

hymns in the Great Awakening in New England, the great evangelistic

movement in America and in England with its enthusiastic singing of

unpretentious Gospel songs—all establish on unquestionably scientific

basis the spiritual value of sacred song.

_Cultural Value of Hymns._

Compare the number of people in any given city or community who read

poetry in any of its forms with the number of church attendants who

read, even when they do not sing, from three to eight hymns every

Lord’s Day. In literary influence, unconsciously absorbed, this wide

use of hymns is vastly more effective upon the public at large than

the more intensive and conscious influence of distinctly literary

verse.

Millions of homes in Great Britain and America have copies of the

Bible and of some hymnbook, while few of them have books of poetry.

Phrases from hymns and psalms are a large part of the religious

vocabulary of millions. They are quoted not only in sermons, but in

essays and general writings and in the public press, perhaps more

generally than are poems.

They have been appreciated by the greatest minds, who found them to be

of great comfort and even delight, including such men as Benjamin

Franklin (who first issued Watts’ hymns in America), George

Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and William Ewart Gladstone.

They deeply interested the man, Matthew Arnold, although the literary

critic, Matthew Arnold, had no use for them.

_Spiritual Value of Hymns._

Hymns touch and influence the most intimate life of men, the moral and

spiritual, and are always influential for good. They concentrate the

comforting truths of the Gospel, make them rememberable; what is even

more important, they add the emotional vitality to those truths that

make them real and actual.

To leave out the hymns from a single service might be an interesting

experiment; but omit them permanently, as was the former custom among

the Friends, and note how arid and flat the service becomes.

To some, the hymnbook is simply the Bible in another form, bringing

its doctrines, its ideals, its hopes, its promises, its comforts, and

its spiritual inspirations in a more apprehensible form. Having passed

through the crucible of the actual personal experience of the writers

of the hymns, they are more concrete, more appealing, more actual.

_The Value of Singing Hymns Too Often Overlooked._

Since the hymn has so high a spiritual value, it is all the more

distressing that its possibilities of spiritual helpfulness are so

generally overlooked and ignored by our ministers and their people.

Even where it seems to be distinctly cultivated and emphasized, it is

often the merely physiological effects that are sought. In other

apparently earnest endeavors to develop its value, there is the

aridity of merely artistic and literary emphasis, or the formal

liturgical aspect that is stressed!

There is an absence of clear comprehension of what the hymns are

intended to accomplish, of their meaning, of the emotions they are

supposed to express, and of the methods to be used to vitalize them

and to make them effective. They are used mechanically, in deference

to tradition and good ecclesiastical form. Most ministers select hymns

to fit the themes of their discourses, fitness depending solely on

logical relations.

The spiritual life of the churches is not only the poorer and the

shallower because of this loss of the quickening influence of the

hymn, but this mechanical attitude is carried over to the other

exercises of the divine service. The preacher who sings mechanically

will pray mechanically, preach mechanically.

_The Need of Emphasis on Efficient Use of Hymns._

The actual fact is that in the hymn the preacher has a most valuable

factor in making his service spiritually effective. Even as a

perfunctory exercise it has at least a social value; but if its

emotional and spiritual possibilities are fully developed and

exploited, it becomes one of the most impressive and thrilling means

of securing genuinely religious results among his people. It is a

tragedy that so many clergymen have such dull and unattractive

services when through a proper use of hymns they might be made

thrillingly interesting. Professor H. M. Poteat, of Wake Forest

College, does not use too severe language in his _Practical Hymnology_

when he says, “As a result of inexcusable ignorance, carelessness, and

laziness, the singing of hymns, in all too many churches, instead of

being an act of worship, has degenerated into a mere incident of the

service, holding its place solely because of immemorial custom.”

It is the purpose of this treatise at least to prevent the ignorance

Professor Poteat complains of so bitterly. The other difficulties can

be removed only “by fasting and prayer.”

THE SINGING CHURCH

PART I

THE CHARACTER OF THE HYMN

_Chapter I_

WHAT IS A HYMN?

I. DEFINITION OF THE HYMN

_Importance of Accurate Definition._

Before undertaking the study of the hymn in its various aspects and

relations, theoretical and practical, it should be very carefully

defined. This is all the more necessary because the word “hymn” is

used to cover so wide a sweep of religious poetry, and because our

discussion is to be largely limited to its practical use in church

work.

Dr. Austin Phelps’ test of a genuine hymn, “Genuineness of religious

emotion, refinement of poetic taste, and fitness to musical

cadence—these are essential to a faultless hymn, as the three chief

graces to a faultless character,”[1] is a very clear and charming

statement of some essentials of a hymn, which needed emphasis in his

rather prosaic day, but does not include all the requisites of a

useful hymn.

_Inadequate Definition._

The narrow etymological definition of a hymn would confine it to

sacred poems that, in at least some part of them, are directly

addressed to some person of the Deity. St. Augustine limits the word

“hymn” to “songs with praise to God—without praise they are not hymns.

If they praise aught but God, they are not hymns.” Even now there are

hymnologists who insist upon this limited conception. No less a writer

than W. Garrett Horder, in his fresh and illuminating _The Hymn

Lover_, insists that “the cardinal test of a hymn should be that it is

in some one, if not the whole of its parts, addressed to God.” This

shuts out the use of sacred poetry in instruction, inspiration,

exhortation, and special practical applications of hymns. Moreover, if

the hymn is to be limited to worship, then the unconverted can never

sing sincerely in the public service, and the ancient and medieval

churches were justified in withdrawing the privilege of religious song

from the general laity.

_Definition Must Be Based on Practical Considerations._

The hymn is simply a means to the supreme end of all religious effort.

That form of the hymn, that method of its use, and that musical

assistance, which realize most fully the immediate and ultimate ends

in view under given circumstances can be approved and used. This

practical basis of actual spiritual results must govern in formulating

the conception of the Christian hymn, as well as in forms of worship

and prayer, in preaching, or in church organization.

Since our discussion of the hymn has in view its contributing

efficiently to concrete spiritual results, its definition must have a

practical basis. Etymological, scholastic, traditional, abstractly

idealistic considerations can have only minor weight.

_Types of Hymns._

The hymn may be viewed from too many angles to confine it to any one

definition. Hence we must recognize different types of the hymn: (a)

There is the poem regarding religious life and feeling that cannot be

brought within the limitations of a musical setting, constituting the

_Reading Hymn_; (b) we have the formless, but elevated, expression of

worship or religious truth that at best can only be chanted, which we

may call the Canticle, in which may be included such hymns as the Te

Deum, the Sanctus, and unmetrical psalms; these, together with poems

that are expressions of emotion, yet are not fitted for mass singing

but may be effectively set to music of a different order, may be

recognized as Solo, or Choral, Hymns, such of The Stabat Mater, The

Dies Irae, and Sunset and Evening Star.

There is left us the sacred poem of such a form and type that it may

be called the _Congregational_ or _Singing Hymn_, which is really the

subject of the present practical discussion, and may be strictly

defined as follows:

_Definition of the Congregational Hymn._

The Congregational Hymn is a poem expressing worship, praise,

thanksgiving, and prayer on the Godward side; personal spiritual

experience, emotion, and inspiration on the human side; and

instruction on the religious side. It must be adapted to mass thinking

and expression, in a form fitted to be sung by a Christian

congregation, and calculated to express and stimulate or create

religious feeling and purpose.

II. THE HYMN MUST BE POETRY

_To Be Poetry, It Must Be Emotional._

The initiating force of all poetry must be emotion of some kind. That

emotion may be mere earnestness, it may be satire, it may be

satisfaction in contemplation of beautiful scenes, or satisfaction in

ideas and memories, or displeasure at impressions painful or

abhorrent. Few of us realize how unfailing is the flow of emotion in

our minds responding to the world about us and in us.

To view life and the world through the eye of reason is valuable, of

course; but if that vision lacks the support of the eye of emotion, it

brings only a silhouette, without perspective, wanting a sense of

reality. That is the weakness of abstract thinking, whether in

theology or political economy.

If the hymn, therefore, is to perform its functions, it must be

definitely emotional to a greater or less extent. This is particularly

true of hymns of Christian experience or in the hymn’s functioning in

inspiration and exhortation. To confuse animal excitement with emotion

is bad psychology. The genuine emotionality of a hymn is the best

criterion of its practical value, for only through emotion can the

will be reached.

_It Must Have Poetical Form._

The first requirement in this definition is that the hymn must be

poetry. It should have meter and rhyme, else there can be no musical

setting practicable for congregational use. The first task Calvin and

his associates faced, after reaching the conclusion that only the

inspired Psalms could be sung in the public religious assembly, was

the preparation of a metrical version. True, the Psalms had been sung

by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, but only as chants by

priestly choirs. In the English church service, these chants were

frequently only led by the choir, the congregation joining in their

singing. But this was practicable only in larger and long-established

congregations, and even then there was more or less confusion. In

general, this chanting was a failure, and the English church adopted

the metrical versions. The use of the Psalms for responsive readings

in our modern church services is a definitely practicable way of

utilizing their liturgical and spiritual values.

The ostensible hymns of the Greek Church, of which Dr. Neale and Dr.

Brownlie have furnished translations, or rather transformations, are

not verse but prose. They were not sung by the congregations, or put

into their hands, but were reserved for the reading of the clergy.

In like manner, the Latin hymns, although poetical in form—often

complicated to an absurd degree—were not sung by the people, but were

versified devotions inserted in the prose Psalms usually read by the

priests.

In the Reformed churches for many centuries the word “hymn” referred

to verses of “human composure,” as opposed to metrified inspired

Psalms.

The famous American hymnologist, Dr. Louis J. Benson, lays less stress

on this metrical form: “A Christian hymn, therefore, is a form of

words appropriate to be sung or chanted in public devotions.” This

opens the way for the inclusion of the “Te Deum Laudamus,” the

“Sanctus,” and other canticles among our hymns. But as these historic

texts are rarely or never sung by the people outside of the Church of

England service, and used chiefly as texts for more or less elaborate

musical compositions sung by choirs, we may accept the common

conception of the hymn as a metrical composition.

_It Must Be Poetic in Spirit._

While having the superficial music of the regularly recurring accents,

and the liquid harmony of the vowels and consonants of the words as

they flow through the lines, there must be also the deeper, more

entrancing music of the literary grace of spiritual thought singing

its beautiful expression. If poetry is “the expression of thought

steeped in imagination and feeling,” all the more must the hymn be

expressive of religious thought transfigured by deep and sincere

emotion.

While a hymn may be didactic, formulating doctrine, or enforcing

obligation, it is not a really good and effective hymn unless the

thought or exhortation is vitalized by imagination and emotion. Arid

versification of Christian doctrines metaphysically conceived, or of

ethical discussions with no heat of conviction, will stir no pulses of

body, mind, or soul, but will conduce to the all too prevalent sense

of the unreality of religious ideas and life.

_The Hymn Must Have Unity._

It must have unity of thought, emotion, and expression, all growing

out of a definite vision of emotion, having a beginning, middle, and

end, which mark the progress of the idea or feeling seeking

formulation.[2]

_The Poetical Element Is Contributory Only._

Yet this element must be felt in the spirit of the hymn rather than in

intention. Preciosity of phrase, elaborate metaphors and similes,

obscure allusions, flights of fancy, are rarely in place. John Newton,

the great hymn writer, speaks to this point in his usual forceful way:

“Perspicuity, simplicity, and ease should be chiefly attended to; and

the imagery and coloring of poetry, if admitted at all, should be

indulged in very sparingly and with great judgment.” Sir Roundell

Palmer is more detailed in his criticism: “Affectation or visible

artifice is worse than excess of homeliness; a hymn is easily spoiled

by a single falsetto note.”[3]

The emphasis of the literary and poetical elements in hymns has

produced some most valuable sacred lyrics, notably the hymns of Keble

and Heber; but occasionally it has also led to such refinement, to

such sought-out subtlety, and to such conscious preciosity that the

virility and emotional contagion of what might have been an otherwise

really effective hymn have been lost.

III. THE CHRISTIAN HYMN MUST BE DISTINCTLY RELIGIOUS

_Poems of Semi-religious Fancy Are Not Hymns._

Poems of fancy with a few religious allusions cannot be classed as

Christian hymns. The objection to the “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere”[4]

has been rather heatedly urged, and there is no small justification

for the criticism. The aboriginal idea of “the happy hunting grounds”

might be referred to by its rather invertebrate fancy, instead of the

heaven of the Christian faith. Eugene Field’s “The Divine Lullaby” so

vaguely suggests the divine care that it can hardly pass muster as a

hymn. For use as a hymn, a poem must be explicitly Christian in

thought and expression.

_Mere Moralizing Will Not Serve._

That a poem has a good moral does not authorize it to pose as a

Christian hymn. “Brighten the Corner Where You Are” cannot be

recognized as a Christian hymn, since it has no direct religious

significance. There are recent ostensible sociological and

humanitarian hymns that are open to the same criticism. It is not

enough that the underlying assumptions are of Christian origin; they

must be fundamentally religious, no matter what the application to

practical living may be.

_Special Propaganda Is Not Admissible._

The value of hymns as a method of introducing and enforcing doctrines

was recognized by the enemies of Christianity early in its history.

The Arians in Asia Minor and in Northern Africa, and later throughout

the Roman Empire, flooded the world with songs sung to the popular

melodies attacking the deity of Christ; and by their influence nearly

wrecked Christianity. In our own day various “sports” from

Christianity, and hybrids with other religions, are issuing

collections of songs and garbled Christian hymns to serve their

purposes. The Buddhists of Japan also are taking Christian songs

bodily, with such changes as seem to them necessary. Unitarian hymnal

editors have not hesitated to alter orthodox hymns to suit their own

views.

That these emasculated hymns are no longer Christian hymns need not be

argued at length. The difficulty is that they have lost the kernel of

genuine Christian thought. The same is true of humanistic lyrics of

propaganda in behalf of brotherhood or social welfare or economic

justice, in which the religious motive is not urged. In general, a

controversial poem cannot be recognized as a hymn; there is no

religious help in controversy. Its emotions are combative, not devout.

_Christian Hymns Should Be Genuinely Christocentric._

A Christian hymn should express some definite recognition of God as

manifested in Jesus Christ. Even if, as in metrical psalms, the name

of Christ is not used, it should be implied, and unanimously accepted

as implied. It may be worship, praise, prayer, confession, acceptance

of salvation through Jesus Christ, spiritual experience, consecration,

Christian doctrine, Christian hopes—or any other aspect or activity of

the Christian faith. This is the very heart of the Christian hymn.

IV. SCRIPTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE HYMN

_Hymns Based on the Scriptures._

If the hymn is to be religious and Christian, it must be based on

scriptural ideas, of course; we have no other authoritative source for

our doctrines or experiences. All our other religious ideas and

methods—our doctrines, our ethics, our religious ideals and

impulses—find their roots there. We cannot afford to sing far-fetched

inferences from unrelated scriptural passages when we have such bodies

of stupendous truth awaiting our contemplation, and when the hymnic

expression of the emotions which those high and conspicuous doctrines

call forth is so freely available. Scriptural truth, so plain that he

who runs may sing, is the only raw material from which Christian hymns

can be produced. It will provide for every religious need of the

individual and of the Church.

_Use of Scriptural Forms Desirable._

There can be no question but that when scriptural phraseology is used

spontaneously, it adds very much to the impressiveness of the hymn

because of the devout associations it brings up in the minds of the

singers. The hymn by so much acquires an authoritativeness and

elevation beyond ordinary verbiage.

But while the body of thought in a hymn must be distinctly religious,

and therefore scriptural, it does not follow that the forms of

expression must be scriptural as well. A distinguished writer on the

subject here seems to be at fault: “Nothing should be called a hymn

and nothing should be sung in our assemblies which is not virtually a

paraphrase—and that a very faithful one—of Scripture passages, whether

they are immediately connected in the Holy Word or not.” Apply that

rule to our hymnbooks and what would we have left?

Although biblical phrases do occur in many hymns, a very close

adherence to this rule would stifle the poet’s spontaneity and make

his hymn stiff and mechanical, like most of the metrical psalms. Such

a rule may seem very devout to the cursory reader, but really it is

mischievous; it is sheer bibliolatry, an emphasis of the letter that

killeth at the expense of the spirit that maketh alive.

V. THE HYMN MUST BE FITTED FOR MASS SINGING

That the hymn is a distinctly social expression, participated in by

the varied personalities massed in a congregation, introduces marked

limitations that cannot be evaded.

_Congregational Singing Is a Pronounced Christian Exercise._

It is a remarkable fact that only in Hebrew and Christian worship is a

congregational use of hymns conspicuous. With all their literary and

poetic urge for expression, the Greeks had no singing connected with

their temple rites.[5] In so far as the Egyptians had musical elements

in their temple ritual, it was choral and not congregational. In

visiting pagan temples, one is struck by the utter absence of

organized assembled worship; what worship occurs is individual only.

The Vedic hymns were not singing hymns, but reading hymns, for recital

and meditation. According to Max Mueller, the only share the women had

in the sacrifices was that the wife of the officiating priest, or head

of the house, should recite the necessary hymns. Although in India

there is singing connected with great festivals and processions, the

songs used are so obscene that respectable Hindus are making an effort

to have the public singing of them forbidden. They are usually sung by

the female attendants of the idol, temple prostitutes, who are the

professional singers of these ostensibly religious songs.[6]

The reason for this absence of true hymns is correctly indicated by W.

Garrett Horder in his _The Hymn Lover_: “But so far as the material

before us enables us to form an opinion, it is that hymns, as an

essential of worship, have been mostly characteristic of the Christian

and, in a less degree, of its progenitor, the Hebrew religion. Nor is

this much to be wondered at, since it is the only religion calculated

to draw out at once the two elements necessary to such a form of

worship—awe and love—awe which lies at the heart of worship, and love

which kindles it into adoring song.”

_Meter Essential to Mass Singing._

The form of the verse is practically of commanding importance. The

musical form of the hymn tune definitely fixes the form of the stanza.

It must not be complicated or free in form, else the tune loses its

needed simplicity and symmetry. More elaborate forms of stanza may do

for solo or choral numbers, where skilled composers write music that

follows the vagaries of the form of the text; but the general

congregation cannot be expected to sing tunes of elaborate and

confusing structure. Although an occasional hymn of unusual form of

stanza is fortunate in finding a happy musical mate, like “Lead,

kindly Light” or “O Love, that wilt not let me go,” the usual hymn

must be adapted to one of about a dozen fundamental meters. Although

the Gospel song is not so circumscribed in its form, because its

setting goes with it, its forms are only rhythmical variations of the

standard meters.

VI. PRACTICABILITY FOR ACTUAL USE

_Ideas Must Be Plainly Evident._

The thought of a good hymn must lie on the surface. It must appeal not

only to the scholarly and subtle minds in a singing congregation, but

also to all who are expected to join the religious exercise. Paul’s

word regarding unknown tongues applies here: “Except ye utter by the

tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be understood, how

shall it be known what is spoken?” The practical Paul enforces the

parallel by saying a few verses further on, “I will sing with the

spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.” No matter how

high the thought or how deep the sentiment of a poem may be, or how

felicitously they may be expressed, it is not an effective hymn if

study (for which there is no time at the moment of singing) is

required to bring out its meaning and feeling.

_Hymns May Not Be Extremely Individualistic._

While a hymn may be the expression of the individual poet, it must be

an appropriate expression of the mind and heart of the whole

congregation as it sings. Yet in addition to the evident, clearly

expressed thought, there may be singing, _sotto voce_ between the

lines, of deeper experiences and higher soarings of the spirit that

only prolonged meditation can reveal.

Some sacred poems express a religious emotion in so individual and

unusual a way that they are not at all fitted to express the emotion

of a congregation. As an illustration of a poem too personal and

individualistic, here are a few stanzas of a hymn of Rev. Samuel J.

Stone, which is found in an increasing number of current hymnals:

“My feet are worn and weary with the march

On the rough road and up the steep hillside;

O city of our God, I fain would see

Thy pastures green where peaceful waters glide.

* * * * * * *

Patience, poor soul! The Saviour’s feet were worn,

The Saviour’s heart and hands were weary too;

His garments stained and travel-worn, and old,

His vision blinded with pitying dew.”

This is a beautiful poem that would make an admirable text for a solo,

but it is out of place on the lips of a congregation. Compare with

this the very useful hymn by Bonar:

“I was a wand’ring sheep,

I did not love the fold;

I did not love my Shepherd’s voice,

I would not be controlled.”

Every one of the first eight lines of this once widely used hymn

begins with the pronoun of the first person singular, yet there is no

particular individuality in this confession; it is the expression of

the common experience in a straightforward manner, void of all

idiosyncrasy.

In some hymns there is found an intensity of feeling that leads to an

apparent extravagance of expression that a single soul can sometimes

sincerely accept as the vehicle of its own experience, but which a

gathering of miscellaneous people cannot sing without the great mass

of them being insincere. For a careless person idly to sing with

Faber,

“I love Thee so, I know not how

My transports to control,”

or

“Ah, dearest Jesus, I have grown

Childish with love of Thee,”

is sheer blasphemy. It is the sin of Uzziah!

The following verses from one of Charles Wesley’s hymns combine the

two faults of extravagance and too-intense individualism:

“On the wings of His love I was carried above

All sin and temptation and pain;

I could not believe that I ever should grieve,

That I ever should suffer again.

I rode in the sky (freely justified I),

Nor envied Elijah his seat;

My soul mounted higher in a chariot of fire,

And the moon it was under my feet.”

_Distracting Figures and Forms of Expression._

Other poems are so full of imagination, so crowded with unusual and

almost bizarre figures of speech, that they fail to be the natural

expression of the religious emotion of an assembly of religious

people. George Herbert wrote a great many religious poems whose beauty

and charm are only enhanced by their quaint and unusual imagery.

Occasionally a hymnal editor ventures on a selection, but it is so

foreign to the methods of thought and expression of the churches as

not to appeal to their taste and feeling. Take the beautiful poem on

the Sabbath day, “O day most calm, most bright.” The first line is

spontaneous, expressive, and musical, and appropriate for a hymn. The

second line, “The fruit of this, the next world’s bud,” with its

antithetical structure, is already somewhat formal and forced. But

when the third and fourth lines,

“The indorsement of supreme delight,

Writ by a Friend and with His blood,”

offer a purely legal and unpoetical figure, one’s sense of song is

entirely obscured.

Yet, when Herbert’s imagery is most matter-of-fact and ungenial, there

is a body of thought and there are a certain fitness and a clearness

of relation that command admiration.

_Verses Must Be Complete in Themselves._

Hymns that have long, intricate sentences extending through two or

more verses are impracticable for use in a song service, as the break

between the stanzas dislocates the development of the idea. Every

verse must be practically complete in itself, no matter what its

relation to the development of the general idea of the hymn may be.

_Musical Limitations._

It must also be recognized that there are limits to the expression

congregational music can give. A poem that is vividly descriptive, or

is in part intensely dramatic, cannot be recognized as a practicable

hymn, since all stanzas have the same tune, a tune which cannot vary

its musical effect to suit the differing stanzas.

Then there are hymns that are too majestic, too glowing, for a

hymn-tune composer to write a fitting tune out of the limited

resources of musical effects available to him. Such a hymn is that one

of Henry Kirke White, of lamented memory:

“The Lord our God is clothed with might,

The winds obey His will;

He speaks, and in His heavenly height

The rolling sun stands still.

* * * * * * *

His voice sublime is heard afar,

In distant peals it dies;

He yokes the whirlwind to His car

And sweeps the howling skies.”

With a chorus of a thousand trained singers, an organ of extraordinary

power, and an orchestra of five hundred instruments, all concentrated

on “St. Anne,” one might make the music adequate to the words, but in

an ordinary congregation the incongruity is painful. This must remain

a reading hymn.

_Outworn Hymns._

The efficient hymn must not distinctly belong to previous generations

in its style and vocabulary or in its peculiar formulation of

doctrine. Only as many of the older hymns have been purged of their

obsolete and archaic words and turns of thought have they survived.

For instance, we no longer sing, “Eye-strings break in death,” as

Toplady originally wrote it.

_Mistaken Objections to Some Hymns._

Some minds, although strong and keen, seem to have a very small visual

angle. Some such persons condemn all hymns that are not direct praise.

The line in Lyte’s “Abide with Me”—“Hold Thou Thy cross before my

closing eyes”—has been objected to as Romish by some, blind to the

fact that it is a prayer to Christ.

Others exclude hymns in which the pronoun of the first person singular

occurs. Bishop Wordsworth, himself a hymn-writer of no mean merit

(_vide_ “O Day of rest and gladness” and “See, the Conqueror rides in

triumph”), says, in his introduction to his _Holy Year_, that while

the ancient hymns are distinguished by self-forgetfulness, the modern

hymns are characterized by self-consciousness. As illustrative

examples, he cites the following: “When I can read my title clear,”

“When I survey the wondrous cross,” “My God, the spring of all my

joys,” and “Jesus, Lover of my soul.” It is strange that so keen a

mind should not have seen that his objection would apply to all

liturgies!

The minister with his eye fixed upon his spiritual purpose can afford

to ignore all these supersensitive critics who have refined refinement

until sensibility becomes hyperesthesia, a veritable disease.

The use of hymns of a somewhat indifferent literary value is often

thoughtlessly condemned because the importance of the recognition of

its topic is overlooked. Such a topic as “Church Erection,” or

“Education,” may not occasion the deep feeling necessary to the

writing of a great hymn, and yet it must find a place in the practical

work of the church. Here again Dr. Phelps gives a useful warning: “The

severity of aesthetic taste must not be permitted to contract the

range of devotional expression in song.... Our desire to restrict the

number of hymns upon occasions, and other hymns of infrequent use,

ought not to banish such hymns entirely.... A hymn intrinsically

inferior, therefore, may be so valuable relatively, as justly to

displace a hymn which is intrinsically its superior.”

Aside from the topical symmetry referred to, this principle will find

other applications in the practical use of hymns. Some inferior hymns

have for some occasions a greater immediate effect than much better

ones, perhaps because of a more singable tune or because its sentiment

fits into the situation or because it makes a desired impression in a

more efficient way.

_Chapter II_

THE PURPOSE AND VALUE OF HYMNS

I. THE IMPULSE TO WRITE HYMNS

The writing of the best hymns of the Christian Church was not a matter

of ulterior purpose, any more than is the singing of the hermit thrush

in the wilderness. They are the result of the urge for expression that

lies back of all the best architecture, literature, and art of the

human race. There is the vision, the sense of reality, the subjective

response to truth, to beauty, and to exalted experiences that must

find an objective bodying-forth in some appropriate form.

The great doctrines of Christianity loom up in their dignity and

majestic sweep, in their adequacy to the highest and deepest needs of

the human soul. The spontaneous hymn is but a cry of astonished

delight, of exalted inspiration, of self-forgetful contemplation of

the revealed glory, an instinctive appeal to other souls to share the

rapture of the vision. Such a hymn is not calmly planned; it forces

itself upon the mind of the rapt poet.

II. PURPOSE IN WRITING HYMNS

_The Influence of Purpose._

This instinct for sharing with others, for winning their attention and

participation in a blessed experience, may produce a measure of

premeditation and become a more or less clearly defined purpose. The

idea of the needs of other souls, or of the Church at large, may

become an additional factor, bringing in the recognition of the

importance of adaptation to the mental processes of those to be

helped, or of practical methods of reaching them.

Also the originating impulse may grow, as in the case of Isaac Watts,

out of the call of some perceived need among the writer’s fellows, or

of some lack in the work of the Church. The emotional and poetic

elements may be marshaled by bringing up the memory of some past

exalted vision of the truth, or of some former quickening spiritual

experience, or (better yet!) by an abiding realization of the truth of

some doctrine, or by a perennial flow of devout feeling.

Dr. Martineau insisted that “every spontaneous utterance of a deep

devotion is poetry in its essence, and has only to fall into lyrical

form to be a hymn.” But he went further and declared that “no

expression of thought or feeling that has an ulterior purpose (i.e.,

instruction, exposition, persuasion, or impression) can have the

spirit of poetry.” His idealism failed to realize that the spirit of

poetry in a writer may be associated with a purpose of helpfulness

urging expression in an efficient form. To delete all the hymns in our

church collections that have definite spiritual purposes would rob the

Christian Church of most of its devoutest and most helpful hymns.

_The Purpose Must Affect Only the Practical Aspects._

Both the literary and devotional value of a hymn of purpose will

depend upon the writer’s ability to reproduce the mental conditions of

a purely spontaneous hymn. If the purpose can be confined to the

practical aspects of the hymn, while the spiritual and poetic impulses

control the thought and spirit, then the most valuable and effective

hymn may be produced.

But if the ulterior purpose fully occupies the mind of the writer, the

hymn will be mechanical and uninspiring. In the more prolific hymn

writers, like Watts and Charles Wesley, the relative influence of

vision and purpose is easily detected. In their best hymns, the

purpose is still present, but latent, and its guidance unconscious.

III. PURPOSE OF THE USER OF HYMNS

When we speak of the purpose of the hymn, therefore, it is not so much

the mental attitude of the writer that is to be considered as that of

the user of the hymn. He finds a body of religious verse ready to his

hand, some of which is adapted to secure spiritual ends, or fitted to

the social conditions which he seeks to improve. His purpose controls

not the production of available verse, but the selection from existing

stores of religious lyrics.

The choice of hymns by the user will be determined by the

characteristics and limitations which his practical purposes demand.

There are three inevitable factors: the end to be realized, the people

to be influenced, and the hymns adapted to affect both.

IV. PURPOSES SERVED BY SINGING HYMNS

_Hymns Unite Christians in Worship and Christian Activities._

The singing of hymns is the most practicable method of uniting

assembled Christians in worship and praise and of creating a common

interest in the various church activities. This is really the leading

purpose of such a gathering.[1]

Worship in prayer, when it is spontaneous, must be largely individual;

when it is expressed in responsive ritual, there is great danger of

mechanical stiffness in the outward form of the prayers and in their

reading, and also in the limited area of the thought to be expressed.

But song is the natural and spontaneous vehicle for exalted feeling

and gives the greatest opportunity for varied sentiment. No one

individual could hope to strike all the strings of noble praise as

have a thousand saints who have written our hymns.

_Hymns Concentrate Interest and Attention._

There is a concentration of interest and attention. The common

thought, the common emotion, the common impulse of devotion, the

common expression, the unanimous attitude of will and purpose—all

quicken the susceptibilities and enlarge the spiritual horizon. God

seems nearer, more actual, and more realizable as the source of every

blessing. Abstract ideas of God as Father, of his Son Jesus Christ as

Saviour, of the Holy Spirit as Comforter, quicken into blessed

realities. It is easy to appropriate the joy, the reverence, the

adoration, the intimate communion with God, which the hymns so

clearly, so movingly, so contagiously, even so rapturously express,

and to make them intimately our own. This is true worship, the high

peak in man’s experience of God.

The social elements in human nature come into play and intensify the

religious emotions. The personal distractions and inhibitions that

hamper devotion are eliminated. Under properly effective conditions

there is a mass attitude, a mass emotion, that needs only a mass

expression to affect every individual unit. The contagion of the crowd

in expression and in action will affect the most sluggish and

indifferent and carry them into an experience that they could not have

reached alone. Add to this the stimulation of the music and the

physical exhilaration of singing, and the worship is lifted to a pitch

of enthusiasm not otherwise possible.

This worshipful use of hymns exercises a most inspiring and vitalizing

influence on the participants. The reaction of the mind and soul of

the singers to the exalted sentiments sung must have a profoundly

spiritualizing effect upon their natures. One cannot sing the old

Latin hymn, “Jesus, the very thought of Thee,” in any genuine way

without feeling an accession of greater love to Christ; or “My faith

looks up to Thee,” by Ray Palmer, without a deeper realization of

one’s dependence on Jesus Christ for salvation and for keeping grace.

[2]

_Hymns Afford a Means of Expression for the Congregation._

Another office of the church hymn is to give a voice to those deep

experiences in spiritual things that enrich the lives of the children

of God. Many excellent Christians are dumb, unable to give expression

to their genuine spiritual experiences. Others find their means of

voicing what they feel totally inadequate. The hymns they sing and

appropriate to themselves unstop their silent tongue. High tides of

spiritual blessings, times of refreshing when Christ is near to the

soul, hours of privilege when the whispering of the Holy Spirit is

heard, victories over fierce or subtle temptation when God’s grace

proves sufficient, moments of God’s overshadowing presence when the

whole world is transfigured, and a thousand other marvelous

experiences in the Christian life—all call for hymns to express them.

They must be tender hymns, ecstatic hymns, triumphant hymns that will

satisfy the craving of the soul to voice forth its deepest love, its

spiritual ecstasies, its strange sense of overcoming power. The dumb

soul, unable to speak of its explorations of divine grace, finds a

voice in these hymns written by saints who had the divine gift of

expressing like glimpses of the divine glory.[3]

_Hymns Provide Help and Comfort in Dark Hours._

These hymns not only bring the joy of giving articulate expression to

these mountain-top experiences, thus reviving them again and again,

but they validate these experiences by showing that others have shared

them and give them reality in the hours when faith fails and the

temptation arises to consider them mere mirages and illusions. Others

have been with us in Bunyan’s Beulah Land and verify our experiences

of its delights.

_Hymns Afford Clear Expressions of Christian Truth._

Another purpose in the use of hymns is to secure the clearest, most

impressive, most appealing, most rememberable statement of the leading

truths of the Christian faith that will fix them most ineradicably in

the consciousness and the life of the individual and of the church.

Such hymns must not be dry formulations of abstract doctrines,

desiccated by logical discussions and metaphysical hair-splittings.

Truth that is dry is no longer vital truth. Its vitamins of reality,

of the deep feelings called forth by a sense of its actuality, of

spiritual and poetic intuition, of self-propagating vitality, have

been lost. Aridity of orthodoxy begets aridity of heterodoxy and is

usually responsible for it.

Didactic hymns that will serve the purposes of the Church must be

living hymns, expressing truth transfigured by the feelings aroused by

the contemplation of its glorious reality. “There is little heresy in

hymns.” Heresies for the most part arise from arid mechanical

reasonings; hymns flow from the intuitions of the heart.[4] This

explains why some of our best hymns about Christ were written by

Unitarians.

_Hymns Give Opportunity for Active Participation by All._

Another purpose of the singing of hymns is to secure the active

participation of the whole congregation in the service. Although the

responsive reading is valuable in this respect, the union of all the

voices of the people in song is more striking, calls for more

aggressive effort, and definitely wins the attention of all to the

sentiments expressed in the hymn. It creates more interest and

stimulates both body and mind.

_Hymns Provide Variety._

The singing of hymns also adds marked variety to the order of service

and so renders it more attractive. It supplies climaxes in different

parts of the program and relaxations of attention to the spoken word.

It represents a greater contrast with the other exercises because it

calls for active participation and produces entirely different

effects. The lack of song in the services of the Friends has been one

of the greatest factors in the limited growth of a movement

representing deep earnestness, conscientiousness, and spirituality.

This variety and the opportunity to take a modest part in the service

have proved among the greatest attractions. The more singing, the more

people, is the universal experience.

_Hymns Create a Religious Atmosphere._

The use of hymns creates an atmosphere of religious interest and

feeling that is realized not only by the believers in the

congregation, but by the unregenerate as well. They may not enter

fully into the spirit of the exercises, but an intellectual interest

is awakened by the singing that may rise into spiritual interest and

into an approach to the spiritual life. Rev. George F. Pentecost,

famous in his day as a preacher and as a very successful evangelist,

recognized the aggressive and practical value of hymn-singing: “I am

profoundly sure that among the divinely ordained instrumentalities for

the conversion and sanctification of the soul, God has not given a

greater, besides the preaching of the Gospel, than the singing of

psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. I have known a hymn to do God’s

work in a soul when every other instrumentality has failed—I have seen

vast audiences melted and swayed by a simple hymn when they have been

unmoved by a powerful presentation of the Gospel from the pulpit.”

_Hymns in the Home._

No small practical value in Christian hymns is found in their use in

family life where young and old sing them together and so sanctify and

spiritualize the household atmosphere. The storing of the memories of

the children with the leading hymns of the church is no small factor

in their Christian nurture. The older members of the family also will

be stimulated spiritually, finding in the memorized hymns strength and

solace while they bear the heat and burden of the day. We have lost

the spiritual atmosphere in many of our Christian homes, not only by

the neglect of the family altar, but also by the neglect of the

singing and memorizing of the hymns and tunes of the church.

One of the chief influences in the preparation of Ira D. Sankey for

his great life-work was the singing of hymns as the family gathered

around the great log-fire in the homestead. He not only familiarized

himself with the old hymns and tunes and popular sacred songs, but he

was impressed by their spirit and by their adaptation to the needs of

the human soul.

_Hymns in Personal Work._

The use of hymns in personal work, in the visitation of the sick, in

improvised religious gatherings in private homes, has been largely

abandoned, much to the loss of the churches. When D. L. Moody was

trying out Ira D. Sankey during the latter’s pregnant first visit to

Chicago, his singing to the sick and to the spiritually needy ones

they called upon was a notable item in the practical test.

Prof. Waldo S. Pratt, of the Hartford Theological Seminary, whose most

valuable book has been quoted in these pages again and again, sums up

the results of an intelligent and devout use of hymns most admirably:

“Hymn-singing may surely be called successful when it affords an

avenue for true approach to God in earnest and noble worship; when it

exerts a wholesome and uplifting reflex influence on those who engage

in it, establishing them in the truth and quickening their

spirituality; and when it creates a diffused atmosphere of high

religious sympathy and vigorous consecration, so that even unbelievers

are affected and constrained by it.”[5]

But if these purposes of the singing of hymns are to be realized and

their values exploited, they must be properly employed. They must be

made vital and their messages brought home to the hearts of the

people. There should be no listless, merely formal singing of noble

Christian hymns. There is unwitting sacrilege in doing that. The truth

of God, the high experiences of his saints, are rendered unreal and

lose their appeal—they become stale.

There are multiplied millions of true believers who duplicate the

unhappy experience of a prominent London preacher who declared that he

did not exactly disbelieve the cardinal doctrines of Christianity, but

that they had become unreal to him. They were only abstractions,

playthings of his logical faculties, husks from which the living

kernel had fallen, which left his soul hungry. How could a minister by

the discussion of what seemed to him unrealities inspire and

spiritualize his hearers? How can any minister to whom the hymns in

his hymnal are dry and abstract rhymes about vague and uninteresting

platitudes at best, be able to make his song service a vital

contribution to the spiritual progress of his people? If the hymns

stir him, he can easily make them stir the people.

V. REASONS FOR THE MINISTER’S APPRECIATION OF HYMNS

_Hymns Are Evidences of the Effect of the Bible._

The hymnbook is an evidence of what the Bible can do with unregenerate

human nature. That the truth of the Bible should be able to take

Newton, the slave driver, and make of him a minister of God, not only

himself writing such hymns as “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,”

“Glorious things of Thee are spoken,” or “How sweet the name of Jesus

sounds,” but inspiring and encouraging the poor hypochondriac, William

Cowper, so that from his heart should well forth the hymns, “There is

a fountain filled with blood,” “God moves in a mysterious way,” and

“Sometimes a light surprises,” is in itself one of the great evidences

of Christianity.

_Hymns and Psalms Affected the Life of the Church._

The extraordinary result of the use of hymns and psalms in the life of

the church and of believers is another reason for the minister’s

valuing hymns highly. The awkward lines of Sternhold and Hopkins’

version of the psalms entered into the speech and private devotion of

Scotch and English Christians as even the Bible itself did not,

becoming a very liturgy to the condemners and flouters of liturgies.

Thomas Jackson in his life of Charles Wesley remarks that “it is

doubtful whether any human agency has contributed more directly to

form the character of the Methodist societies than the hymns. The

sermons of the preachers, the prayers of the people, both in their

families and social meetings, are all tinged with the sentiments and

phraseology of the hymns.”

_Hymns in Personal Christian Experience._

Listen to the personal experiences of Christians in our own day and

you will hear more reference to hymns than to the Scriptures. There is

now no such committing to memory of passages of the Bible and of hymns

as there was in preceding generations, but almost without set purpose,

by simple absorption, the average Christian can quote more lines of

hymns than he can of Scripture verses. This extraordinary place in the

affections and life of Christian people is no derogation to the Bible,

for the hymns are simply the Bible in another form.

_Hymns as Stimulating the Spiritual Life of the Minister._

To some men who lack emotional and poetic insight, the hymnbook may

appear dry and uninteresting. It certainly is uninteresting to the

unspiritual man, no matter how poetical he may be, and this will

account for the occasional attack upon the hymns of the Christian

Church as being without poetical power or merit. But the Christian

minister, who deals with spiritual things, for whom the emotions of

the human heart give a great opportunity for sowing the seed of life,

ought to find the study of his hymnbook a great delight.

_Hymns Approved by Paul._

If there were no other reason why a minister should be profoundly

interested in hymns and their use in religious work, the example and

exhortations of Paul should be sufficient. He does not lay as much

stress upon preaching, nor upon praying, as he does on singing. He

admonishes the Ephesians that they “be filled with the Spirit”; and

that divine possession should manifest itself in “speaking to

yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making

melody in your heart to the Lord.” A part of this exercise of singing

was to consist of “giving thanks unto God and the Father in the name

of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[6]

He exhorts the Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly

in all wisdom,” and one of the results of such indwelling was to be

“teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and

spiritual songs”; he even urges earnestness and sincerity in such

singing, “Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”[7] Such

singing should not be with mere enthusiasm, for he assures the

Corinthians that his singing was not only devout but intelligent as

well: “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the

understanding also.”[8] There is more than a suspicion that in some of

his most striking passages he is quoting a current hymn or

interjecting a part of an improvised hymn.

_Hymns in the Early Church._

The emphasis placed on the value of song by the early church is made

clear by Tertullian, who states that at the current “love feasts” each

person in attendance was invited at the close of the feast to sing

either from the Holy Scriptures or from the dictates of his own spirit

a song of adoration to God.

In the middle of the third century St. Basil testifies to the value of

congregational singing as practiced in his day: “If the ocean is

beautiful and worthy of praise to God, how much more beautiful is the

conduct of the Christian assembly where the voices of men and women

and children, blended and sonorous like the waves that break upon the

beach, rise amidst our prayers to the very presence of God.” The

remark is made by one of the ancient fathers that the singing of the

churches often attracted “Gentiles”—i.e., unconverted persons—to their

services, who were baptized before their departure.

_Hymns Prepared the Church for Periods of Marked Progress._

While by no means the only cause for such progress, a great increase

in the writing and singing of hymns has been a conspicuous feature in

every great religious movement. The converse is also true that when

the privilege of congregational singing was curtailed or withdrawn,

spiritual declension followed.

The victory of the Church over Arianism was a singing victory both in

the Eastern and Western churches. The Crusades were marked by

processional singing of religious songs. The singing Lollards and

Hussites heralded the Great Reformation, and the most effective

preaching of Huss and Luther and Calvin was the hymns and metrical

psalms they introduced. Watts prepared the way for the Wesleyan

revival, and the Wesley brothers entered the path he had blazed and

made a great highway of Christian song. Dour New England found its

voice during the Great Revival under Jonathan Edwards and later under

Nettleton. The preachers who saved the pioneers of the Appalachian

range of mountains and the budding Middle West from relapsing into

paganism and savagery were “singing parsons” with their repertoire of

“spiritual” revival choruses and religious ballads.

Even Charles G. Finney, the great praying evangelist and later founder

of Oberlin College, whose revivals swept through New York and northern

Ohio like a prairie fire, had the popular _Christian Lyre_, edited by

Joshua Leavitt, as a breeze to fan the flame, although he often

forbade the singing of hymns in certain conditions in his meetings.

William B. Bradbury, S. J. Vail, Robert Lowry, William H. Doane, Fanny

Crosby, George F. Root, Philip Phillips, P. P. Bliss, and many others

had written and taught the American people the songs that prepared the

way for the Moody and Sankey revival movement which so profoundly

affected the religious life of both America and England and, through

the missionaries, intensified the faith of the Christian Church

throughout the world.

Through all the centuries it has been the singing armies that have won

the religious wars. The successful denominations and individual

churches have been pre-eminently singing churches led by singing

preachers who swayed their communities. Cardinal Newman is now chiefly

remembered for his hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light.” Washington Gladden, a

great religious leader, will have his memory kept green by his hymn,

“O Master, let me walk with Thee,” and Bishop Phillips Brooks fifty

years hence will be chiefly remembered for his Christmas carol, “O

little town of Bethlehem.”

VI. STRANGE INDIFFERENCE TO HYMNS

_The Minister’s indifference._

In view of the considerations and facts here marshaled, how strange is

the general lack of interest among ministers toward their hymn

service, toward the hymns themselves, their history, their meaning,

the methods to be used in exploiting their great value. Is it saying

too much to suggest that three out of five ministers have no adequate

conception of the possibilities of hymn singing or appreciation of its

value?

_Indifference of the Congregation._

Outside of the lamentable weakness of egocentric human nature it is

difficult to discover why the part of the divine service devoted to

sacred song should be so utterly subordinated to the other parts of

the sacred program; but that it is true is so evident to any

reasonable observer that it needs little or no proof. The janitor

religiously postpones opening or shutting windows, or shaking down the

furnace, during the prayer, or sermon even, until the hymn is being

sung. Members of the congregation seize the opportunity to leave the

room, or to consult with others about church affairs in all too

audible voices.

The hymn ought to be the consummate note of prayer and praise and

devout meditation on sacred themes, the great co-operative climax in

the worship of God. It is too often looked upon as a merely physical

stimulus to liven up the tedious service.[9]

This ought not so to be! For the primary object of assembling the

saints is united worship—united praise. There can be no true public

prayer without an element of worship; but it has a recognition of

personal needs and even wants. This human factor makes it a composite

of the human and the divine and lowers its dignity. In genuine praise

there is a forgetfulness of the human element and a rising into the

pure realm of the divine. In true praise the human soul is unconscious

of self and utterly absorbed in God.

Hence it is not too much to say that congregational song is the

supreme element in all worship.

_Chapter III_

THE LITERARY ASPECT OF HYMNS

I. WHAT MAKES THE HYMN LITERATURE?

_Its Character as a Transcript of Life._

In so far as a hymn is a transcript of a genuine conviction,

intensified by emotion, or of a profound experience, it is literature.

There have gone into it vision, feeling, imagination, sincerity,

intimate experience—an appropriation of the influences life offers a

soul that gazes upon it with wide-open eyes. It is not the measure or

the rhyme that makes literature of a hymn. A bald formulation in

metrical form of doctrines dissected by metaphysical processes may be

called a hymn by courtesy, but it is not literature any more than

would be a textbook on mathematics.

But a hymn in which the hurried pulse and the throbbing heartbeat of

deep human feeling can be felt is genuine literature, a revelation of

human personality and of the collective life of which it is

representative. It is the story of the experience of an exploring soul

seeking knowledge of the deeper spiritual relations with God and his

Kingdom.[1]

_Its Wide Distribution._

The importance of the hymn as literature is further attested by the

response to it of the many generations which have made it the vehicle

of their religious life. Dr. Reeves calls attention to the wide

distribution of hymnbooks; they have come from the printing press by

the multiplied millions during the last four hundred years. Three

millions of the _Methodist Hymnal_ have been broadcast over the United

States, sixty million _Hymns Ancient and Modern_ over the British

Empire. Hundreds of other contemporary hymnals, both official and

unofficial, aggregate even more millions. If we add collections of

Gospel Songs, we get many millions more. No other form of literature

has had so wide a distribution. A single hymnal has had more active

readers than all the poetry in the world, ancient and modern.[2] To

dispose of an edition of one hundred thousand volumes of Palgrave’s

_Golden Treasury_, the standard collection of the poems of the ages

approved by critics, would take a score of years. Moreover, they would

go largely into libraries, private and public, for occasional

reference.

_Its Acceptance Through Many Generations._

But wideness of distribution is no final criterion of literary

quality, else our newspapers might lay an earnest claim to literary

standing. But these hymnals do not severally represent individual

writers, as do most of the books of poetry; they contain a common body

of hymns representing the major portion of all of them. That selection

of hymns, fundamental to all of them, has been culled out from the

great mass of sacred lyrics written through many centuries, by the

consensus of different generations, of different backgrounds, of

different grades of social and literary culture, of different peoples

and even races, and accepted as the most complete expression of the

fundamental Christian life of them all. If that unanimity of

responsiveness and practical endorsement by continued use does not

confer the accolade of literature upon that body of hymns, the

accepted definition of literature is faulty and inadequate.

_Its Profound Influence._

No other verses have been read so often. They have not only shaped the

religious thought and experience of vast peoples and developed their

character, but have affected their general modes of thought and forms

of expression and influenced their secular literature. Without their

rugged, ax-hewn version of the Psalms, would the Scotch have become

the stern, dour, conscience-driven people the world has learned to

know and value? Without the vigorous “spirituals” and the lively

rhythms of its gospel songs, would the American church life have

developed the freedom from ecclesiastical tradition and formalism, and

the fearless aggressiveness that has lighted the beacons of salvation

in every land? The hymn has been the expression of life, and in turn

has become the wellspring of life.

Whatever of culture and refinement other forms of literature have

brought has directly touched only a small minority, and but indirectly

the great mass of civilized peoples; but the hymn has had a direct

influence on the life and character of the mass of the people, and has

appealed to their instincts and imaginations and shaped their ideals

in the most immediate and striking way. Where one person has been

refined and enriched in mind by the poetry of Milton, or Wordsworth,

or Tennyson, a thousand have been comforted, inspired, and transformed

by Sternhold and Hopkins, Watts, or Wesley.

Archbishop Trench, the fault of whose hymns was chiefly that they were

too few, was admonished by his friend, John Sterling, to give more

attention to hymn-writing: “You would influence millions whom poetry

in any other form would never reach.”

II. OBJECTIONS TO RECOGNIZING ITS LITERARY CHARACTER

_Due to Narrow Definition of Literature._

In spite of these facts that surely entitle the hymn to be considered

literature in the most vital sense of the word, there are critics who

look upon it with undisguised indifference, if not with scorn. Partly

due to an utter lack of sympathy with the use of it, partly to an

academic idea of what literature really is, emphasizing form and

rhetorical interest, partly because its appeal is emotional and not

mainly intellectual, these objectors are blind to the larger interests

involved. If there is any truth in the insistence of some literary

critics that there are few hymns that are good from a literary point

of view, Montgomery’s statement may give a sufficient reason: “Our

good poets have seldom been Christians and our good Christians have

seldom been good poets.”[3]

_Due to Failure to Realize Limitations of Hymns._

A better reason is that such critics have seldom realized the

limitations the singing hymn presents to the poet. Milton was a great

poet, but he could not condense his ideas sufficiently or give them

the needed terse expression. He needed a large canvas, while the

successful hymn-writer is confined to a miniature. Even Tennyson, who

succeeded in small lyrics, wrote only one hymn and that ill-adapted to

actual congregational use.

Palgrave, in the preface to his _Treasury of Sacred Songs_, compares

secular and sacred verse as follows: “Secular verse covers many

provinces: manners, incident, love, landscape, the vast sphere of

drama—in a word, all the many-colored romance of life. Sacred verse

can hardly go beyond one province: to expect masterpieces in one field

approximately numerous as those in the secular lyric is unreasonable.

Even more unreasonable is it, when of this single province a district

only is chosen for censure, and treated as the whole domain. Hymns,

well-nigh limited to the functions of prayer and praise, are precisely

that region in which a practical aim is naturally, almost inevitably,

predominant!”

_Some Critics and Their Criticism._

Dr. Samuel Johnson’s criticism of hymns may be brushed aside as based

on a wrong conception of poetry, which to his mind called not for

simplicity, but for something near to that artificiality which he

conceived of as art: “Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between

God and the human soul, cannot be poetical.”... “The paucity of its

topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of its matter

rejects the ornament of figurative diction.”

In mitigation of the false judgment of the old literary dictator, it

may be said that the golden age of English hymnody had not yet

arrived.

The later criticism of the hymn by Matthew Arnold represents more

fully the attitude of the literary critic in our own day. The

practical aspects of life were not ignored by him, but they did not

bulk large in his mind. Hence it is not surprising that, while he

fully comprehended the wide influence of the hymn, he had little or no

sympathy with its spirit and even less with its purpose, so that he

could write about it after this fashion: “Hymns, such as I know them,

are a sort of composition which I do not at all admire.... I regret

their prevalence and popularity among us.” Could anti-religious

rationalism go further?

Among more recent critics, Edmund Clarence Stedman speaks of the hymn

as “the kind of verse which is, of all, the most common and

indispensable.” But Professor Boynton in the _Cambridge History of

American Literature_, gives as much space to “Yankee Doodle” as he

does to American Hymnody and refers to its “sentimental ornateness,”

“tawdry sentimentalism,” and “banalities of evangelistic song,”

unconsciously drawing an unhappy portrait of his own spiritual

condition.[4]

The older criticism of the hymn had at least the merit of

thoughtfulness and serious consideration of its value and of its

shortcomings.

The hymns that would have satisfied literary critics would have

required a spiritual delicacy and refinement, an elegance and artistry

of phrase, a vagueness of religious idea devoid of genuine feeling,

that would shut them out from use in the workaday world in which we

live. To set aside the “good and useful purpose” acknowledged by

Matthew Arnold in the consideration of the hymn is to ignore its whole

reason for being, and, what is vastly more important, to ignore the

deepest needs of the human soul.

III. THE WRITING OF HYMNS

_The Handicap of Thought and Diction._

Alfred Tennyson clearly recognized the limitations that handicap the

writer of hymns. “A good hymn is the most difficult thing in the world

to write!” The hymn he did write, “Sunset and Evening Star,” beautiful

as it is, failed in practicability for congregational use. Its

unfitness for mass singing in its various phases is the chief

stumblingblock.

The hymn writer finds in the limitations, which he must bear in mind

as he writes, no small hindrance to spontaneity and poetic vision. He

must limit the thought not only to the comprehension, but to the

natural feelings of the people who are to sing what he writes. He must

not use unusual or polysyllabic words. Striking figures, startling

tropes, involved similes, obscure metaphors, allusions to things known

by but few, descriptive or dramatic lines, are all forbidden. Every

verse, whether in single or double meter, must be complete in itself,

whatever its relation in thought to what precedes or follows. There

must be unity, simplicity, condensation of thought, and yet a

clearness that shuts out involved thought or mysticism that cannot be

instantly grasped. The hymn writer is like a violinist called upon to

play on a single string.[5]

Thomas Hornblower Gill, an English hymn writer who is slowly gaining

recognition in current hymnals—_The Revised Presbyterian Hymnal_ has

five of his hymns—gives his conception of what hymns should be, in his

preface to his first volume, issued in 1868. He insists that the true

hymn is a true poem in every case, while it is debarred from liberties

of luxuriance which may be claimed by other poetry. “It may easily be

too figurative; it cannot be too glowing or imaginative... They should

exhibit all the qualities of a good song—liveliness and intensity of

feeling, directness, clearness and vividness of utterance, strength,

sweetness, and simplicity and melody of rhythm: excessive subtlety and

excessive ornament should be alike avoided.”

_The Handicap of Meter._

Not the slightest handicap is the necessity of choosing a form of

stanza that will at the same time fit the writer’s sentiment and be

adapted to singable tunes known to the congregations which are to be

lyrically served. This range of form is quite limited. Most of these

tunes call for iambic or trochaic measure, because anapaestic or

dactylic numbers lack the dignity and the impressiveness necessary for

general hymns.

The form of the stanza may take the elevated, heavy “Long” Meter, the

more widely expressive “Common” Meter, the sententious “Short” Meter,

“Sevens and Sixes,” “Eights and Sevens,” plain “Sevens” or “Sixes,” or

the more lively “Sixes and Fours” or “Sixes and Fives.”[6]

These different meters have very marked characteristics. It is really

marvelous how the instinct of true hymn writers in all generations has

unconsciously, or at most subconsciously, taken account of them and

with practical unanimity observed them.

The Long Meter is stately and dignified. It is the fit expression of

noble praise like the Long Meter Doxology, “Lord of all being, throned

afar,” “From all that dwell below the skies,” “Before Jehovah’s awful

throne,” or elevated sentiment like “God is the refuge of His saints,”

“When I survey the wondrous cross,” and “’Tis midnight, and on Olive’s

brow.” Its long, even lines, broken by no strong stops, afford a

smooth, graceful expression for general truths and Christian doctrine

in poetic form, such as “O Jesus, our chief cornerstone,” “Jesus shall

reign where’er the sun,” and “O Love! how deep, how broad, how high!”

The Common Meter is much more varied in its possibilities of

expression, as its unequal lines and alternate rhymes give greater

freedom. It is the prevailing meter of the old English ballad. It is

really the most adaptable and pliable form of stanza open to the hymn

writer, giving equal opportunity of expression to all emotions and

classes of truth. It is a fit vehicle alike for the elevated praise of

“All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” the majesty of “I sing th’

almighty pow’r of God,” the doctrinal statement of “There is a

fountain filled with blood,” the tenderness of “Jesus, the very

thought of Thee,” the vigor of “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,”

and the quiet resignation of “Father, whate’er of earthly bliss.” On

account of this adaptability it has become the Common Meter in fact as

well as in name. Its exclusive use in some of the collections of

metrical psalms shut out the use of tunes in other meters and so led

to the singing of only a few of the more popular Common Meter tunes;

the result was that the congregational singing in the churches in

England, Scotland, and America was nearly wrecked.

S. M. might stand for sententious meter as well as for Short Meter, as

the two short lines and the long pauses at the end of each of them

give it an emphatic, terse, even epigrammatic style. This may be seen

in “My soul, be on thy guard,” “Welcome, sweet day of rest,” “Stand up

and bless the Lord,” “Crown Him with many crowns,” and “Come, Holy

Spirit, come.” John Fawcett was not happy in the selection of this

meter for his otherwise very useful and precious hymn, “Blest be the

tie that binds,” as the strong pause at the end of the first line in

all but one of his stanzas cuts his sentences in two and makes the

hymn alike difficult to read and sing. The same difficulty will be

found in the reading of other hymns in this meter, the limitations of

which have not always been recognized by writers using it. It would be

a very slow, heavy meter did not the longer third line give it needed

movement.

The meter known as 6s lacks the longer third line and is therefore

peculiarly grave and disjointed. It is well adapted for hymns of

passive faith or resignation, such as “My Jesus, as Thou wilt,” “Thy

way, not mine, O Lord,” or for dolorous prayers like “My spirit longs

for Thee,” and “I hunger and I thirst.”

The meter 6s and 4s in its various forms might be supposed to be even

slower than the 6s because of the additional short lines of four

syllables each. The opposite is true. In some cases the first four

lines are rhythmically equivalent to two lines of ten syllables each,

so slight is the pause of actual thought at the end of the

six-syllable line, with the result that the slowness is quickened into

simple dignity and elevation. But even where the pauses at the end of

the first and third lines are long, the shorter second and fourth

lines, as in common meter, give added movement. In the other form of

6s and 4s, the first two six-syllable lines are so knit together by

their common rhyme and, if properly written, have so markedly a common

goal of completeness of thought in the third line toward which they

hurry that again the movement is hastened and the severity of the 6s

is mitigated. The same principle applies to the following three or

four lines, depending on the form examined. Hence we have in the

various forms of this meter some of our noblest hymns of prayer,

praise, and victory, such as “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” “More love to

Thee, O Christ,” “We are but strangers here,” “Fade, fade, each

earthly joy,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Rise, glorious Conqueror,

rise,” “Come, Thou Almighty King,” and “My country, ’tis of thee.”

IV. THE LITERARY QUALITY NOT TO BE OVERESTIMATED

_Literary Quality Not the Supreme Consideration._

Although poetical feeling and imagination and nice literary

craftsmanship are not to be undervalued, but rather to be earnestly

sought for in our hymns, after all, they are not the supreme

considerations. Practical use has proved many hymns that conspicuously

lacked them to have been supremely useful because of their spiritual

content, sincerely and lucidly expressed. When hymn writers like Watts

and Newton have deliberately ignored and even avoided literary values,

and yet have written among the most useful hymns in our collections,

the critic who insists on poetical quality has by no means a _prima

facie_ case. Charles Wesley was a poet, but in his valuable hymn “A

charge to keep I have” he is a pedagogue without poetic afflatus.

Standards of literary value, when not artificial, as in Samuel

Johnson’s case, have their place, but a place that is modest and not

supreme.

_Literary Quality Should Be Subconscious._

The danger in unduly emphasizing the literary aspect of hymns is well

expressed by Dr. Louis F. Benson: “The hazard is implicit in the very

motive of hymn singing; the heightening of religious emotion. The

danger is of mistaking sugary sentiment for true feeling and its

rhetorical expression in ‘soft, luxurious flow’ for true poetry.” In

other words, the conscious seeking of the hymn writer after literary

atmosphere and skill of treatment is fatal to genuineness of feeling,

and to his success in producing a true hymn.

It will do no harm to iterate here that the two essentials to a

successful hymn are spirituality and the power to express it so as to

reach the understanding as well as the hearts of the people who are to

sing. According to Paul, the first commandment in hymn writing and

singing is: “I will sing with the spirit”; the second is like unto it:

“I will sing with the understanding also.”

_Chapter IV_

THE EMENDATION OF HYMNS

I. THE CHANGES IN OUR HYMNS

_Early Changes._

The question of changes made in hymns by others than their writers

deserves consideration. The point is not that the individual preacher

is supposed to air his critical skill, but that he should understand

why changes have been made by hymnal editors and better appreciate the

principles involved and the literary niceties that are to be observed.

In the first compilations of hymnbooks, the rights of the authors of

the individual hymns were entirely below the horizon. Many hymns were

published without the names of their writers. To this day Charles

Wesley’s claim to “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” as against that of his

brother John, depends wholly on considerations of style and form of

stanza. There is not even a well-founded tradition.

It was the adaptation of the hymn to immediate actual needs that

counted, not the writer. There was no moral copyright, much less

legal, to stay the hand of the mutilator.

Watts did not hesitate to incorporate in his hymns lines and even

whole stanzas from the hymns of others. John Wesley had no scruples in

rewriting lines and stanzas and even whole hymns already in print.

Toplady’s alterations were often quite radical, as, for example, his

drastic revision of Charles Wesley’s “Blow ye the trumpet, blow”[1] to

suit his intensely Calvinistic views.

_The Abuse of the Editorial Revision._

Dr. Worcester, in this country, who issued several collections of

psalms and hymns, chiefly by Watts, was lavish in his alterations,

mostly for the worse—so much so that the New England churches

revolted. Lord Selborne said of these mutilations by many hands,

“There is just enough of Watts left here to remind one of Horace’s

saying that ‘you may know the remains of a poet even when he is torn

to pieces.’”

The needless alteration of hymns that occurred in these early days is

to be greatly deplored, especially of those most widely known. “Rock

of Ages” and “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” were fair targets for the

editorial spear—out of the twenty-four lines of the former only eleven

have escaped change. The line “When mine eyestrings break in death”

was the only one peremptorily demanding a change, although a few other

alterations may be accepted as slight improvements, as, for instance,

“wounded” instead of “riven” side. So many people have committed this

hymn with its differing lines to memory that when it is sung there is

frequently the clash of these variations instead of the desirable

uniformity of utterance.

The same is true of Wesley’s hymn. In spite of John Wesley’s warning

against changes in the Methodist hymns—“Hymn-cobblers should not try

to mend them. I really do not think they are able”—more than thirty

variations occur in the first stanza of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.”

The pity is that while uniformity is extremely desirable in these and

many other hymns, it is now out of the question. The several

variations have their partisan upholders.

James Montgomery spent years of his life amending and modifying the

hymns of others, but asked that others should not change his verses.

He insisted that if good people could not conscientiously adopt his

doctrines and diction, it was a little questionable in them to impose

theirs on him.

It is interesting to note that Montgomery could not “conscientiously

adopt the doctrine and diction” of the first verse of Cowper’s “There

is a fountain filled with blood” and substituted a verse of his own of

which he said, “I think my version is unexceptionable.” But hymnal

editors did not find it so and unanimously repudiated it. It was

regarded as “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.”

_The Return to Originals._

This abuse of the editorial revision produced a reaction, and in the

last half century, under the leadership of Dr. Louis F. Benson, a

strong movement appeared among hymnal editors whose slogan was “Back

to the originals!” In many cases that was not practicable, as the

changes made were evident improvements, but the new tendency often

proved to be a very useful one in restoring many a good original

phrase in place of a much inferior alteration.

II. PRINCIPLES OF EQUITY INVOLVED IN THESE CHANGES

_The Rights of the Original Writer._

There are some principles of equity that lie upon the surface. The

writer of hymns has rights that must be recognized. His name should be

given as its author. No name other than his own should be connected

with the product of his pen. Unless there are sufficient reasons, the

hymn should be given as he wrote it. If his name is given, no doctrine

or experience should be interpolated. In business affairs that would

be adjudged forgery in the second degree. If interpolations or changes

of ideas become necessary for practical reasons, due notice should be

given that the original writer is not responsible for the new ideas or

the changes of phraseology. Unitarian hymnal editors have not always

recognized this obligation. Our recent well-edited hymnals have been

scrupulous in this particular.

_The Limits of the Author’s Rights._

But there are distinct limits to the author’s rights. If the hymnal

were a merely literary compilation, the liberty to make changes would

not be admissible. But the hymnal is not an anthology; it is a

collection of hymns for a definite and practical purpose of an exalted

character—to aid congregations in the worship of God and in the

realization of the spiritual aims he has set before them. That purpose

has the right of eminent domain. If the original hymn has faulty lines

or weak verses that jeopardize its otherwise practical effectiveness,

competent editors of collections of hymns for congregational use have

the right to amend, or condense, and so add to its usefulness in the

work of the church, in so far as it does not affect the general spirit

and tenor of the original. Isaac Watts recognized this principle,

saying, “Where an unpleasing word is found, he that leads the worship

may substitute a better one.” Indeed, in 1737, he acknowledged that

“Many a line needs the file to polish the roughness of it and many a

thought wants richer language to adorn and make it shine—but I have at

present neither inclination nor leisure to correct and I hope I never

shall.”

III. EFFECT OF CHANGES ON QUALITY

_Loss of Original Writer’s Vision._

It has been strongly urged that the emendation of hymns is dangerous

to their quality; that the original writer was a better judge of both

thought and phrasing than the cold critic whose very attitude prevents

the high feeling that must inspire the most appealing forms of

expression.

But the protest overlooks the fact that the very fervor and urge of

fresh vision and its consequent emotion may prevent attention to nice

details of phraseology or even to the proper balance of parts of a

hymn. Furthermore, the writer with the creative urge may lack the

critical faculty and fine discrimination necessary to polish up his

verses after the impulse of writing has spent its force.

This being true, the editor who supplies the wanting critical attitude

shows no presumption, provided his vision is clear and his skill in

supplying more accurate, more melodious, or more practical phraseology

adds value to the hymn. Martin Madan was no hymn writer, but when he

rewrote Watts’ hymn,

“He dies, the Heavenly Lover dies!

The tidings strike the doleful sound

On my poor heartstrings; deep he lies

In the cold caverns of the ground,”

and gave us the noble stanza,

“He dies, the Friend of sinners, dies;

Lo! Salem’s daughters weep around;

A solemn darkness veils the skies,

A sudden trembling shakes the ground,”

he not only gave it a dignified and Biblical content and form, but he

rescued the hymn for the spiritual edification of coming generations.

_Biblical Precedent._

There is plenty of Biblical precedent. The original compiler and

editor of the Psalms, be he Asaph or Ezra, inserted a version of the

eighteenth psalm differing from the original as found in the

twenty-second chapter of Second Samuel. It cannot escape the most

casual reader of the New Testament that its quotations from the Old

Testament, whether poetical or prose, are by no means accurately

reproduced. Moreover, the writers of psalm versions from Marot and

Luther down to Watts did not hesitate to condense, alter, or

interpolate new ideas in their transcriptions of the sacred originals.

They had no sense of presumption; their minds were preoccupied with

the practical ends they were trying to serve.

IV. ANALYSIS OF CHANGES MADE

It may be instructive to study more in detail the occasions for

changes made in our hymns and learn the justification for many of

them. If some of them seem somewhat microscopic and even captious,

none the less they make for exactness, for nice discrimination, and

for more intelligent appreciation of the literary and spiritual values

of our magnificent body of hymns.[2]

_The Omission of Verses._

A very important change from the original of many hymns is the

omission of some of the less valuable stanzas, or even a condensation

of some of them by omitting unattractive lines.

“Oh for a thousand tongues to sing,” the fine hymn that opens all but

recent Methodist hymnals, originally began, “Glory to God and praise

and love,” and had eighteen stanzas. The hymn as now used consists of

stanzas 7 to 12 of the original. Some hymnals omit stanza 10.

In the Trinity hymn sometimes ascribed to Charles Wesley, “Come, Thou

Almighty King,” the second of the original five stanzas is always

omitted:

“Jesus, our Lord, arise,

Scatter our enemies,

And make them fall;

Let thine almighty aid

Our sure defense be made,

Our souls on thee be stayed;

Lord, hear our call.”

The evident imitation of the second stanza of the British National

anthem is too obvious:

“O Lord, our God, arise,

Scatter his enemies,

And make them fall.

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

Confound their politics,

On Him our hearts we fix;

God save the King.”

In Bishop Brooks’ original of “O little town of Bethlehem,” so widely

known and used, the fourth stanza is omitted:

“Where children, pure and happy,

Pray to the Blessed Child;

Where misery cries out to thee,

Son of the Mother mild;

Where charity stands watching,

And faith holds wide the door,

The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,

And Christmas comes once more.”

The reasons are not far to seek: the double rhyme in the third line is

so forced as to be awkward; the first two lines refer to Jesus in the

third person, but the next two in the second; more important still,

the stanza does not make a sufficient addition to the value of the

hymn to warrant the added length.

The stanza,

“Thy body slain, sweet Jesus, thine,

And bathed in its own blood,

While all exposed to wrath divine,

The glorious suff’rer stood,”

if retained, despite its medieval picture of our suffering Lord, would

have added nothing to Watts’ noble hymn, “Alas! and did my Saviour

bleed,” but rather would have hemmed the progress of its thought and

feeling.

Few of the lovers of Robinson’s classic hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of

every blessing,” would have enjoyed singing and visualizing the

omitted fourth stanza,

“O that day when freed from sinning,

I shall see thy lovely face!

_Richly clothed in blood-washed linen_,

How I’ll sing thy sovereign grace!”

A stanza was omitted from a hymn by Isaac Watts by Dr. Worcester, and

he was compelled by public sentiment to replace it in his next

collection. Who was right—Dr. Worcester, or Watts and the church

public?

“But while I bled and groaned and died,

I ruined Satan’s Throne;

High on my cross I hung and spy’d

The monster tumbling down.”

What a travesty in this stanza of Christ’s words, “I beheld Satan as

lightning fall from heaven”!

The omission of all the older hymns regarding “the state of the

unpenitent dead” in our more recent hymnals is due to their usually

rather lurid expressions, going beyond those of the Scriptures, to the

reaction in the church at large against the rather mechanical and

heartless emphasis of the painful doctrine—not only in hymns, but in

sermons as well—and also to the realization that it is not a theme

fitted for singing.

What modern congregation could sing Watts’ stanza formulating the

doctrine,

“Up to the courts where angels dwell,

It [the soul] mounts triumphant there;

Or devils plunge it down to hell

In infinite despair”?

When we come to the hymns constructed by selecting stanzas from long

poems—e.g., by John Keble or by John Greenleaf Whittier—we reach

marvels of skill in selection and co-ordination that have greatly

enriched English hymnody.

_Reconstructing and Rewriting Faulty Hymns._

John Wesley inveighed against “hymn-cobblers,” but he was a most

efficient and skillful “hymn-cobbler” himself. He deserves high

commendation for his literary skill and taste in cutting the rough

diamonds that passed through his editorial hands. A few instances will

illustrate his success.

“Before Jehovah’s awful throne” is recognized as one of Watts’ noblest

hymns of worship. But it is Wesley’s reconstruction that brought out

its essential nobility.

Watts began it in rather mechanical fashion,

“Sing to the Lord with joyful voice,

Let every land his name adore;

The British Isles shall send the noise

Across the ocean to the shore.”

Wesley omitted this stanza entirely. Beginning with the second stanza,

“With gladness bow before his throne,

And let his presence raise your joys;

Know that the Lord is God alone

And formed our soul and framed our voice”

(which shows that Watts’ inspiration had begun to rise), Wesley

transformed it into a majestic expression of pure worship:

“Before Jehovah’s awful throne,

Ye nations, bow with sacred joy;

Know that the Lord is God alone,

He can create and he destroy.”

He was equally successful with Watts’ third stanza:

“Infinite power, without our aid,

Figured our clay to human mould;

And when our wandering feet had strayed,

He brought us to his sacred fold.”

The first line is faulty: the accent of “infinite” is on the first

syllable: Watts placed it on the second. The second line conveys no

clear idea: how is clay “figured”? The third and fourth lines are bald

and ordinary, lacking in poetic grace. See how deftly Wesley took

Watts’ material and gave it grace and dignity:

“His sovereign power, without our aid,

Made us of clay and formed us men;

And when like wand’ring sheep we strayed,

He brought us to his fold again.”

Transforming Watts’ fourth stanza in like manner, he added a majestic

fifth stanza of his own:

“Wide as the world is thy command,

Vast as eternity thy love;

Firm as a rock thy truth shall stand

When rolling years shall cease to move,”

completing one of the noblest hymns in the language.

Another hymn of Isaac Watts was enriched by passing through the hands

of John Wesley. Besides correcting minor infelicities and curtailing

its impracticable length, he rewrote the third stanza of the very

popular hymn, “Come, ye that love the Lord,” transforming Watts’

“The God that rules on high

And thunders when he please,

That rides upon the stormy sky

And manages the seas,”

into

“The God that rules on high,

That all the earth surveys,

That rides upon the stormy sky

And calms the roaring seas.”

He might have gone further and obviated the break of the sentence

occurring between the third and fourth stanzas. Some hymnal editors

meet the difficulty by omitting both.

Rev. Martin Madan wrote no hymns; his only claim to immortality rests

on his emendations of the hymns of greater men. But he well deserves

to be remembered for some of his happy improvements of important

hymns. His revision of Watts’ hymn “He dies! the Heavenly Lover dies!”

has already been referred to.

Madan very fortunately changed Charles Wesley’s

“Hark how all the welkin rings,

Glory to the King of Kings,”

into the much more poetical lines:

“Hark! the herald angels sing,

‘Glory to the newborn King.’”

_Minor Felicitous Changes._

No small improvement in our hymns consists of the change of individual

phrases because of misplaced accents, unfortunate consonantal

combinations, inept metaphors, and phrases that are secular in spirit

and associations.

In Cowper’s “Jesus, where’er thy people meet,” the second line had the

word “inhabitest,” difficult to sing; it was changed to “Dost dwell

with those.”

In Bishop Ken’s “Evening Hymn” some bad cases of wrong accents have

been corrected. “Under thy own almighty wings” now is “Beneath the

shadow of thy wings,” and “Triumphing rise at the last day” is become

“Rise glorious at the judgment day.”

Isaac Watts’ theory that hymns should eschew poetic grace was carried

too far—into euphonic slovenliness. In “Welcome, sweet day of rest” he

wrote “One day amidst the place,” ignoring the fact that “amidst” is

not singable. “One day in such a place” is much more suave. In “Joy to

the world! The Lord is come!” he wrote in the first line of stanza

three “let sins and sorrows grow”; the excessive sibilation has been

removed by using singular nouns.

In Charles Wesley’s very useful hymn, “Ye servants of God, your Master

proclaim,” “The praises of Jesus” is substituted for “Our Jesus’

praises,” distributing the hissing s’s more musically. The second and

third stanzas are wisely omitted; few congregations could sing, with

the solemnity the rest of the hymn calls for, such lines as

“When devils engage, the billows arise,

And horribly rage and threaten the skies.”

Charles Wesley in his hymn, “Jesus, let thy pitying eye,” had a very

realistic vision of the crucifixion and wrote “My Saviour _gasped_,

‘Forgive!’” which for singing purposes was well emended to “prayed.”

How did it escape the eagle eye of his brother John? Or did the

influence of the Moravians, who were fond of these physical touches in

writing of the crucifixion, affect both the Wesleys?

The “Protestant Te Deum,” “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” has

fared well—or ill, according to the point of view—at the hands of

“hymn-tinkers.” Revisers have omitted

“Let highborn seraphs tune the lyre

And, as they tune it, fall

Before His face who tunes their choir,

And crown him Lord of all.”

They have transformed the stanza,

“Let every tribe and every tongue

That bound creation’s call

Now shout in universal song

The crowned Lord of all,”

into the nobler stanza,

“Let every kindred, every tribe

On this terrestrial ball,

To him all majesty ascribe,

And crown him Lord of all.”

Omitting one or two more stanzas, Dr. John Rippon has added a last

stanza that puts a fitting climax to the whole hymn:

“Oh, that, with yonder sacred throng,

We at his feet may fall!

We’ll join the everlasting song,

And crown him Lord of all.”

Edward Mote began his widely-used hymn, “My hope is built on nothing

less,” with a “stumble on the threshold,” writing “Nor earth nor hell

my soul shall move,” a very unintelligent plunging _in medias res_.

Was it Bradbury, who wrote the popular and effective tune that gave

the hymn wings, that had the happy impulse to combine parts of the

first and second stanzas, using the first two lines of the second

stanza and the last two of the first? This gave an arresting first

line and eliminated a line impossible to put on the lips of a general

congregation, “Midst all the hell I feel within.”

The very familiar and useful hymn of George Heath, “My soul, be on thy

guard,” is a notable example of the value of a competent editor’s

emendations. In stanza three Heath wrote,

“Ne’er think the vict’ry won,

Nor _once at ease sit down_;

_Thy arduous work_ will not be done

Till thou _hast got thy_ crown.”

Again in the fourth stanza he wrote,

“Fight on, my soul, till death.

God will thy work applaud,

Reveal his love at thy last breath,

And take to his abode.”

The improvement in both stanzas, as found in our hymnals, is obvious

at a glance.

Even so finished a poet as the distinguished historian Milman

disfigured his noble Palm Sunday hymn, “Ride on, ride on in majesty,”

by such a line as “Thine humble beast pursues its road,” which Murray

changed to the graceful and appealing line, “Saviour meek, pursue thy

road.”

Space is wanting to exhaust the various changes in hymns that are

amply justified if their most effective use is to be secured. It is

sufficient to say that changes of text must increase the perspicuity,

precision, propriety, and force of the hymn. Single phrases may wisely

be modified if a change corrects a wrong accent, makes a line more

euphonious, adds to its vividness, expressiveness, or vigor, increases

its dignity, clarifies the sense, or better adapts it to public use.

_Chapter V_

THE CONTENT OF THE HYMN

The hymn is not an independent entity, sufficient unto itself, whose

whole purpose is to be beautiful and to give pleasure to those

responsive to its charm. The hymn has a definite message, is big with

purpose.

It is related to its writer in satisfying the urge for expression of

ideas that will give him power over the thoughts and feelings of

others, or of emotions that demand to be voiced forth in the mystic

expressiveness of rhythm and rhyme.

It is related to God as the original source of its impulse and as the

recipient of its response in love and praise.

It is related to the church in the aid it affords to its collective

life and to the reader or singer whose spirituality is to be inspired,

developed, and expressed.

It is the content expressing these several relations and purposes that

separates the hymn from purely literary ideals and criticisms.

I. ITS RELATION TO GOD

_Thanksgiving._

The first impulse is a recognition of the blessings and privileges

that God bestows upon his creatures in general and upon the writer and

the singer in particular. There is consciousness of self in this

expression of gratitude. The soul still has its feet upon the ground.

There is nothing unworthy in this recognition of self as the recipient

of God’s favor, for the soul honors God in its realization of its

dependence on him and in its clear vision of the source of its

blessedness. Indeed, God asks it as his due.

_Prayer for Future Blessing._

The cynic who declares that gratitude is usually tinctured with the

hope of favors to come may not properly represent the soul as it gives

thanks to God, but there is a kinship between thanksgiving and prayer

that makes it easy and logical to pass from the one to the other. The

memory of benefits received inevitably suggests needs yet to be

supplied.

In its relation to God the hymn may well be a vehicle for the prayer

that envisages the spiritual lack that God alone can supply, and

vitalizes the recognition with a desirous urgency that must

characterize true prayer.

Here again we find not only divine authority, but encouragement and

assurance. Whether the hymn is an individual or a collective prayer

matters not. The individual need is also a need common to all

petitioners, and the prayer by a congregation is still the individual

prayer of its units, only intensified objectively toward God and

subjectively toward the singers by its mass expression. This

intensification is multiplied not arithmetically but geometrically.

_Adoration._

The hymn of adoration lifts the soul into a higher plane, into a

contemplation of the glory and majesty of the infinite perfections of

its God in which self is forgotten and a consciousness of the

infinitude of divine beauty, nobility, and spiritual elevation remains

to thrill the soul. It rises on wings of selfless delight and

rejoicing in God into a very ecstasy that only song can express.

Whether the soul stands on some high peak of earth and surveys the

billowing world that stretches far and wide with its beetling cliffs

and rocky headlands, its forests and fields, its meadows and orchards,

filled with the overwhelming mystery of life and force obeying

implicitly the laws formulated only in inherent nature; or gazes into

the great vault of the sky, with the silent majesty of circling stars

and developing universes, it will find the anonymous hymn of more than

a century ago voicing its deepest awe, its noblest joy:

“Praise the Lord! ye heavens adore him,

Praise him, angels in the height;

Sun and moon rejoice before him,

Praise him, all ye stars of light.”

When the soul on some mountaintop of inner experience and vision

glimpses something of the sublimity of the divine character, its

justice, its truth, its purity, its invincible power and will guided

by infinite knowledge and wisdom, its boundless mercy and forgiving

grace flowing from the eternal Source of its all-embracing love, again

it can adopt as its very own the solemn notes of Tersteegen, echoed in

English by John Wesley:

“Lo! God is here; let us adore

And own how dreadful is this place;

Let all within us feel his power,

And humbly bow before his face.”

This is the highest office of the hymn and should be made its largest

use; in no other way can the minds and hearts of Christian worshipers

be filled and thrilled with a consciousness of an indwelling God as by

hymns of praise, fully comprehended and sung with unflawed sincerity.

_The Hymn of Communion._

Beyond the hymn of exultant praise is the hymn of communion with God,

where the soul expresses its joy, not simply in the objective glories

of the divine nature, but in actual communion, companionship, and

conscious unity with God in desire, ideals, and purposes. The soul

thinks the thoughts of God, delights in what God approves, walks in

his ways with spontaneous gladness, and lives in absolute harmony with

his will, not mechanically under a stress of duty, but by urge of the

deepest depths of the soul. Objective praise may pull out all the

stops of the soul’s enthusiasm and the high imaginings of the spirit,

but the hymn of communion may express itself in tenderness and

sweetness, in upwelling love and quiet affection. It often is a

personal rather than a collective hymn.

II. RELATION TO THE SINGER

_The Hymn of Emotion._

Given a definite emotion based on realization of some religious truth,

man will urgently call for some expression of it, directly by speaking

or writing, or by means of some provided method.[1] Christians are

stimulated by being impressed by the experiences of others. There is a

blessed contagion in these expressions of the profound experiences of

the saints of God as found in the hymnbooks of all our churches. One

feels the accelerated spiritual heartbeat as one reads (or, better

yet, sings) Watts’ emotional cry as he stands before the cross of

Christ:

“When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss

And pour contempt on all my pride.”

Who can fail to follow him in his final consecration,

“Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all”?

Medley’s hymn, “Oh, could I speak the matchless worth,” in not a

single phrase directly addresses the Deity. It is a purely subjective

expression of delight in the Lord Jesus Christ; and yet how

impressive, how delightful, how eminently worthy of the feelings of

any great congregation, is this hymn of Christian joy.

The hymn of emotion, therefore, supplies the soul’s demand, for it

satisfies the instinct for expression. It clarifies the intellectual

basis of the emotion and in so doing intensifies it. The collective

singing and mass expression of a common emotion intensify it still

further and fit it more fully to affect the will and the character,

and so give permanence to the influence of the truth underlying the

feeling. Where at the beginning the truth is but dimly perceived and

passively accepted, the resulting shallow feeling will be deepened. In

this way the hymn becomes a very generator of desirable religious

emotion.

_The Hymn of Inspiration._

It follows that the hymn may be a means of stimulating interest and

enthusiasm in connection with a topic or proposed course of action,

and may become the hymn of inspiration. Any line of thought or method

of presentation appealing to any emotion or impulse that creates

courage, hopefulness, confidence, assurance of success, will be

pertinent and desirable. The intenser element of direct exhortation

may be added, making a hortative hymn of one of mere inspiration.

_The Hymn of Personal Experience._

The hymn of personal experience differs from that of emotional

expression in being more subjective, more analytical of the effect

produced on the mind by the apprehension of the religious truth. The

latter is based on the realization of some objective truth or

doctrine, while the hymn of personal experience emphasizes the inner

experience in prayer, in specific exercise of faith, in a reaction of

the soul to some accomplished task, or to a season of communion with

God. The hymn of the blind poet, George Matheson, which has been so

widely used,

“O Love that wilt not let me go,

I rest my weary soul on Thee,”

is distinctly a hymn of Christian experience; while Isaac Watts gives

poignant expression to the emotions of the Christian, as he

contemplates the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, borne to atone

for his sins,

“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?

And did my Sovereign die?

Would he devote that sacred head

For sinners such as I!”

The hymn of personal experience has been rather heatedly objected to

by critics like Bishop Wordsworth. In some cases these “I and My”

hymns have been rewritten to meet the objection.

These critics who find their own “ego” offended by the apparent

emphasis of the hymn writer’s “ego” forget some rather important

factors in the situation.

1. It would have been rather presumptuous on the part of the writer to

speak for the collective “We” and “Us” who presumably were to sing his

verses.

2. As a spontaneous expression of personal experience, the hymn had to

be individualistic. Not often, if ever, are particular religious

experiences common to a body of believers at a given moment.

3. The high peaks of religious experience which are most valuable as

furnishing ideals and stimulus to the members of a singing

congregation can be reached only by individuals, not by a mass of

people. To restrict the expression of religious experience to that

common to all Christians, would be to omit the most inspiring and

helpful hymns, and keep our song service at a dead level of inferior

value.

4. It must not be forgotten that it is not the congregation that

sings; it is its individual units! The congregation is an abstraction,

a merely mental conception. The singing of each member is

fundamentally as purely individual as if he were absolutely alone!

Hence the “I and My” hymn is entirely fitting. Each sings what is, or

ought to be, his own individual experience. Indeed, he makes his best

contribution to the collective effect if he is intensely

individualistic in his singing.

5. In all ages this individualistic participation in mass singing has

been natural and spontaneous. The children of Israel sang an

individualistic “I and My” hymn in rejoicing over the army of Pharaoh.

The psalms are largely “I and My” hymns of praise, of prayer, and of

confession. David sings, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”

It is too much to expect that every singer shall apprehend the full

import of the words he sings; to accuse him of insincerity and

hypocrisy if he fails to rise to their level, or if he takes them on

his lips thoughtlessly, is uncharitable. In most cases the fault lies

with the leader of the service who does not bring out the meaning and

does not prepare the minds and hearts of the singers for the hymn

about to be sung.

It is, therefore, not a question of the first person singular, but of

the kind of personal experience that finds a voice. Is it artificial

or genuine? Is it morbid or wholesome? Is it depressing or stimulating

to the spiritual life? Is it an experience to which all have attained

or may attain, in terms all can accept, or is it morbid, fanatical,

extravagant?

No congregation should be expected to sing offhand with Faber,

“I love Thee so, I know not how

My transports to control,”

or

“Oh, dearest Jesus, I have grown

Childish with love of thee.”

There are other limits that need to be considered. A hymn may properly

be the vehicle for a confession of sin or of spiritual unworthiness;

but it should not take exaggerated forms of expression that only a few

could honestly adopt. The same is somewhat true of hymns of

consecration. Some hymns are title deeds to gifts to Jesus Christ so

comprehensive that few could sincerely subscribe to them. All these

hymns, though they may have been spontaneous outbursts from the hearts

of the writers, will seem unreal and forced to the singer, and will

only aggravate the mechanical unreality and the unwitting insincerity

that vitiate the average service of song.

_The Hymn of Meditation._

The hymn of meditation is less emotional than that of personal

experience or feeling. It is quiet in rhetorical style and gentle in

mood. Its purpose is not didactic, although it often superficially

seems to be so. It is occupied with doctrinal truth only in an

inferential way. It contemplates all religious truth, whether

doctrinal or ethical, in an objective, impersonal way and notes its

implications and corollaries. It is, therefore, emotionally negative,

blending with the other elements of the service rather than

controlling them.

Perhaps as typical an instance as can be cited is Bishop Bickersteth’s

“Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?

The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.”

Charles Wesley’s meditation on the Christian’s duties, “A charge to

keep I have,” is another hymn of this class. Faber’s “There’s a

wideness in God’s mercy” (“Was there ever kinder shepherd”) is also in

the meditative mood.

_The Hymn of Exhortation._

At first blush it may seem a little absurd that the members of a

congregation should sing at each other such a hymn as “Stand up, stand

up for Jesus” or “Work, for the night is coming.” But this is an

artificial and not a genuine objection. The instinct of the human race

is toward the singing of just such hortatory songs as these. The

Marseillaise Hymn, which was one of the strongest influences leading

to the French Revolution, is simply an exhortation, but it swept the

French people off their feet and helped prepare the way for the great

transformation of the social structure of the nation. The Church has

gone on producing and singing these hortatory hymns throughout all

generations from the time of David until now, because the impulse is

native to the human heart.

_The Didactic Hymn._

The hymn may be used to teach truth as well as to express emotion. If

we are to accept Paul’s statements regarding the use of song in the

churches in his early day, the didactic hymn is the oldest form of the

Christian hymn. “Teaching and admonishing one another” is his phrase

in Colossians 3:16. Indeed, we can go back to Moses for authority for

it, for the ninetieth Psalm is largely didactic. In the Psalms we find

more instruction than worship. There is really no reason why an

assembly should not sing truth, as well as recite it, as it does in

the Apostles’ or in the Nicene Creed.

The didactic value of the hymn is too great that we should refuse its

help in laying a foundation of doctrine in the hearts of the people of

God. Never was it more necessary than now. It is significant of John

Wesley’s appreciation of its didactic value that in his announcement

of his hymnal of 1780, _The Large Hymn Book_, he refers to his

grouping of the hymns under subjects, making the hymnal “a little body

of experimental and practical divinity.”

Many of our most frequently used hymns are unfeignedly didactic.

Bishop Wordsworth’s “O day of rest and gladness” is a resume of the

arguments for the validity of the Christian Sabbath. “The Church’s one

foundation” is one of a series of hymns by Samuel J. Stone expounding

the Apostles’ Creed. Heber’s hymn, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God

Almighty” is suffused with poetical feeling, but is none the less a

didactic hymn emphasizing the doctrine of the Trinity.

At the same time, this religious truth must have a poetic element. It

is the great value of a hymn as a teaching method that it puts heart

and feeling into the doctrine it expresses, and so gives it reality

and appeal. Despite Dr. Austin Phelps’ rejection of Montgomery’s

“Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire” as “without the wings of song,”

the Church at large has been singing it for a century. Even if the

last stanza were omitted, it would still be a good hymn, because the

doctrine of prayer is clothed in such beautiful and inspiring language

that it is eminently fitted for the expression of a congregation in

song.

_The Doctrinal Hymn._

The doctrinal hymn is simply a limited form of the didactic hymn in

that it is devoted to the promulgation of the leading Christian

doctrines, while the general didactic hymn may be used to inculcate

any truth or duty, whether of a fundamental character or not.

The use of the hymn to teach the doctrines of the Church has numerous

advantages. It is clear and succinct, not obscuring the truth with

philosophical or metaphysical subtleties. It is dogmatic and not

argumentative. It has the mnemonic advantage of rhythm and rhyme and

is easily remembered. It has the inspiration of collective singing.

Above all it is vivid and poetical, emotionalizing and vitalizing what

in the philosopher’s hands becomes abstract and dry.

America’s most distinguished hymnologist clearly differentiates the

doctrinal theologian and the doctrinal hymn writer: “The theologian

and the hymn writer traverse day by day the same country, the Kingdom

of our Lord. They walk the same paths; they see the same objects; but

in their methods of observation and in their reports of what they see,

they differ. So far as theology is a science, the theologian deals

simply with the topography of the country: he explores, he measures,

he expounds. So far as hymn-writing is an art, the writer deals not

with topography, but with the landscape: he sees, he feels, he sings.

The difference in method is made inevitable by the variance of

temperament of the two men, the diversity of gifts. But both methods

are as valid as inevitable. Neither man is sufficient in himself as an

observer or a reporter. It is the topography and the landscape

together that make the country what it is. It is didactics and poetry

together that can approach the reality of the spiritual Kingdom.”[2]

It follows that the doctrinal hymn is not simply reluctantly

admissible, it is actually peremptorily necessary if the doctrines of

the Christian faith are to be impressed upon each rising generation.

This function of the hymn is all the more important because of the

decline of doctrinal preaching. It is the “substance of doctrine” the

hymns supply rather than the rigid philosophical shell which the

creeds and the catechism offer. It is this shell that is “dry,” not

the realities it too often hides.

_The Homiletical Hymn._

The homiletical hymn is a homily, as its name implies—a sermonette.

The term refers to its form, not to its content, for that is usually

doctrinal and always didactic. It is sermonic because it proceeds from

point to point, leading the way to a practical application. This form

of hymn makes up the great body of the older hymnody, because it was

written by sermonizers who applied homiletical methods to their hymns.

Take Doddridge’s hymn, “Ye servants of the Lord”: the first stanza

makes the general appeal for service; the second emphasizes the need

of readiness for that service; the third, attention to the Lord’s

commands; the fourth exclaims over the joy and the reward of service;

the fifth, the honors that Christ shall heap on his servant. That

makes a fine outline for a sermon!

The homiletical hymn was often dry because the sermon was dry. They

were both too frequently “proses” in a sense different from the

medieval use of the word.

_The Hymn of Propaganda._

The hymn of propaganda calls for consideration. It is a didactic hymn,

of course, but its purpose is not to express the fundamental doctrines

of the faith, but to urge some subordinate article of it out of all

proportion to its intrinsic importance, or to win adherents for some

new religious ideas. There are hymns of Perfectionism, of Holiness, of

Unity, of Premillenialism, of Second Adventism, of Christian Science,

of phases of Theosophy, that fall within this category.

The spiritual value of some of these is not to be underrated, but each

hymn must be judged on its own merits. The danger of exaggeration is

the chief point calling for circumspection. Hymns of propaganda

criticizing or antagonizing the Christian Church must be rejected.

_Hymns of the Social Gospel._

A few years ago, when the sociological aspect of Christianity won wide

attention, it was seriously proposed to rewrite the whole hymnbook and

inject the “Social Gospel.” A few desirable hymns on Brotherhood were

written which fill out a previously somewhat neglected rubric.

Brotherhood is not a discovery of the twentieth century, but has been

an integral part of Christianity from the beginning and was never so

fully exemplified as at that period.

In so far as the “Social Gospel” is simply the application of the

gospel of Christ to old wrongs that yet need to be righted, like

slavery, and war, and alcoholism, or to new social complexes in our

modern economic life where there is injustice, or where there is need

of help for body, mind, or soul, hymns may prove desirable helps. They

will, however, be written spontaneously, not as propaganda, and will

be used freely in so far as there is practical and emotional

justification for them. The onward progress of the Kingdom in these

unfinished tasks will most likely depend on the stimulation of the

great motives that have given victory in the past. It is the appeal to

these motives that gives vitality to such a hymn as “Where cross the

crowded ways of life,” by Frank Mason North.

_Special Hymns._

It is a little difficult to supply hymns for subordinate topics which

do not stir the spiritual pulses, and hence the poorest hymns in our

hymnbooks are found in these divisions. The doctrines of Human

Depravity, Regeneration, Sanctification, the State of the Impenitent

Dead, do not lend themselves to attractive hymnic expression.

These hymns have no wings; they are unemotional and without appeal to

the imagination. Yet the selectors of hymns who have a purely

homiletical point of view demand that a hymnal shall supply

appropriate lyrics to fit subjects and occasions that have no lyrical

possibilities. If the demands of symmetrical completeness in a hymnal,

or of close fitness of theme in a service, must be met, then one must

be content with prosaic verses lacking in poetic charm or emotional

inspiration.

_The Great Hymnic Themes._

There are certain doctrines, certain experiences, that appeal so

strongly to Christian hearts that the impulse to write and sing about

them far exceeds that growing out of less general, less striking

themes. There may be a great difference in the favorite themes of

different persons, under different circumstances, in different

generations. The Latin medieval hymnists greatly stressed the

suffering Christ; Watts sang of the majesty and glory of God and of

his reign in the moral and spiritual world, and his hymns are found

largely in the purely worshipful rubrics of our hymnals; Charles

Wesley wrote in the midst of a great revival, and his hymns emphasize

the plan of salvation and voice the personal experiences of the saved.

In our own day the ideas of service, of public welfare, of works of

philanthropy and mercy, and of social justice find expression.

The supreme theme, of course, is Christ. Whatever phases of Christian

doctrine or experience may seem to absorb the mind of any generation,

still the songs cluster about the person of Jesus Christ. As Dr.

Austin Phelps eloquently insists, “here the rapture of holy song

culminates on earth, as it does in heaven. Here every grace of

religious character, and every experience of a devout life, has found

freedom to express itself in hymns of worship. Where can another such

body of sacred poetry be found in any language, as that which

comprises the Christology of the songs of the Church?”

This hymnody is all the more appealing in that it sings a living and

not a dead Christ, a present personality, near and dear, and not

merely a historical character. The singer does not strain his power of

thought and elevation of expression to hymn adequately the perfections

of an infinite God, but spontaneously rejoices in a Friend who

“sticketh closer than a brother”!

_Chapter VI_

THE GOSPEL HYMN

If this were a purely scholastic and literary treatise on the hymnody

of the Church, the subject of this chapter might be ignored; but this

discussion purports to be practical, and the Gospel hymn is too large

a factor in the life and work of our churches to be thus brushed

aside. It is a conservative estimate to say that four out of five

churches in our land make use of these hymns to a greater or less

extent. They even elbow their way into the most exclusive hymnals

issued by ecclesiastical authorities. Collections of them are found

not only in rural or village communities, but in urban churches as

well. Great denominational publishing houses issue them by the hundred

thousand. They are heard in the great ecclesiastical gatherings and

conventions of the land. Great evangelistic movements depend on them

for inspiration and for aggressive energy.

Yet the Gospel hymn has been treated as a convenient “punching bag”

for the literary and musical idealist. One respects the antagonistic

attitude of the high liturgist to whom the form is so significant, or

of the literary or scholarly man whose susceptibilities are outraged

by the acknowledged shortcomings and banalities of many of these

popular religious lyrics. Nonetheless, one is astonished that persons

of high intelligence, in their devotion to exclusively literary and

musical standards, should be blind to the great spiritual value of the

better specimens of this indiscriminately condemned class of hymns,

and to the extraordinary effectiveness and the immense results in

aggressive religious work which this people’s hymnody has

demonstrated.

This is really only the recrudescence of an ancient feud between the

conception of the hymn as exclusively worshipful and belonging to the

liturgical service, and as the free lyrical expression of the

religious life of the people adapted to all phases of Christian

life—individual, domestic, and social, as well as ecclesiastical. As

the church life of the early Christians began to crystallize, the

former improvisations were discouraged. In time, the service of song

was taken from the laity in the interest of greater dignity and

churchliness. The Arian controversy with its hymnic outburst freed the

wings of popular religious song, only for them to be restrained again

by the rigid formalism organized and enforced by Gregory the Great.

The Waldenses, the Hussites, the Lollards, each group had its own

popular hymnody. In the general breaking of bonds in the Reformation,

the popular hymns of Huss and Luther and their associates, and the

metrical psalms of Marot and Sternhold set to popular secular

melodies, were the first manifestations of the new freedom.

The same outcry was heard against the hymns of Watts, and a little

later against those of the Wesleys, not only in Great Britain, but in

New England as well. In the latter the outcry was heard against the

“camp-meeting ditties” of the aggressive Methodists as they spread

into the West.

Even now, in Germany there is frequent protest against the use in

church service of the simpler “folk” hymns, like “Harre des Herrn”

(Wait on the Lord), “Ich will streben” (I will strive), and “Sei

getreu bis in den Tod” (Be faithful unto death), because they are more

recent in origin and have not the severe dignity of the older hymns

and chorals.

And so the feud between the devout formalism of the liturgical spirit

and the free attitude of aggressive spirituality has gone on from

century to century and from land to land, and will continue to do so

“until He come.”

_Lack of Discrimination._

There is an utter lack of discrimination shown in the opposition to

Gospel hymns.

It is no more true that all Gospel and Sunday-school hymns are crude,

illiterate, and undignified than is the anti-foreign Chinese’s charge

that all Americans are liars and thieves. Many of the Gospel hymns

were written by devout, cultured people of high intelligence. Fanny

Crosby has had wide recognition, and there have been many others of

equal ability, but lacking her adventitious appeal for sympathy. There

are many Gospel hymns which deserve the harshest denunciations that

have been expressed. In a people’s hymnody that was inevitable; but

there are others so fine that the line of essential values between the

Gospel and the standard hymn is difficult to trace. Lowell Mason and

Thomas Hastings’ _Spiritual Songs_ was practically a people’s Gospel

songbook, used for the same purposes and in the same relative spirit,

and largely made up of new materials in text and music just like a

modern Gospel songbook, being even issued in parts. Among its new

hymns were Palmer’s “My faith looks up to Thee” and Smith’s “The

morning light is breaking,” now recognized as leading standard hymns.

The same is true of Gilmore’s “He leadeth me, O blessed thought!” and

Kate Hankey’s “I love to tell the story” and Mrs. Hawks’ “I need Thee

every hour.” Mrs. Gates’ “I will sing you a song of that beautiful

land,” E. E. Hewitt’s “More about Jesus would I know,” Hopper’s

“Jesus, Saviour, pilot me,” Stite’s “Simply trusting every day,”

Walford’s “Sweet hour of prayer,” Hunter’s “In the Christian’s home in

glory,” Bliss’ “Almost persuaded,” Spafford’s “It is well with my

soul,” and Pres. Dr. J. E. Rankin’s “God be with you till we meet

again” are none of them illiterate or undignified. Indeed, many of the

writers of these despised hymns were college professors, clergymen of

high standing, editors, women of education and culture and of profound

spiritual life. Many Gospel song writers are far and away superior to

the average of the hymnists of the eighteenth century—indeed, have

written nothing so unpoetical and so distinctly offensive to good

taste as some of the hymns published by Watts and Wesley, the hymnic

giants of that age.

There is an impulse to distinguish between Gospel hymns and Gospel

songs, accepting the former and rejecting the latter; but that is

playing with words. Good Gospel songs are to be baptized Gospel hymns

and allowed to enter the golden gates of approved hymnody. Others draw

the line at the end of the Moody and Sankey campaigns, closing the

canon at that time and regarding all later Gospel songs as apocryphal!

But the worst specimens that have appeared were issued before that

date and many excellent ones have been written since. No such

mechanical criteria can be applied. The acid test of actual usefulness

must be employed with Gospel songs as it was to formal hymns. That

many of the former have won a permanent place without the emendation

needed by the latter shows how unjustified is the indiscriminate

condemnation of this whole class of sacred lyrics.

_Wrong Assumptions of the Opposition._

In much of the discussion there seems to be an underlying assumption

that there is an inherent antagonism between the standard and the

Gospel hymn, that the latter is intended to displace the former.

Nothing can be farther from the truth. It is true there is an

occasional church where the standard hymns are neglected, but they are

a negligible minority. The current Gospel song collections practically

all supply a large department of standard hymns and their tunes, in

many cases all that are in actual general use. The value of the

standard hymn is recognized everywhere as having a most important

place in the work of the church.

But its very dignity and strength occasion the limitations to its use,

and beyond those limitations the Gospel hymn comes as a complementary

help. The wise preacher does not use Gospel hymns in his formal,

worshipful services, but finds them indispensable in popular evening

services, where not awe and solemnity but spirit and aggressiveness,

and appeal to the person of average or less culture, are needed. His

prayer meeting and other subordinate meetings of groups need the

individual feeling and intimacy with religious things supplied by the

Gospel hymns.

In evangelistic meetings a few of the standards can express the high

peaks of interest, but the Gospel songs lead up to those heights. The

great revivals of the nineteenth and of the early decades of this

century were distinctly characterized by the use of Gospel songs, many

of them not even of the higher type.

_Unfairness in Comparisons Made._

While the worst specimens of Gospel hymns have usually been selected

as the basis of attack, the very best of the standard hymns have been

held up as the criterion of value; the utter unfairness of such

comparison is evident enough. Gospel hymns should be judged by their

best specimens when compared with standard hymns.

The inequity of such a comparison is made more flagrant by the fact

that these standard hymns, only hundreds in number, which are justly

appreciated and lauded, are the survivors of multiplied tens of

thousands that were written through the generations. Of the more than

seven hundred written by Isaac Watts, twenty-three appear in the

recent _Presbyterian Hymnal_. Of the nearly seven thousand hymns of

Charles Wesley, the new _Methodist Hymnal_, naturally biased in

judgment by tradition, uses only fifty-five, while the _New

Presbyterian Hymnal_ finds space for only eighteen. This tremendous

mortality is not necessarily due to offensive weakness and faults, for

hundreds served their day and generation most acceptably and well. In

like manner the older Gospel hymns, which have had their day of

usefulness are fading out of these collections, making way for new

ones that express the feelings of the present generation more

intimately. This is as it should be.

But when the detractor of current Gospel hymns finds some delectable

bit of vulgarity or of literary clumsiness or of grammatical solecism,

let him remember that Watts published lines like these:

“Tame heifers here their thirst allay

And for the stream wild asses bray.”

“I’ll purge my family around

And make the wicked flee”;

and that John Wesley allowed his brother to publish

“Idle men and boys are found

Standing on the devil’s ground;

He will give them work to do,

He will pay their wages too.”

Remember also that William Cowper, the poet acclaimed by literary

critics as the father of a new movement in poetical writing, issued

such a stanza as this:

“Not such as hypocrites suppose

Who with a graceless heart

Taste not of Thee, but drink a dose

Prepared by Satan’s art.”

If the great poets and hymn writers of that age wrote such lines, what

must have been the character of the verses of the obscure scribblers

and poetasters of their day!

Not only do the best of the standard hymns alone survive, but those

survivors have been rewritten and amended by a half-century of editors

and hymn revisers, their revisions being re-revised by succeeding

critics, as we have seen in a previous chapter. Every line and phrase

has been submitted again and again to the microscope of the literary

critic, until we have a body of hymns established in every detail by

the consensus of the best literary minds of the last century. This is

no derogation of our accepted hymns, but a great advantage to them;

but it must not be overlooked in making a fair comparison.

_Criteria for Evaluation._

Much of the criticism of the Gospel hymn is due to excessive emphasis

on the literary and poetical aspects of the verses to which objection

is made. But we have already insisted on the fact that these are not

the final criteria of the value of hymns, although they are important

factors not to be overlooked.

Speaking of a hymnal containing material of inferior literary quality,

Dr. Austin Phelps, of Andover Seminary, who shared with his colleague

in the faculty of that institution the honor of being the fathers of

American hymnology, wisely remarks: “It is a shallow judgment either

to approve or to condemn such a work in the spirit of a connoisseur in

aesthetics. The very conditions of excellence in a body of popular

psalmody must extend its limits out of the range of a purely Attic

taste.”

The approval or rejection of a hymn, or of a body of hymns, is not a

question of personal taste or liking, nor even of personal religious

reactions, but a question of the needs of the people to be stimulated

and helped, and the results of interest and spiritual impression

secured among them by the hymns under consideration.

_Gospel Hymns and the Unsaved._

There is a distressing lack of understanding both of the real function

of the hymn and of the needs of the body of Christians as a whole, and

even a greater ignorance of the psychology of reaching the unsaved. If

the body of our standard hymns fails to develop needed interest among

a large element in our churches, how much less will it appeal to these

outside the fold! If these intellectually and culturally less

privileged masses in and out of the Church are to follow the Apostolic

example and “sing with the understanding,” the songs must lie within

the range of their understanding. Professor A. S. Hoyt, D.D., of

Auburn Theological Seminary, sums up the situation very wisely: “A few

of the modern revival hymns make quick appeal to the modern heart, are

easily sung, and may be teachers of religious life. The majority of

them are shallow in thought and without musical worth. But in all

matters of education we must help men as we find them and patiently

lift them to better things.”

_Gospel Hymns and the Demands of Worship._

Perhaps the most misleading assumption among those who reject the

Gospel hymn is that the chief use of hymns is in worship. They will

sing didactic hymns, hortative hymns, inspirational hymns, addressed

solely to human ears and hearts in the stated church service and then

cast out the Gospel hymn because it is not fitted for solemn worship.

That attitude conceives the Divine Being as a literary connoisseur, or

as a music critic who applies conventional academic criteria in

accepting what his people bring him. Their slogan is that we must

bring to God only our best, insisting that anything but our best is an

insult to him, forgetting that we do not bring the hymn, but the

spiritual results of the hymn in devotion and love and consecration,

and that hymn which produces these in the given congregation is the

best.

Moreover, the approach to God is not the sole function of effective

hymns; it may instead be the approach to men. The best hymn in that

department is the one that succeeds most fully in affecting the souls

to be influenced. There, not the abstract values of the hymn count,

but its psychological adaptation to the actual mental, moral, and

spiritual condition of the minds and hearts to be helped, not

overlooking even the physical factors essential to religious results.

Furthermore, there are lines of church activity which need the

religious atmosphere and suggestiveness but are concerned with social

and administrative work, with the temporalities of church life, for

which many of these Gospel hymns are eminently fitted. There are

campaigns, drives, and movements that need musical help such as many

of the less subjectively pious Gospel hymns can give.

_Gospel Hymns in the Preparatory Service._

There are large and miscellaneous church gatherings where there is no

preparation of mind to sing worthily and deeply religious hymns, and

where it would be a sacrilege to ask the miscellaneous crowd to take

upon their lips such a hymn as “O Love that wilt not let me go” or

“Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above.” Better to sing the

semi-religious and shallow “Brighten the corner where you are” until

the crowd has been psychically organized.

_Gospel Hymns in the Laboratory._

When we come to organized campaigns to persuade unconverted persons,

old and young, to accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, the need of

these informal, stimulating, emotional folk songs becomes immediately

apparent. Awe, impressiveness, spiritual elevation of mind, such as

are supposed to be produced by the standard hymns, are not the stimuli

that create aggressiveness of mind among Christian workers, nor are

they calculated to awaken a response among the unspiritual. It is

proved as surely by actual laboratory experiment that Gospel songs

produce the conditions needed for securing a religious revival as that

hydrochloric acid and water poured over zinc clippings will produce

hydrogen.

Lord Shaftesbury, the great English philanthropist and Christian

worker, speaking in Ireland in the interest of evangelistic work

there, said: “Therefore go on circulating the Scriptures. I should

have been glad to have had also the circulation of some well-known

hymns, because I have seen the effect produced by those of Moody and

Sankey. If they would only return to this country, they would be

astonished at seeing the influence exerted by those hymns which they

sing.”

It is worthy of incidental note that the most of those to whom the

Gospel hymn is anathema are not much in sympathy with any evangelistic

methods; nay more, they seem to shrink from popular manifestations of

religious life. They have sharpened the edge of their religious

refinement until it will no longer cut.

_The Advantages of Gospel Hymns._

These Gospel hymns have several distinct advantages that should not be

overlooked. They are simple, easily understood by everybody, quickly

appropriated as his own expression by the most limited in education or

culture. They are quite emotional, expressing feeling and creating it.

They are spontaneous and free, with no labored subtlety or recondite

allusion. They are usually more or less rhythmical and stimulating,

physically as well as mentally. They are adaptable to various

situations and states of feeling. Even more than standard hymns they

express personal religious experiences, and are more direct in their

hortative method. The chorus, if intelligently written, emphasizes the

fundamental idea of the hymn in an unescapable way. As a tool for

aggressive effort it has no substitute, and but one rival—earnest and

spirit-filled preaching.

_Discrimination in the Use of Gospel Songs._

It should be said, however, that the inventory of its values mentioned

above applies to only a comparatively small part of the Gospel songs

offered to the public, just as the accepted standard hymns are a very

small part of the formal hymns from which they have been gleaned.

Usually its faults are aridity, vapidity, and shallowness. Yet in all

these shortcomings, specimens of equal weakness and futility can be

found in verses by accepted hymn writers.

The better Gospel songs are after all the sincere expression of a

certain stage of culture of mind and soul. That stage may not be high

nor admirable, but it must be allowed its spontaneous expression.

Every generation has had its own ephemeral hymnody and will continue

to have it in spite of all the scolding critics. When our religious

people stop writing and singing new songs and are satisfied to sing

over and over again the songs of preceding ages, it will prove that

the process of ossification has set in and that vital force is passing

away. Better that literary unskillfulness and mediocre musical talent

shall continue to write, better to have ephemeral, shallow, and

unsatisfying songs written by the thousands, than that the impulse to

express spontaneously the vital godliness within should be entirely

lost.

THE SINGING CHURCH

PART II

HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF HYMNS

_Chapter VII_

APOSTOLIC ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

In considering the origin of the Christian hymn, one must remember

that it is an outgrowth of man’s innate impulse to express his

feelings in hymns and songs. That impulse is constitutional; man sings

because he was so made that he cannot help singing.

Furthermore, the Christian hymn is the natural development of the

Hebrew psalm, just as Christianity is the consummation of the Jewish

religion. The two systems of religion are related as closely as the

foundation and the superstructure of a great temple. We shall find the

Hebrew voice of worship not only leading the songs of the Apostolic

Church, but through all the succeeding ages sounding the controlling

note of all Christian praise. David and the sons of Asaph led the

choirs and congregations in chapel and church and cathedral as truly

as they did those in the temple and synagogues. Christianity gave the

Psalms a larger, more inspiring message and a more literary and more

musical setting; but the thrumming of David’s harp has been heard

through all the long centuries and is still heard around the world.

The Greek atmosphere in which the Early Church developed might be

supposed to have influenced the character of the Apostolic hymnody;

but the Greek Christians were not literary in culture, and the Greek

religion had no congregational singing. It took several generations

before it began to affect the form and music of the Christian hymnody,

but eventually it was to become a formative force.

I. SACRED SONG IN THE NEW CHRISTIAN CHURCH

_The Rise of Sacred Song in Apostolic Times._

But when the baptism of the Holy Spirit vitalized and organized the

Christian Church, the tide of sacred song began to swell. It had a

great heritage from the dying Jewish church: its fundamental ideas,

its laws, its prophets, its hope of the Messiah now transformed into a

reality; but not the least of its inheritances were the habit of

praise and worship, and the lyrics that gave them form.

We read that the Church was filled with joy and praised God.

Incidentally, we learn that, despite sufferings from cruel scourging,

Paul and Silas sang hymns in the Philippian prison, showing that with

the new wine of Christian joy there were created new bottles to

contain it. We may be sure this was not an isolated instance, but the

occurrence of an established practice.

_Apostolic Emphasis of Sacred Song._

James says, “Is any merry, let him sing psalms.” Whether he meant

David’s or “private” psalms is left open to conjecture. The American

Revised Version translates it “praise.” Paul is most definite in

recognizing “hymns and spiritual songs” as distinguished from

“psalms.” Some commentators have interpreted the latter as David’s

psalms, the “hymns” as the already accepted canticles, and the

“spiritual songs” as the new songs, more or less improvised, that were

sung by individuals, “teaching and admonishing one another,” “singing

with grace in the heart.”

Paul’s conception of the hymn, therefore, was not a collective hymn,

sung by all, but a hymn of edification sung by individual singers. The

practice of solo singing assumed in Paul’s exhortations in Ephesians

and Colossians, due to the perennial danger of governmental raids and

persecutions, still continued in the time of Tertullian (circa 198).

He writes that after their common meal “each man, according as he is

able, is called on, out of the Holy Scriptures, or of his own mind, to

sing publicly to God. Hence it is proved in what degree he hath

drunken”—a refutation of the common charge of gluttony and

drunkenness.

_Traces of Hymns in the Epistles._

In the eagerness to unearth traces of the supposed hymnody of the

Apostolic church, the wish has been father to the thought, and

passages have been pointed out as probable quotations from hymns

current in the churches. Some of them are quite plausible, but others

are examples of the periodic structure so manifest in the style of

both Christ and Paul and in the Oriental proverbial form, but lacking

the parallelism of the Psalms.

In Ephesians 5:14, Paul has the formula of quotation from the Old

Testament, but no such passage, or anything approaching it, can be

found in either the canonical or uncanonical books of the Old

Testament. If we should substitute “it” for “he,” the second word of

the passage “it” might refer to a hymn in common use. Westcott and

Hort put it in metrical form, but the Revised Versions do not. It is

very plausible, however; even in the English translation the structure

is distinctly metrical:

“Awake, thou that sleepest,

And arise from the dead,

And Christ shall give thee light.”

Equally plausible is the passage in 1 Timothy 3:16, although not

formally quoted:

“God was manifested in the flesh,

Justified in the spirit,

Seen of angels,

Preached unto the Gentiles,

Believed on in the world,

Received up into glory.”

This is particularly true of such passages as have rhetorical warmth

rather than inherent lyric quality. The extraordinary flight of the

Spirit that has been called the “Hymn of Love” (1 Cor. 13) can be

called a hymn only by stretching the limits of the definition beyond

all reasonable bounds. Noble as it is, no composer has ever succeeded

in setting it to worthy music. As well call Lincoln’s Gettysburg

address a Memorial Day Hymn. The same may be said of the ecstatic

passage which opens Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (1:2-12).

_The Hymns of the Apocalypse._

It has been suggested that the choral passages of the Book of

Revelation are quotations from current hymns. If that were true, how

could the little gatherings of Christians have risen to the majesty of

these marvelous hymns of adoration, either vocally or spiritually?

They are so intimately a part of the stupendous scenes in which they

appear as to make their being merely quotations seem impossible. Only

the itch of a German-type scholarship to press out the last drop of

possibility from any given historical material, and the calm assurance

that the results must be true, since it has recognized them, can

explain this hypothesis.

These hymns are too integral a part of the scenes, too consonant with

their elevated spirit, and logically too inevitable, that they should

have been mechanically introduced or even adapted from current

hymns—they are too choral in the grand manner.

In general, we may accept the same judgment of Dr. Lyman Coleman, in

his work _The Primitive Church_. “The argument is not conclusive, and

all the learned criticism, the talent and the taste, that have been

employed on this point, leave us little else than uncertain conjecture

on which to build a hypothesis.”

“_The Odes of Solomon._”

“The Odes of Solomon” is a Syriac collection of hymns which good

authorities claim to be of the Apostolic Age; one authority, Mrs.

Gibson, insists that it precedes Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, while

the most conservative concede that it belongs to the first century, or

the first half of the second.

Its discoverer, Dr. Rendell Harris, Director of studies at Woodbrooke,

the Quaker center at Selly Oak, England, says of the “Odes”: “They are

utterly radiant with faith and love, shot through and through with

what the New Testament calls ‘the joy of the Lord.’” He quotes one of

them: “A great day has shined upon us; marvelous is He who has given

us of His glory. Let us, therefore, all of us unite together in the

name of the Lord, and let us honor Him in His goodness, and let us

meditate in His love by night and by day.”[1]

The first stanza of Ode XXVI is translated as follows:

I poured out praise to the Lord,

For I am his:

And I will speak his holy song,

For my heart is with him,

For his harp is in my hands,

And the odes of his rest shall not be silent.

I will cry unto him from my whole heart;

I will praise and exalt him with all my members.

For from the East and even to the West

Is his praise;

And from the South and even to the North

Is his confession:

And from the top of the hills to their utmost bound

Is his perfection.

_The Failure of Apostolic Spiritual Songs to Survive._

It is likely that the reason why no definitely recognized collection

of hymns has survived from Apostolic times, and immediately

thereafter, is that the singing, outside of the Psalms and Gospel

canticles, was largely extemporaneous. The later hymnic form and

structure had not yet developed. Dr. Neale, who deserves to be

recognized as a high authority, referring to the apostolic “hymns” and

“spiritual songs,” says: “From the brief allusions we find to the

subject in the New Testament we should gather that the hymns and

spiritual songs of the Apostles were written in metrical prose.”

Rhyming did not come into use until very much later. The singing was

in recitative with rather formless melodies. Such extemporizations as

appealed to the body of believers were passed on from place to place,

the very best from generation to generation, from memory and by word

of mouth, for illiteracy was the common lot of the mass of early

believers. These people’s spiritual songs were presently lost, much as

were most of our early American “spirituals” that served so excellent

a purpose.

Indeed, it would be entirely correct to conceive of the stream of

devout song flowing steadily on from the “hymns and spiritual songs”

of the Apostolic times down through the centuries until our own time,

sometimes finding temporary subterranean channels, as with the

Albigenses, the Hussites, and the Lollards, but always inspiring,

refreshing, and comforting the generations as it passes. It was the

_Laus Perennis_, the unfailing sacrifice of praise, that day and night

rose without break or intermission to the ears of the Almighty. In

every generation, hymns that had nobly served preceding generations

were replaced by new ones fresh from throbbing hearts that had

re-experienced the vital truths of Christianity.

It is no condemnation of a hymn that the Church lays it aside. That it

served only for a season may have been due to its peculiar adaptation

to the individuality of the age, to the temporary conditions and needs

among God’s saints of that particular time.

_Chapter VIII_

THE POST-APOSTOLIC HYMN

_The Post-Apostolic Church a Singing Church._

Whatever conclusion we reach regarding the song service during the

Apostolic age, because of the meager facts we have regarding it, we

have sufficient information regarding the second, third, and fourth

centuries to be sure that the hymn had become a more and more

important feature of the religious life. The tide of song swells

louder and higher as the generations pass. Clement of Alexandria, the

reputed writer of the earliest surviving Christian hymn, “Shepherd of

tender youth,” writes, “We cultivate our fields, praising; we sail the

sea, hymning.” Jerome writes to Marcellus, “You could not go into the

field, but you might hear the plowman at his hallelujahs, the mower at

his hymns, and the vinedresser singing David’s psalms.” Tertullian, a

little earlier, when the antiphonal singing was still in vogue,

objects to the marriage of a Christian with an unbeliever, because

they cannot sing together, whereas the Christian mates each would

challenge the other “which shall better chant to the Lord.” The early

church was, therefore, a singing church.

Tertullian was not a writer of hymns, for he declared “We have a

plenty of verses, sentences, songs, proverbs.” We do not have their

hymns, but we have the names of prominent hymn writers who sealed

their faith with their blood: Ignatius, Athenogenes, Hippolytus, and

many others who did not win a martyr’s crown.

All these hymns blossomed out of the consuming love for the Lord Jesus

Christ, for which the Jewish psalms could give no expression. That

they were used for public worship we have the testimony of Pliny (A.D.

110). His report from Bithynia to the Emperor Trajan was that “the new

sect have a custom of meeting before dawn on a stated day and singing

by turn a hymn to Christ as God.”

_The Earliest Surviving Hymns._

Unless we accept the Syriac “Odes of Solomon” as an apostolic

hymnbook, none of the “spiritual songs” of that age survive. The hymn

written (or quoted?) by Clement in 170 is accepted as the earliest

hymn handed down to us, with the “Candlelight Hymn” as possibly

contemporaneous.

Clement’s hymn “Shepherd of tender youth” is found in most of our

hymnals and is in actual use.[1] Dr. Henry M. Dexter’s version, as

generally used, is an attenuation suited to the taste of our day

rather than a faithful reproduction of the original, which begins with

a rather violent figure, “Curb for stubborn steed” (E. H. Plumptre).

The date of the “Candlelight Hymn” is very uncertain. It was so old in

370 that another St. Basil could throw no light on its origin: “It

seemed fitting to our fathers not to receive the gift of light at

eventide in silence, but on its appearing immediately to give thanks.”

The version by John Keble is still in use:

“Hail, glad’ning Light, of His pure glory poured

Who is the immortal Father heavenly, blest,

Holiest of holies, Jesus Christ, our Lord!

Now we are come to the sun’s hour of rest;

The lights of evening round us shine;

We hymn the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit divine.”

_The Relation of Hymns to Psalms and Canticles._

In the very nature of the case, these individual songs and hymns and

psalms had no authority back of them. They were the “spirituals,” the

Gospel songs of their day and generation. Most of them were

improvisations for a single service—flying sparks from the anvil of

the Spirit. Undoubtedly others had a longer life, were written out and

passed from hand to hand and even from generation to generation.

These hymns were mostly in Greek, though some were in Syriac, and as

far as they were given a standard form they used Greek classical

meters. Some were modeled on the Septuagint psalms and were known as

“private psalms.” Many were odes, like the “Odes of Solomon.”

But it is quite evident that this body of song was never regarded as

on an equality with the Psalms of the Jewish church, or with the

Canticles of the New Testament. These had the sanctions of the rapidly

crystallizing canon of the New Testament, and the established canon of

the Old, which gave an authority that was lacking in the current

hymnody. The relation was even more pronounced than that in our own

day between the body of hymns surviving through the generations

recognized as “standard” and the current religious songs of the hour.

In addition to the Psalms taken over from the Jewish psalter (not over

one-half of which were ever sung) and the Canticles of Luke’s Gospel,

there gradually rose a subsidiary body of canticles which by the

fourth century had been for the most part fully formulated. They were

developments of passages from both the Old and New Testament. In

addition to the ejaculatory responses, “Alleluia” and “Hosanna,” the

following were hymns authorized to be used in Christian services:

1. The _Gloria in Excelsis_, developed from the song of the angels as

found in Luke, known as the Greater Doxology.

2. The _Ter Sanctus_, based on Isaiah 6:3, possibly later associated

with Revelation 4:8, and called the Cherubical Hymn.

3. The _Benedicite_, the song of the three Hebrew children in the

furnace, a paraphrase of the forty-eighth Psalm, likely taken from the

Apocrypha.

4. The _Gloria Patri_ or Lesser Doxology, apparently handed down from

the Apostolic time, developed from the baptismal formula. It was

expanded during the Arian controversy, adding “As it was in the

beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.”[2]

_The Hymn as Propaganda._

The inferiority of the popular hymnody became ever more pronounced as

the hymn was employed by heretical sects as a means of propagating

their pernicious doctrines. Bardesanes and his son Harmonius in

Edessa, Asia, a little later composed an entire psalter of one hundred

and fifty psalms, “deserting David’s truth and preserving David’s

numbers,” as Ephrem Syrus expressed it.

The Gnostic hymns during the third century were slowly undermining the

faith of the people, but it was not until Arius appeared with his

denial of the deity of Jesus Christ and spread broadcast his “Thalia,”

a collection of practical hymns emphasizing practical duties and the

value of the daily life of the people, as well as magnifying the

humanity of Jesus, that the full extent of the revolution in the

religious sentiment of the people became evident. He fitted his

measures to well-known popular tunes, sung only by those “who sing

songs over their wine with noise and revel.”

Arius, an ungainly giant of tremendous force of personality and

unbounded energy, thus began a movement that was to convulse with its

controversy the whole Roman Empire through many generations, even down

to our own times, and was to prepare Asia and Northern Africa for the

superimposition of the Mohammedan personality and cult upon an

emasculated Christianity.

In 269, Paul of Samosata, an Arian Bishop, banished from his churches

the hymns that had come down from the second century because they were

addressed to Christ as God and “as being innovations, the work of men

of later times.” He began the Arian fashion of propaganda by means of

hymns. As an answer to this came the great hymnic outburst of the

fourth century, headed by Gregory of Nazianzus and participated in by

St. Chrysostom.[3]

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Synod that met in Laodicea

in 363 ordered that “psalms composed by private men must not be read

in the church, nor uncanonical books, but only the canonical of the

New and Old Testament.”

Nor need we wonder that with the Arian fanatics interrupting orthodox

services by starting their heterodox hymns, the same Synod decided

that “beside the psalm singers appointed thereto who mount the ambo

and sing out of the book, no others shall sing in church.”

This robbing the lips and the hearts of the congregation of its share

of the public praise, in order to prevent Gnostic and Arian heretics

from profaning public services with their strife and contention,

hardened into a perpetual prohibition, and in the Greek church the

people are mute to this day.[4]

It should be remembered that these prohibitions applied only to public

services and their liturgies. Outside the walls of the larger churches

the people were still singing. Indeed, the popular song was used by

the orthodox to displace the heretical songs of the Arians, as was

done by Chrysostom in Constantinople, in order to stem the tide of

attack on the doctrine of the deity of Christ.

_Chapter IX_

THE GREEK HYMNODY

I. EARLY GREEK HYMNS

The reaction of the Greek Church to the hymnic attack of Arians

interests us because of its influence on the general development of

the Christian hymn.

Of the earliest hymn writers we know little, and their work has not

come down to us. We have a hymn of Methodius (311) based on the

parable of the ten virgins, of considerable vigor and merit.

The most prominent figure that greets us is that of Gregory of

Nazianzus (327-389). He was called to Constantinople by the Emperor

Theodosius to lead the orthodox forces against the Arian enemy. He was

appointed court preacher, Patriarch of the Eastern Church, and

president of the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople; but the pious,

gentle monk, while a great preacher and a fertile hymn writer (it is

said that he wrote thirty thousand hymns), was not fitted for the

strife and intrigue rampant in the Capital; within a few years he

returned to his cell at Nazianzus in Cappadocia. His hymns are ranked

very high. Dr. Brownlee has given an excellent version of his “Evening

Hymn”:

“O word of truth! In devious paths

My wayward feet have trod;

I have not kept the day serene

I gave at morn to God.

And now ’tis night, and night within,

O God, the light hath fled!

I have not kept the vow I made

When morn its glories shed.

For clouds of gloom from nether world

Obscured my upward way;

O Christ, the Light, thy light bestow,

And turn my night to day!”

Synesius (375-430), Bishop of Cyrene, was a brilliant man, a friend of

Hypatia, whom most general readers know as the heroine of Charles

Kingsley’s great historical romance. He wrote some very tender hymns

and poems that have been widely appreciated. He is best known by his

hymn, “Lord Jesus, think on me,” a free paraphrase of which (by Allen

W. Chatfield) is found in some of our hymnals.

Anatolius (d. 458) is known to us, not as the able and noble Byzantine

pontiff, but as the original writer of two quite different hymns,

translated by Dr. Mason Neale: the evening hymn, “The day is past and

over,” and the descriptive hymn, “Fierce was the wild billow.” He was

one of the first to forsake the classical forms and to put his

thoughts into harmonious prose. He wrote few hymns, but all of great

excellence.

II. THE LATER GREEK HYMNS

The earlier Greek hymn writers wrote in the classical measures and

evinced an admirable sense of form; but the later hymnists, following

the example of Anatolius, wrote in rhythmical prose and not by any

means as felicitously. Moreover, the later Greek language greatly

degenerated, losing its lucidity and subtlety of expression.[1]

The later Greek hymns had many ecclesiastical and theological phrases

difficult to render. They were filled with grotesque figures; the

worship of Mary, and even of the saints, is offensive. Being mostly in

rhythmical prose, they were not intended to be sung—at most only to be

chanted. Really they were not hymns in the ordinary sense of the word;

rather they were the raw materials of hymns. As Dr. Brownlie says,

“The writers are not poets, in the true sense, and their language is

not Greek as we have known it.”

The more conspicuous of these later Greek devotional writers do not

appear until the eighth century.

Andrew of Crete (660-732), an archbishop, was a very voluminous

devotional writer. Among his more important works are the “Great

Canon,”[2] the “Triodion,” and the “Pentecostarion.” The “Great Canon”

has more than three hundred stanzas, illustrating by Scripture

examples the feelings of a penitent confessing his sins. He is

represented in some of our hymnals by the hymn, “Christian, dost thou

see them?” translated by Dr. John Mason Neale and said to be taken

from the “Great Canon.”

The other hymnists of this century are John of Damascus (d.780), his

foster-brother Cosmas, the Melodist (d.760), and Stephen the Sabaite,

his nephew (725-794).

John of Damascus wrote the best Greek of his generation and was most

poetical in spirit and style. Gibbon calls him the “last of the Greek

Fathers.” His verse is characterized by being written in iambics (the

most common measure in modern hymns). His best-known hymn is “’Tis the

day of resurrection,” taken from his great Easter canon, styled the

“Queen of Canons” and the “Golden Canon” by the Greek Church.

John’s foster-brother, Cosmas, survives in the Christmas hymn, “Christ

is born! exalt his name.” Although his canons are very thoughtful, his

style is often turgid and difficult to follow.

Stephen the Sabaite, the nephew of John of Damascus, the third of this

“nest of singing birds” (to use Dr. Gillman’s phrase), came to Mar

Saba as a boy and remained there all his life. Dr. Neale found the

inspiration of his hymn “Art thou weary, art thou languid?” in some

lines of Stephen.

These three Greek hymn writers were monks in the monastery of San

Saba, to be seen to the north from the highway between Jerusalem and

Jericho, on the rugged heights overlooking the Jordan valley.

Another group of Greek hymn writers appears a little later, headed by

Theodore (759-826), abbot of the Studium, a great monastery at

Constantinople. The group was quite controversial, the occasion being

not the Deity of Christ, but the enforced destruction of ikons, or

images. The hymns of this group were not all controversial.

Theoctistus (c.890), an obscure and later member of it, when the heat

of strife had presumably subsided, could write this devout hymn of

praise to Christ:

“Jesu, name all names above,

Jesu, best and dearest.

Jesu, fount of perfect love,

Holiest, tend’rest, nearest.

Jesu, source of grace completest,

Jesu purest, Jesu sweetest.

Jesu, well of power divine,

Make me, keep me, seal me thine.”

Joseph of the Studium (c.840), because of his many hymns, was called

the Hymnographer. He wrote too much to write well. His work is

characterized as tautological, tawdry, tedious. Three of his hymns,

however, had enough suggestiveness to inspire Dr. Neale to write “Let

our choir new anthems raise,” “O happy band of pilgrims,” and “Safe

home, safe home in port.” Dr. Neale’s pump seems to have needed but

slight priming to bring up stirring lyrics from the deepest spiritual

experiences and emotions!

The most striking characteristic of the Greek hymnody is its sheer

objectivity. It is self-forgetful in its rapt, ecstatic contemplation

of the doctrines and facts of the Christian faith. It is never

experiential or self-analytical except when it confesses sin and

unworthiness. The sustained dignity and elevation of its praise and

adoration are other admirable traits. Its consciousness of God, its

unflawed acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, its assurance

of the indwelling Spirit, give it a liturgical value beyond that of

any other ancient hymnody.

_Chapter X_

THE LATIN HYMNODY

I. THE BEGINNINGS OF LATIN HYMNODY

The early disciples in the West were accustomed to use the Greek

language, as may be gathered from Paul’s writing his Epistle to the

Romans in Greek. It is probable that their religious services were

largely in that language until there were Romans enough added to the

churches to make the use of Latin necessary.

That great ode, the “Te Deum,” comes to us only in a Latin form. The

tradition is that it was an antiphon improvised by Ambrose and

Augustine on the occasion of the latter’s baptism, but that is

doubtless a hero-worshiping fancy of the ninth century. That a good

deal of it came from the Greek was to be expected and is quite

certain, whether the Dacian Bishop, Nicetius of Remisiana, gathered up

the Greek material or not (circa 400).

On the other hand, there is no Greek version extant, except a much

later one which is evidently a translation from the Latin.

It may have been written (or compiled) during the Arian controversy as

a creedal song to be sung by clerical or monastic choirs. It may have

grown by gradual accretion, from generation to generation, like the

Easter hymn “Jesus Christ is risen today,” which, begun in the

fourteenth century, was not given final form until 1816.

This magnificent ode, for it is a hymn only by a considerable

extension of the definition, appears in our modern hymnals only as a

chant, and is practically never sung in our non-liturgical

congregations. It has been used as a choral text throughout all its

history, never as a congregational hymn. It has had unnumbered

settings by the greatest composers of Christendom.

It is the high festival ode of the ages, used in celebrating victories

or other stately occasions of great public interest. Its

comprehensiveness, nobility of thought, and elevated style befit the

coronation of kings or the investiture of popes. For the mass of our

churches, great as it is, it has only a historical interest. It might

find impressive use as a responsive reading.

II. EARLY LATIN HYMN WRITERS

Bishop Hilary of Poitiers (circa 300-367), “the hammer of the Arians,”

was exiled into Phrygia by Constantius because he called the Arian

emperor “The Antichrist.” In his exile he came in touch with the

fierce propaganda waged on both sides by means of hymns. His

controversial zeal recognized the opportunity, and he wrote a great

many anti-Arian hymns, which he gathered on his return to France into

his _Liber Mysteriorum_. That his book was lost was no great calamity,

for his fiery, combative spirit, valuable enough at the time, had no

message for future generations. He woke a new interest in singing and

furnished a more practicable model. He undoubtedly suggested the

antiphonal singing he found in the “Hinterland” of Asia Minor and thus

prepared the way for his fellow-countryman, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.

If the latter is recognized as the father of Latin hymnody, and even

of all the Western hymnody, Catholic and Protestant, Hilary is its

grandfather.

Ambrose (340-397) had been a lawyer, not a product of the

ecclesiastical system, and he brought to his office a freshness of

insight and of resources that might have been atrophied in the

mechanical clerical education of his day. The value of song in

supporting the spirits of his followers when besieged for days in his

cathedral suggested to his practical mind, stimulated by his musical

nature, its wider use when the battle was won.

Ambrose broke new ground for Latin hymnody in several essential

particulars. He transformed the merely reading hymn, confined to the

clergy, to a singing hymn for the congregation, writing hymns for the

express purpose of promoting congregational song. He passed by the

artificial classical meters for the simplest of lyrical meters, four

lines of four iambic measures each, which has come down to us through

the centuries as Long Meter. He also introduced the free use of

rhymes.

Ambrose was not only a learned man of great ability, but—what is more

to our present purpose—a man of great piety and devotion. He sought to

vitalize and actualize the devotions, personal and collective, of the

Christian Church, to make them genuine and heartfelt as against the

formalists to whom the mere letter is all-important. His hymns are

evidences of his spirituality. There is room for stanzas from only a

few of them:

“O splendor of the Father’s face,

Affording light from light,

Thou Light of light, thou fount of grace,

Thou day of day most bright.

Thee, in the morn with songs of praise,

Thee, in the evening time, we seek;

Thee, through all ages, we adore,

And suppliant of thy love we speak.”

In spite of the opposition of the Roman See, and the later effort of

Charlemagne, in his zeal for the Gregorian system, to destroy all

copies of the Ambrosian hymns and tunes, the “Ambrosiani” still keep a

small place in the Roman Breviary.

Among the contemporaries of Ambrose, no hymnist stands out more

conspicuously than the Spaniard, Prudentius (348-424). He also had

been a lawyer and a man of affairs. He had more literary gifts than

Ambrose, and his poems show more personality, more charm, more

unaffected sincerity. Bentley calls him “the Horace and Virgil of the

Christians.” A single stanza may illustrate his spirit and style:

“The bird, the messenger of day,

Cries the approaching light;

And thus doth Christ, who calleth us,

Our minds to life excite.”

Mention should be made of Fortunatus (530-609). He was, like the later

Marot of psalm-version fame, “the fashionable poet of the day,” a

precursor of the troubadours. Later in life he became religious, a

priest, an almoner of a monastery, and finally Bishop of Poitiers. He

wrote a processional to be used at the reception of a piece of the

true cross presented by Queen Rhadegunda. The hymn “Vexilla regis

prodeunt” has come down the ages. Dr. Neale calls it “one of the

grandest in the treasury of the Latin church.” We make room for the

first and last stanzas of Dr. Neale’s translation:

“The royal banners forward go;

The cross shines forth in mystic glow;

Where he in flesh, our flesh who made,

Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.

* * * * * * *

Hail, altar! Hail, O Victim! Thee

Decks now thy passion’s victory

Where life for sinners death endured,

And life, by death, for man procured.”

The influence and power of the Roman hierarchy were steadily exercised

against the use of hymns and in behalf of the sole use of Scripture

psalms and canticles. It is a far cry from Gregory the Great to John

Calvin and John Knox, demanding the sole use of canonical material in

the services of the church; and a like far cry from the Council of

Toledo in Spain in 633, which made a strong plea for the use of hymns

in the church’s devotions, to Isaac Watts and his prefaces to his

several collections of modified psalms and of hymns. It was only

toward the end of the twelfth century that hymns of “human composure”

were used in Roman churches, and then were sung by clerical choirs in

the larger basilicas of the capital city. The people were still shut

out from their use.

But the impulse to write devotional material for the church service

persisted. The Venerable Bede (672-735), scholar, theologian,

philosopher, historian, general encyclopedist, wrote both Latin and

Anglo-Saxon hymns in his faraway monastery at Yarrow, England.

Theodulph (d.821), Paulus Diaconus, Odo of Cluny, Cardinal Damiana,

and other minor hymnists wrote hymns, some of which, transformed by

skillful translators, have found use in our day.

Notker, called Balbulus (850-912), of St. Gall in Eastern Switzerland,

became weary of the long-drawn-out notes of the cadences of the final

syllable of the “Alleluia,” which was prolonged to enable the deacon

to ascend to the rood-loft to chant the Gospel. It was suggested that

a text be supplied, a syllable for every note. At first these texts

had no metrical form and were called Proses. Later they were given a

definite form and were called sequences, because they followed the

“Alleluia.” These sequences continued to be written for over three

centuries and were brought to technical perfection by Adam of St.

Victor.

These sequences, however, were an evidence of the abiding urge for

lyrical expression rather than a step in the progressive development

of the Christian hymn.

III. GREAT LATIN HYMNS

A more important figure in our study of Latin hymns is Rabanus Maurus

(776-856), archbishop of Mainz, Germany, a great scholar, an

influential teacher, a profound theologian, a voluminous writer, as

well as a great hymn writer. He had been a notable figure in German

church history before hymnological investigators proved that he was

the writer of the great hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” the worthy

successor of Fortunatus’ “Vexilla regis prodeunt.” Its authorship had

been credited at different times to Ambrose, Gregory the Great,

Charlemagne, and Notker Balbulus. It is the only metrical hymn

officially recognized by the early English Church. It is sung at high

ceremonies like the coronation of kings or the consecration of

bishops. The accepted version is by Bishop Cosin. It appears in our

leading hymnals.

The next bead in our rosary of great hymns is “Veni, Sancte Spiritus,”

by the helpless little paralytic and humpback, Hermannus Contractus

(1013-1054). An excellent historian, a renowned philosopher and

theologian, a mathematician of unusual attainments, in short a

universal and encyclopedic scholar, his chief glory now is that he

wrote this hymn which Archbishop Trench rated “as the loveliest of all

the hymns in the whole cycle of Latin sacred poetry.” There is space

for one stanza only, the third of this great hymn:

“O most blessed Light divine,

Shine within these hearts of thine,

And our inmost being fill;

Where thou art not, man hath naught,

Nothing good in deed or thought,

Nothing free from taint of ill.”

The tide of the years had been flowing quietly with only here and

there rapids or an eddy, but now the current was hastening toward the

great whirlpool of the Crusades. Hildebert, Peter the Hermit, Bernard

of Clairvaux, Abelard, Peter the Venerable, Adam of St. Victor, stand

out as lighthouses on an uncharted sea.

Not the least of these was Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux

(1091-1153), scholar, orator, statesman, and man of affairs, of whom

Archbishop Trent declares: “Probably no man during his lifetime ever

exercised a personal influence in Christendom equal to his; the stayer

of popular commotions, the queller of heresies, the umpire between

princes and kings, the counsellor of popes.” This does not suggest the

writer of such a hymn as “Jesu dulcis memoria,”[1] the tenderest,

sweetest sacred lyric of the Middle Ages. But he was credited with it

for centuries until it was found in a manuscript of the eleventh

century and there credited to a Spanish Benedictine abbess, an origin

more consonant with its spirit and with its finished Latinity. Would

we knew more about her, this medieval precursor of Anne Steele, Sarah

F. Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth P. Prentiss, and Fanny

Crosby! Dr. S. W. Duffield holds “Bernard to be the real author of the

modern hymn—the hymn of faith and worship”; but now the iconoclastic

modern hymnologist denies him even the authorship of the “Salve Caput

Cruentatum.”[2]

We know very little about the other Bernard, who was a monk in the

greater abbacy of Cluny; but his authorship of the great indictment of

the Roman church of his time, “De Contemptu Mundi,” is undoubted. His

great poem of three thousand lines[3] occupied itself with the vice

and moral filth which his pure soul detested. In his disgust with the

moral ordure in which his feet were immersed, he suddenly takes wing

and rises to the heights to contemplate “the Heavenly Land.” Dr.

Neale, out of scattered lines and phrases of the original, with

additions of his own, constructed the wondrous mosaics which we

delight to sing: “Brief life is here our portion,” “Jerusalem, the

Golden,” “For thee, O dear, dear country.”

One thinks of Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) as the Aristotelian logician,

the profound Augustinian theologian, the philosopher, the invincible

protagonist of medieval orthodoxy, rather than as a hymn writer; yet

some of our present day hymnals contain two communion hymns of

profound thought and deep feeling written by him. “Pange, lingua,

gloriosi” is perhaps the finer; here is one stanza of Edward Caswell’s

version:

“Now, my tongue, the mystery telling

Of the glorious body sing,

And the blood, all price excelling

Which the Gentile’s Lord and King

Once on earth amongst us dwelling

Shed for this world’s ransoming.”

The other, “Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem,” has been rendered by Alexander

R. Thompson, as follows:

“Zion, to thy Saviour singing,

To thy Prince and Shepherd bringing

Sweetest hymns of love and praise,

Thou wilt never reach the measure

Of thy most ecstatic lays.”

IV. MEDIEVAL DEVOTIONAL POEMS

We now reach the consideration of hymns and poems of great excellence

in themselves but without the appeal, or practicability as hymns,

possessed by the foregoing. Some of them appear in liturgical hymnals,

or in more formal hymnals of non-liturgical churches, but their use is

limited.

Among these is Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Sun,”[4] not a

hymn, but a psalm of praise for all created things. For our day it has

chiefly literary and antiquarian interest.

His follower and biographer, Thomas of Celano (?-1255), however, wrote

a sequence or hymn that has intrigued the interest of generation after

generation. Mozart’s “Requiem” uses parts of it as its text. Goethe

introduces it in his “Faust.” Unnumbered translations of it have been

made into all civilized languages. Theodore Parker called it the

“damnation lyric.” In the original “Dies irae” there were eighteen

stanzas. The version of W. J. Irons has fourteen stanzas of three

lines each, a few of which follow:

“Day of Wrath! O day of mourning!

See fulfilled the prophets’ warning,

Heaven and earth in ashes burning!

Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth,

When from heaven the Judge descendeth,

On whose sentence all dependeth.”

Sir Walter Scott’s version is in four-line stanzas, three of which are

used to make a practicable hymn. But who in our self-complacent age

cares to sing any of these versions, portraying “The Last Judgment”?

Another famous hymn, written by a follower of Francis of Assisi,

perhaps Jacopone da Todi, “the fool for Christ’s sake,” is the “Stabat

Mater Dolorosa.” It celebrates the sufferings, not of Christ on the

cross, but of Mary, his mother, standing at its foot. It is the

supreme Mariolatrous hymn in sentiment and in diction. It is Roman, of

course, not Catholic, and interests us only as marking the sincerity

and the depth of the medieval sentiment and devotion to the Madonna.

This great hymn is noteworthy because of the many translations into

modern languages which have been made, seventy-eight into German alone

and as many more into English, in whole or in part. Its emotional

possibilities have appealed to many music composers, including

Palestrina, Pergolesi, Haydn, Rossini, and Dvorak—settings varied in

style from Palestrina’s high dignity to Rossini’s almost theatrical

treatment.

It must be remembered that the Greek hymns of the Eastern church, and

the Latin hymns of the Western, were not in dead languages, as they

appear to us, but in living languages, the vernacular of the persons

producing and using them. While the common people may have spoken a

different dialect, the monks and clergy used the classic speech as a

very mother tongue. The hymns were for the most part a perfectly

spontaneous expression of religious conviction and feeling, a living

product of vital experience, an instinctive expression of profound

faith.

In closing this rapid survey of a thousand years of Greek and Latin

hymns, one is impressed that they are all clerical—even monastic—in

type and character. There are in many of them spontaneity, genuine

feeling, and personal experience, a profound sense of spiritual

realities; yet over all of them falls the shadow of the tonsured

ecclesiastic, with his heart set on the impressiveness of the forms of

worship rather than on the ultimate result in creating spiritual

reactions in the individuals of the congregation.

V. MEDIEVAL POPULAR HYMNODY

Although the hymns whose origin we have been tracing were used in

enriching the services of the Roman Church, and for guiding the

meditations and devotions of the clerical spiritually-minded readers,

we get hints of a people’s hymnody used privately and in public

processions, usually in the common speech of the region. It was the

age of the Troubadours, a time of universal song. It is unthinkable

that a people in whose lives religion was a commanding influence

should have no songs of their own about it.

But among the Albigenses and Waldenses and other pietistic sects in

remoter regions there must have been a hymnody all their own. They had

no clergy, no connection with the Romish Church—were in utter

opposition to its forms and organization. Hence their natural impulse

for worship and praise compelled the creation of hymns of their own.

They were spontaneous utterances expressing their spiritual life in a

native vocabulary all could understand and appropriate.

Although this people’s hymnody has perished, because it was produced

and used by the populace and contemptuously ignored or denounced by

the clerical custodians of the literature of their day, or by those of

succeeding generations, the hymns were widely sung in the homes, on

the streets, at popular religious festivals, and even in the remoter

village churches where the clerical choirs were wanting.

It was these popular religious songs, rather than the more stately

hymns read and chanted by clerical and monastic choirs, that kept

alive the vital spark of religious feeling and devotion to Christ. If

most of the doves of song hovered over the head of the Madonna during

this long period, it was because she was the mother of Jesus. It was

as the representative of all motherhood that she brought home the true

manhood of our Lord.

That this popular hymnody of the medieval period has failed to survive

is no proof of its worthlessness. It is no condemnation of the sermons

of Chrysostom, of Peter the Hermit, of Martin Luther, or of a thousand

sermons preached every Sunday that they perish with the breath that

gave them utterance. They served a good purpose in their brief hour.

That hundreds of Watts’ hymns, and thousands by Charles Wesley, are no

longer sung, does not establish their uselessness, but only that their

spiritual as well as verbal idiom is not adapted to the needs of our

day.

_Chapter XI_

LUTHER AND THE GERMAN HYMN

I. PRE-REFORMATION VERNACULAR HYMNS

While there has been a traceable logical progress in the development

of the Christian hymn, as in that of material creation, the generative

relations are not always clear. The link between Greek and Latin

hymnody may be found in Hilary of Poitiers in the fourth century, but

thereafter for five centuries they developed side by side along

independent lines.

The same may be said regarding the Latin and German hymns, Luther

furnishing the connection. But his connection is not so apparent with

the clerical Latin hymn as with the general impulse toward the

vernacular hymn.

Luther did not directly build upon the Latin hymns, although he did

translate a few of them, but on the popular songs and hymns that were

current in his day. Since the eleventh century vernacular hymns and

religious songs had been in private use. The Gregorian rule that

Scripture psalms and canticles only should be sung in public services

had been strictly enforced in the monasteries and larger centers; but

even there the proses and sequences had been allowed—in Latin, of

course. The first hymns sung in the common speech were enlargements of

the short responses allowed the people, “Kyrie eleison” and “Christe

eleison” being surviving Greek phrases which were used as refrains to

the stanzas of the hymns. They were called “Leisen,” or “Leichen.” Our

English word “lay” is a derivative from the same source. Many of these

“Leisen” mingled German and Latin words.

Back of the wrong conception of the way of salvation and the

fanaticism expressed in self-torture, the Flagellant Monks of the

later medieval period had an intensity of conviction and a selfless

devotion that inevitably found expression in song. Bands of them made

pilgrimages through Christian lands in processions, singing hymns to

Mary and her Son in the common speech, little recking that they were

helping to fertilize the soil from which should spring the Great

Reformation.

When King Conrad was anointed in 1024, our information is that

“joyfully they marched, the clergy singing in Latin, the people in

German, each after his own fashion”, but this was not a church

service, it was a festival procession.

Vernacular hymns became more and more numerous during the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries. The troubadours and minnesingers could not but

stimulate their production, furnishing the metrical and rhythmical

models and no small part of the hymns themselves, especially those

glorifying the divine motherhood of Mary. The monks, the custodians of

the literary and scholarly product of this age, had no motive for

making a record of these hymns, much less of their tunes, for which,

indeed, no adequate system of notation existed; hence but little of

this popular hymnody survives. It was not until Gutenberg brought in

the age of printing that some of it was handed down to us.[1]

The great mystic, John Tauler (1290-1361), a Dominican monk of

Strassburg, and others, wrote hymns of profound personal religious

experience that were widely sung. John Huss of Prague (1369-1415), the

renowned Bohemian martyr, wrote hymns in both Czech and Latin. In 1501

and 1505 Czech hymnbooks were issued, the first congregational

hymnbooks in the vernacular, the latter containing no less than four

hundred hymns, while Luther’s first collection, in 1524, nineteen

years later, contained only eight.

It will be seen that the foundations of vernacular singing by the

people, with popular tunes, had been laid, deep and wide, foundations

on which Luther could later build his German hymnody. In almost every

particular he had been anticipated by the Bohemian reformers, in

vernacular hymns and psalms, in the use of the people’s tunes, in the

revision of hymns current among the Catholics—by discarding their

worship of Mary and the saints—in the emphasis placed on music as a

vehicle for conveying Gospel truths and for the intensifying of the

needed propaganda.

In France, in England and Scotland, in the Netherlands, the same

impulses were felt. The fullness of the times had been prepared, and

the great protagonist and organizer of the spiritual revolt against

the hierarchy of Rome made of the hymn, which the ecclesiastical

builders had rejected, one of the cornerstones of the new Church.

II. LUTHER’S RELATION TO GERMAN HYMNODY

Luther’s objective in regard to the hymn was entirely different from

that of these representatives of traditional worship. He did not have

in mind the perfecting of a liturgical service on the lines of

ecclesiastical tradition, but the spiritual edification of the mass of

the people whom the liturgic monks had been ignoring. While too

appreciative of the Latin liturgy to cast aside psalms and canticles,

as well as sequences, he rejected them as models for his hymns, and

his creative impulse made the more appealing and practical folk songs

his basis of form and spirit.

Luther was a great lover of poetry and music. In his youth he went

about singing in the streets and in private homes. He knew both the

popular and the churchly music and was well prepared for his future

post of liaison officer between the Latin and the coming German

hymnody.

His great work in hymnody is that he took both the psalm and the hymn

from the clergy, put them into the vernacular in metrical form, with

popular tunes, and restored them to the people. He added to the

function of the hymn as worship those of instruction, meditation, and

exhortation. He added an entirely new dimension to the value of the

hymn, making it a means of creating a religious atmosphere for the

whole life of the Christian—personal, family, community. He made the

German people a singing people and laid the foundations for their

later musical pre-eminence. As Dr. Benson says, “He took it [the hymn]

out of the liturgies and put it into the people’s hearts and homes. He

revived, that is to say, Paul’s conception of hymnody as a spiritual

function.”[2]

Luther’s hymns are the root out of which grew all our Protestant

hymnody. They are like Ambrose’s in their plainness but, owing to

their popular models, are superior in their metrical variety and in

their cheerfulness. They are purposely cheerful: “When we sing, both

heart and mind should be cheerful and merry.” They had also a more

definite evangelical content, both objective and subjective, more

personal experience, more exhortation, thus immensely widening the

horizon of the hymn. Much of this was doubtless due to the Hussite

influence.

Luther anticipated Isaac Watts in demanding that the psalm should be

transformed into a hymn, retaining its important subject matter, but

excluding “certain forms of expression and employing other suitable

ones.”

The most important characteristic of the hymns of Luther and his

associates was the burden of biblical truth. “What I wish is to make

German hymns for this people, that the Word of God may dwell in their

hearts by means of song also,” gives us his ideal and his practical

purpose.

Luther’s hymns bear the characteristics of their writer. They were

straightforward, clear, and unpretentious, full of force and strong of

conviction. He was no poet. He was not conscious of literary impulses.

His diction often is more forcible than elegant. Indeed, he was a

peasant within whose horizon the elegant did not appear. Dr. Philip

Schaff says of him: “He had an extraordinary faculty of expressing

profound thought in the clearest language. In this gift he is not

surpassed by any uninspired writer; and herein lies the secret of his

power.... His style is racy, forcible, and idiomatic.”

Lord Selborne, an English hymnologist, remarks on Luther’s hymns,

“Homely and sometimes rugged in form, and for the most part objective

in tone, they are full of fire, manly simplicity, and strong faith.”

Luther wrote thirty-eight hymns. Twelve of them were based on Latin

hymns, among others, “Veni, Redemptor gentium,” “Veni, Creator

Spiritus,” “O Lux beata Trinitas,” and “Te Deum Laudamus”; four were

rewritten pre-Reformation hymns; seven were versions of Latin psalms;

six were paraphrases of other portions of Scripture, such as the Ten

Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer; nine were original hymns.

Nine collections were issued by Luther, beginning with the “Achtlieder

Buch,” the first evangelical hymnbook in the German language, issued

in 1524. It contained but eight hymns, four by Luther, three by Paul

Speratus, court chaplain at Koenigsberg, and one of unknown

authorship. Later in the year it was increased to twenty-five hymns,

bringing fourteen new hymns by Luther; it was called the “Erfurt

Enchiridion.” During this year, 1524, he wrote twenty-one of his

thirty-eight hymns. Five years later, 1529, he issued another hymnbook

containing fifty-four hymns. The issue of 1553, seven years after his

death, contained one hundred and thirty-one hymns. Three of these nine

issues had prefaces, as noteworthy as those of Watts to his several

books of psalms and hymns in formulating the principles of the new

Christian hymnody.

Luther’s masterpiece, “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A mighty

fortress is our God”), is based on the forty-sixth Psalm. It is one of

the greatest hymns in the whole Christian hymnody, great in itself,

great in its influence on the Protestantism of northern Europe. Ranke,

the noted church historian, says: “It is the production of the moment

in which Luther, engaged in a conflict with a world of foes, sought

strength in a consciousness that he was defending a divine cause,

which could never perish.” Carlyle recognized its majesty, “a sound of

Alpine avalanches, or the first murmurs of earthquakes.” Calling up

the inspiration it brought to the Protestant armies, German and

Swedish, in the religious wars after the Reformation, Heine

characterized it as “the Marseillaise of the Reformation.” It has been

recognized as the national hymn of Protestant Germany.

A number of translations into English have been made. Carlyle

successfully reproduces its rugged strength in his version, but for

congregational use the translation of Rev. Frederick H. Hedge, made in

1853, is more practicable.

Luther’s tune is worthy of the text in its ponderous majesty. A small

congregation, or a larger one that does not know it very well, can do

little with it; only a large congregation singing lustily and in the

characteristically German slow _tempo_ can do it justice.

His Christmas hymn, “Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her” (“From heaven

above to earth I come”), his praise of Jesus Christ, “Gelobet seist

du, Jesu Christ” (“All praise to Thee, eternal Lord”), a revision of a

pre-Reformation popular hymn, and his doctrinal hymn, rejoicing over

the salvation wrought out by Jesus Christ, “Nun freuet euch, lieb’

Christen G’mein” (“Dear Christian people, now rejoice”), have been

very much beloved and were very effective in building up the

Protestant cause.

Luther deserves well of the Christian Church, not only because of his

own hymns, but because of the inspiration he afforded others among his

contemporaries, and to the generations since his day, to take up the

writing of hymns. Among the co-laborers in this field in his own

generation were Justus Jonas, Paul Eber, Erasmus Alber, Lazarus

Spengler, Paul Speratus, and Nicolaus Decius. Luther furnished the

idea, the inspiration, and the model for all these hymnists. According

to Koch, fifty-one writers contributed hymns to swell the Lutheran

hymnody between 1517 and 1560.

As was to be expected, the early German hymnody was also enriched by a

number of excellent hymns from the Bohemian Brethren. They were

translated by Michael Weiss and Johann Roh, German ministers who had

been associated with them.

No small part of the immediate success of Luther’s hymns was the tunes

which he provided. He used the melodies already current among the

people. He had providentially associated with him musical helpers like

Johann Walther and Ludwig Senfl, who did the musical editorial work on

his issues. His settings of his “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” and

“Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” are still a valuable part of the

melodic treasury of the Christian Church.

_Chapter XII_

THE LATER GERMAN HYMNODY

I. THE RISING STANDARD OF LITERARY VALUES

After Luther’s death, the impetus of his hymnic influence gradually

lost its evangelical force, and a more self-consciously literary

coterie raised both the literary and musical standards. Prominent

among them was Bartolomaeus Ringwaldt (1530-1598), who wrote “Es ist

gewisslich an der Zeit”—the German “Dies Irae”—which probably

suggested the English hymn, “Great God! what do I see and hear?” He

was a very fertile writer. Equally fertile was Nicolaus Selnecker

(1530-1592), who wrote nearly one hundred and fifty hymns.

More important than either was Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608), a

Westphalian pastor, whose “Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern” (“O

Morning Star, how fair and bright”) and “Wachet auf, ruft uns die

Stimme” (“Sleepers, wake, a voice is calling”) have been and are the

most widely used of all German hymns outside of Luther’s two

masterpieces. Nicolai wrote them while a great pestilence was raging

in Unna, during which fourteen hundred persons perished. He wrote the

hymns for his own comfort and that of his people. He also wrote the

chorales to which they are sung and which have been called

respectively the “Queen” and “King” of German chorales. On the basis

of their intrinsic value rather than on that of adaptation to American

spirit and type of church life, they occasionally appear in our

hymnals, but they are rarely or never sung. Miss Winkworth’s

translation of the “King” may be judged by the first stanza:

“Wake, awake, the night is flying;

The watchmen on the heights are crying,

Awake, Jerusalem, at last!

Midnight hears the welcome voices,

And at the thrilling cry rejoices;

Come forth, ye virgins, night is past!

The Bridegroom comes, awake,

Your lamps with gladness take;

Alleluia!

And for his marriage-feast prepare,

For ye must go to meet him there.”

This chorale was used by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy as one of the

climaxes of his great oratorio, “St. Paul.”

The popular “Te Deum” of Germany, “Nun danket alle Gott” (“Now thank

we all our God”), was written by Martin Rinkart (1586-1649). Miss

Winkworth’s version is found in most modern hymnals and deserves wide

use, for it is entirely practicable in a congregation of average size.

Mendelssohn used this chorale in his cantata “Lobgesang” with much

effectiveness. This great hymn was written at the conclusion of the

horrible and disastrous Thirty Years’ War. Michael Altenburg

(1584-1640) wrote the famous battle hymn of Gustavus Adolphus with

which the great Warrior King has been credited; “Verzage nicht, du

Haeuflein klein” (“Fear not, O little flock, the foe”) is still used

in Germany. However, Luther’s “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” was the

more usual battle hymn, as Altenburg’s hymn was not introduced until

late in Gustavus Adolphus’ campaigns—indeed, has been called his “Swan

song.” Martin Opitz (1597-1639) deserves mention as a valuable

influence in regulating the meters and in stressing poetical values.

One of the immortal hymns written during this period was that of Georg

Neumark (1621-1681), librarian of the Duke of Weimar, “Wer nur den

lieben Gott laesst walten” (“If thou but suffer God to guide thee”).

Other hymn writers during this distressful period were Johann Heermann

(1585-1647), who wrote distinctive hymns of prayer in a correct style

and good versification; Johann Rest (1607-1667), who wrote six hundred

and eighty hymns intended to cover the whole domain of theology (two

hundred of which were in common use in the German churches); and

Matthaeus Apelles von Loewenstein (1594-1648), Johannes Matthaeus

Meyfart (1590-1642), and Paul Fleming (1609-1640).

This was a period of tribulation, calamity, and desperation, which, as

Miss Winkworth remarks, “caused religious men to look away from this

world” and led to a more subjective type of hymn, expressing personal

feeling. In general, the literary value of the hymns of this period,

in form and diction and imagination, exceeded that of those of the

previous generation.

II. THE GOLDEN AGE OF GERMAN HYMNODY

The spiritual deepening of this age of sorrow, the widening of the

scope of the hymn by the inclusion of more subjective elements, and

the literary advance in the structure and diction were preparing the

way for the Golden Age of German hymnody which followed the conclusion

of the great religious war. It extended from Paul Gerhardt (1604-1676)

to Christian Fuerchtegott Gellert (1715-1769).

Gerhardt had spent his young manhood amid the desolation and

difficulties of the Thirty Years’ War. He did not enter the ministry

until he was nearly fifty years old, having written no hymns up to

that time. A great preacher and a devoted pastor, he was a man of deep

piety and of unflinching loyalty to the truth, as it was given to him

to see it. As calamity followed calamity, under strict divine

discipline in preparation for his great work in the writing of hymns,

not only for the German church, but also for the whole Christian

world, he united in himself the two tendencies, the one of viewing God

and divine things in an objective way, characteristic of the early

Lutheran hymns, and the other, the expression of the emotion produced

by such contemplation in the heart of the Christian, characteristic of

the subsequent period. He had the body of the older hymnody and the

spirit of the new.

Moreover, Gerhardt was a poet. Indeed, his writings were extensive

lyrics rather than hymns. Some of them have furnished several hymns.

He was the Keble of German hymnody, and his influence upon subsequent

hymn writing has been most helpful. There is a poetic fertility in the

man lacking in his predecessors.

He wrote one hundred and twenty-three hymns, of which Dr. Philip

Schaff declares that they “are among the noblest pearls in the

treasury of sacred poetry.” They are of such uniform excellence that

it is difficult to select those of outstanding merit. “Befiehl du

deine Wege” (“Give to the winds thy fears”) was translated by John

Wesley. “O Jesu Christ, mein schoenstes Licht” (“Jesus, thy boundless

love to me”) is another most successful translation by the same hand.

“O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” (“O sacred head, now wounded”) leans

hard on “Salve, caput cruentatum,” but has a spirituality the older

hymn does not so fully display. Thirty of his hymns are in general use

in the German churches, and Germany recognizes him as her prince of

hymnists, superior even to Luther.

Gerhardt’s contemporaries, John Franck (1618-1677) and John Scheffler

(1624-1677), while fairly prominent do not compare with him in

thoughtfulness and literary felicity. Both are more pietistic. The

latter has a somewhat exuberant style, intense and enthusiastic. John

Wesley translated and adopted one hymn known to our hymnals as “Thee

will I love, my strength, my tower.”

III. THE PIETISTIC HYMN WRITERS

In the latter decades of the seventeenth century, Philipp Jacob

Spener, August Hermann Francke, and Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen

led a strong movement of protest, called Pietism, against the arid

scholasticism and cold formalism of the Lutheran church. It was a

second Reformation, emphasizing piety and sincere emotionalism. It

postponed the blight of Rationalism for a few decades and led a

generation into a devouter, more genuine, religious life.

Spener was a great leader and a good man, but no hymn writer; Francke

wrote but few hymns, and so this phase of their work devolved on

Freylinghausen. He was full of spirit, with attractive rhythms and

florid music. His songs were very popular, but lacked permanent merit.

Other writers of this school were Schade, Schutz, and Rodigast.

Less immediately connected with the Pietistic movement, but under its

influence, are Hiller of South Germany, Arnold, a professor at the

University of Giessen, and Tersteegen of Westphalia, a mystic, all of

whom wrote very acceptable hymns. Tersteegen was highly appreciated by

John Wesley, who translated his “Gott rufet noch; sollt’ ich nicht

endlich hoeren?” (“God calling yet! shall I not hear?”). “Gott ist

gegenwaertig! lasset uns anbeten” (“Lo! God is here; let us adore”)

and “Jedes Herz will etwas lieben” (“Something every heart is loving”)

are others found translated in current hymnals. Lord Selborne speaks

of him as “of all the more copious German hymn writers after Luther,

perhaps the most remarkable man, pietist, mystic, and missionary, he

was also a great religious poet.” That he was a layman makes his

religious life all the more remarkable.

A more widely known and striking personality was Count von Zinzendorf

(1700-1760), a very devout but somewhat erratic man. He became the

patron saint of the Moravian Church and shared—perhaps created—its

zeal for foreign missions. He spent some time in the United States, in

eastern Pennsylvania, and in the West Indies, doing evangelistic work.

He wrote two thousand religious lyrics, disfigured to a large extent

by extravagances and by repulsive materialistic similes and phrases.

His associate and successor, Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg, long

resident in America, and Bishop Christian Gregor also wrote very

useful hymns. The Moravian hymnody is all the more noteworthy in that

it had a great influence over the hymnic work of the Wesleys.

IV. GERMAN REFORMED HYMNODY

The Reformed Church in Germany long followed Calvin in exclusively

using the Psalms of David, but finally felt the impulse of the

Lutheran hymnody. Tersteegen, mentioned above, leaned to this branch

of the German church, although not officially connected with it.

Joachim Neander (1650-1680), a Reformed minister at Bremen, wrote some

extremely valuable and popular hymns of praise and was called the

Psalmist of the New Covenant. Among his best are “Sieh, hier bin ich,

Ehren-Koenig” (“Behold me here in grief draw near”), “Lobe den Herren,

den maechtigen Koenig der Ehren” (“Praise to the Lord! He is King over

all the creation”), “Unser Herrscher, unser Koenig” (“Sovereign Ruler,

King victorious”), still sung in every pious home in Germany.

V. TRANSITION TO RATIONALISTIC HYMNS

The transitional personality between this Pietistic and the succeeding

Rationalistic era, was Christian F. Gellert (1715-1769), a professor

in Leipzig University. He was a man of sincere piety; he was a

teacher, not only in the classroom, but in all his literary efforts.

He wrote moral _Tales and Fables_, _Moral Poems_, _Didactic Poems_, as

well as _Sacred Odes and Hymns_. There were fifty-four of these, all

in the same didactic style. They lacked the rugged strength of Luther,

the poetical element of Gerhardt, and the mystic insight of

Tersteegen; but this very matter-of-factness made his writings

immensely popular. Of all his hymns, but one survives in our modern

hymnals, his Easter hymn, “Jesus lebt, mit ihm auch ich” (“Jesus

lives, no longer now”).

VI. RATIONALISM IN HYMNODY

German hymnody suddenly fell from its exalted Pietistic rhapsodies

into a crass materialism. Dr. Philip Schaff gives a vivid glimpse into

the situation: “He (Klopstock) was followed by a swarm of hymnological

tinkers and poetasters who had no sympathy with the theology and

poetry of the grand old hymns of faith; weakened, diluted, mutilated,

and watered them, and introduced these misimprovements into the

churches.... Conversion and sanctification were changed into

self-improvement, piety into virtue, heaven into the better world,

Christ into Christianity, God into Providence, Providence into fate.

The people were compelled to sing rhymed sermons on the existence of

God, the immortality of the soul, the delights of reunion, the dignity

of man, the duty of self-improvement, the nurture of the body, and the

care of animals and flowers.”

There is no poetical, much less religious, lyrical impulse in

rationalism, and the church lyrics of this period have left little

impress on the hymnody of the Christian Church. It was the classic

period of German literature, but it had few Christian elements in it.

Athens and Rome, not Jerusalem, were the centers of intellectual

interest; and it might almost be said that it is a pagan literature.

VII. HYMNS OF RENEWED RELIGIOUS LIFE

As in the immediate pre-Reformation age, in spite of the decadence of

religious life among the Roman Catholic leaders, there was a

semi-submerged piety that forced the Reformation inside the church; so

in this recrudescence of paganism in the German church, there was a

great body of earnest, pious Christians who kept the spirit of true

German devoutness alive.

These were represented by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803),

who, although he set the disastrous fashion of re-writing the older

hymns in order to improve their literary value by removing archaisms

and harsh lines, was yet a devout man, writing the great German epic

“Messias” and also some deeply religious hymns that were too poetic

for the common people. Another devout writer was Johann Kasper Lavater

(1741-1801), better known by his treatise on physiognomy, who wrote

some hymns after the style of Klopstock, but with greater popular

success, for his “O suessester der Namen all” (“O name than every name

more dear”) has been translated and used in English hymnals.

When the first intoxication of the new freedom from churchly, and even

moral, restraint passed away, the German church again found able

representatives to give expression to its religious life. Friedrich

von Hardenberg (1772-1801), also called “Novalis,” a mining engineer

of fine literary ability, wrote some hymns of deep feeling and

beautiful style. Friedrich de la Motte Fouque (1777-1843), chiefly

known as the author of _Undine_, and as an outstanding representative

of the Romantic school in literature, wrote some very beautiful hymns,

including two missionary hymns of great excellence. There is a

literary and imaginative charm in these hymns, as in his general

German style, that betrays his Huguenot heredity. Both these writers

had the literary emphasis that somewhat discounted the value of their

hymns for the common people. They stand, however, as landmarks of the

subsidence of the rationalistic period in German hymnody.

VIII. HYMNS OF PIETISTIC TYPE

In the reaction from Rationalism, Pietism again came into its own and

a noble roster of sacred lyrists have given it expression. This

includes Ernst Moritz Arndt, professor of history at the University of

Bonn, whose “Wahres Christentum” was as necessary to every Christian

home as the Bible itself, a patriot who won the hatred and persecution

of Napoleon Bonaparte by his patriotic songs, and whose hymns are no

small part of the treasury of later German hymnody. Among them are

“Ich weiss, an wen ich glaube” (“I know in whom I put my trust”),

which is one of the German classics.

Friedrich Adolf Krummacher (1767-1845) is best remembered by his hymn

“Mag auch die Liebe weinen” (“Though love may weep with breaking

heart”) and his missionary hymn, “Eine Herde und ein Hirt” (“One

shepherd and one fold to be”). Still others are Friedrich Ruckert

(1789-1866) whom Dr. Schaff calls “one of the greatest masters of

lyric poetry,” Albert Knapp (1798-1864), editor of the outstanding

critical collection of German hymns, “Der Liederschatz,” and writer of

many widely used hymns, and Meta Heusser-Schweizer (1797-1876), of

Switzerland, “the most eminent and noble among all the female poets of

our whole evangelical Church.”[1]

The primate of them all is Karl Johann Philipp Spitta (1801-1859),

“the most popular hymnist of the nineteenth century.” The fifty-fifth

edition of his _Psalter und Harfe_ appeared in 1889. He was an

Hanoverian pastor. He had been under rationalistic teachers at the

University of Goettingen, but toward the end of his university course

had a profound religious experience that affected all his future life;

he wrote no secular verse after that time. He was recognized as a

mystic and pietist and his promotion was antagonized on that ground.

Many of his hymns have been translated into English. Among the most

successful are “O Jesu, meine Sonne” (“I know no life divided”), “Es

kennt der Herr die Seinen” (“He knoweth all His people”), “O selig

Haus, wo man dich aufgenommen” (“O happy home, where thou art loved

the dearest”), “O treuer Heiland, Jesu Christ” (“We praise and bless

thee, gracious Lord”).

Spitta may be called “the Gerhardt of the nineteenth century,” for he

has many of that great hymn writer’s qualities as well as his

popularity. He was sincerely devout, a man of an abiding sense of

God’s care and nearness; his style is smooth and melodious as well as

poetical.

Spitta’s hymns are very practical in length and form of stanza, and

his themes grow out of the common needs and experiences of general

humanity. For this reason they have been very largely translated into

English—no less than thirty-three of them—and, what is more

significant, selected by editors of hymnals, especially in England.

Karl von Gerok (1815-?) is another exceedingly popular religious

lyrist of the nineteenth century, hardly second to Spitta. His

“Palm-blaetter,” issued in 1857, reached its fifty-sixth edition in

1886. By this time it has likely reached the century mark. But his

verses are religious poetry, not hymns, and but a few centos have been

admitted to German hymnbooks.

Recently the new rationalism and sensual materialism have again

submerged the religious life of Germany and the impulse to write hymns

has lost its urgency. Whether the shattering of the illusion of

world-wide power, and the sobering effect of its terrible losses of

men and of wealth, will bring Germany back to her religious senses

must be patiently awaited by those eager for her highest welfare. The

recrudescence of paganism and its threat of renewed striving after

world dominance need not blast this pious hope. God’s hand is still on

the tiller of the German national bark, and the heart of the German

people is not represented by the bulletins on the surface of its

current events, caused by the pride of nationalism in the shallow

vocal stratum that stridently claims the world’s attention.

In this hurried review of the development of the German hymn from

Luther to Spitta much that is interesting and profitable has been

omitted. But it is manifest that this German hymnody holds the supreme

place in the hymnody of the Christian Church in all ages and nations.

The reasons for this lie on the surface: the German people are a

singing people, and the instinct to sing their thoughts and feelings

is stronger than in any other race. Again, they did not lose two

centuries under the spell of Calvin’s devotion to the Hebrew Psalms,

as did Great Britain and America. In contrast with the Latin and Greek

hymnodies, it is the voice of the people, not the restrained

liturgical voice of the clergy.

The German hymnody is often ponderous and heavy, often tediously

prolix and dull, but at the heart of it is a profound realization of

the actualities of the Christian faith, and a responsiveness to its

appeals to the hearts of men, that one cannot find elsewhere to the

same extent.

_Chapter XIII_

METRICAL PSALMODY

I. CALVIN’S CONCEPTION OF CONGREGATIONAL SINGING

While Luther recognized the value of hymns as pre-eminent in his work,

he still left a large place for the Psalms, himself making some

admirable versions and inciting others to do the same. But there were

limits to his sympathy with an undue and merely formal emphasis of

them. He canceled the obligation of repeating the whole Psalter once a

week, instituted by Cardinal Quimonez, as “a donkey’s burden.” Luther

was a reformer, changing only what needed changing in order to secure

a deeper spirituality. Calvin and Zwingli were not reformers, but

re-creators, setting wholly aside all the liturgy, the ecclesiastical

organization, the clerical rules, and the distinctive doctrines of the

Roman church, and building up an entirely new church with no other

sanction than their interpretation of the Word of God.

Perhaps unconsciously, Calvin harked back to the Roman attitude of

Gregory the Great, in insisting on purely Scriptural sources for the

service of song. He was too good a Biblical scholar not to know that

the Apostolic Church used “hymns and spiritual songs” as well as

Psalms; indeed he never categorically forbade hymns of “human

composure.” But the people had been forbidden the Bible. The Psalms

had been sung by the clergy alone in an already dead language. Calvin

declared that “if a man sang in an unknown tongue, he might as well be

a linnet or a popinjay.” So he reacted somewhat violently. He had a

profound sense of the authority of the Word of God, and his mind was

possessed by the idea of the divine sovereignty; hence religious rites

of human origin seemed trifling and negligible.

This attitude was emphasized all the more by the Latin hymns sung and

read in the churches, and on religious occasions, whose chief burden

was worship of the Madonna, and even of the saints, against which his

mind rose in outraged horror.

II. CALVIN’S FOLLOWERS MORE EXTREME

Human nature being what it is, it was inevitable that Calvin’s

followers should carry his ideas to an extreme, and mechanically add

the conclusion that hymns independent of the lyrics of the Scriptures

should be forbidden.

While Luther stressed the Biblical content of the hymns and exalted

the Psalms as the source of religious lyrical impulses, Calvin and his

disciples added a rigid and almost superstitious regard for the mere

form of the Scripture lyrics. They accepted their distortion and

mutilation in giving them a metrical form as justified by the

congregational necessity, and by the evident devotional results among

the people.

III. MAROT’S SUCCESSFUL VERSIONS

Beneath his austerity Calvin evidently had an appreciation of literary

beauty and grace, for he developed an ambition to clothe the Hebrew

Psalms in a literary French metrical dress. It was while this problem

was exercising his mind that there fell into his hands the French

version of some of the Psalms by Clement Marot (1497-1544), who had

come under the influence of Marguerite de Valois, the Huguenot

princess, whose _valet de chambre_ he was during his early twenties.

It is possible that he and Calvin met at Ferrara in 1535. Though the

work of a Huguenot poet, these lyrics were admired in high political

and social circles in France. Written in measures fitting them to

popular tunes, they were very popular among the royal courtiers,

Catholics as well as Protestants, and were soon introduced into other

countries.

That he was later persecuted by the Roman ecclesiastics only

recommended him the more to Calvin. Here was a poet of high

reputation, a skillful versifier of the Psalms, a fellow-sufferer at

the hands of the Roman hierarchy—why not commit to his hands the task

of supplying Calvin’s new church with its needed book of Psalms? So

Marot was called to Geneva.

IV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENEVAN PSALTER

In 1543, nineteen years after Luther’s first venture, the _Acht

Liederbuch_, appeared, _The Genevan Psalter_ was issued in the French

language. It contained fifty psalms by Marot. Marot died in 1544. The

completion of the Psalter was committed to Theodore Beza of Burgundy,

who revised Marot’s verses, eliminating the classical allusions and

offensive gaiety. With the help of Bourgeois, and later of Goudimel,

in completing and harmonizing the tunes, he finished the Psalter in

1562.[1]

V. ENGLISH PSALM VERSIONS BEFORE STERNHOLD

There had been English versions of some of the Psalms before Sternhold

undertook the task. Bishop Aldhelm of Sherborne, who died in 709 A.D.,

composed a complete psalter. Two versions were due to Lutheran

influence. That of Miles Coverdale, _Ghoostly Psalms and Spiritual

Songs_, appearing sometime between 1530 and 1540, used some of the

German chorales, including the great “Ein’ feste Burg.”

The Wedderburn brothers of Dundee, Scotland, issued the _Compendious

Booke of Gude and Godlie Ballates_, also known as _Dundee Psalms_, on

the return of John Wedderburn, soon after 1539, from Wittenberg, where

he had been under the influence of both Luther and Melanchthon. Latin

psalms and hymns had no value with young people, he insisted in his

preface; “but when they hear it sung into their vulgar tongue, or sing

it themselves, with sweet melody, then shall they love their God with

heart and mind, and cause them to put away bawdry and unclean songs.”

While considerably better than the songs the collection displaced, the

new book was too cheaply popular, and undignified in many of its

religious parodies of popular songs, to satisfy the elders of the

Scottish Kirk (!) and they tried to suppress it.

But the lines of religious, social, doctrinal, and political influence

connected England and Scotland with France and Geneva so closely that

it happened that the new English and Scotch psalmody was based on the

work of Marot and Calvin and not on that of Luther. To human minds

with some sense of literary dignity and style and of a more

spontaneous expression of religious life and experience, it seems a

great pity!

The first response in England to the new version of Marot was the

Latin version of George Buchanan in 1548. Latin was an entirely dead

language to the commonalty, but was quite generally familiar to people

of scholarship and culture. This version, in the scholarly language of

all Europe (like the Mandarin in China), found wide appreciation in

intellectual circles and many editions of it were issued. Of course,

the mass of the English people was not affected by it, and it had

little or no influence on the development of English psalmody.

That there were vernacular versions already in use, is quite certain.

Robert Cowley anticipated Sternhold and Hopkins in the versifying of

the whole Psalter, issuing his work in 1549. In the preface to this

collection he refers to previous versions which had passages “obscure

and hard.” Probably they were Lollard or Wycliffite in origin, for

these “sweet singers,” precursors of the Reformation to come, worked

among the lower classes in the Low Countries as well as in England,

singing the Gospel in the vernacular.

VI. VERSION OF STERNHOLD AND HOPKINS

Undoubtedly it was the French Psalms of Marot, and their great

popularity in the highest circles in France, that incited Thomas

Sternhold to undertake a like version in the English language. His

first issue, probably in 1547 and 1548, contained nineteen Psalms. In

1549 he published another edition containing thirty-seven Psalms.

Sternhold died in 1549, leaving but nineteen additional Psalms

unpublished. Another poet, John Hopkins, a near neighbor in

Gloucestershire, contributed to the edition of 1551. In 1562 the

psalter was completed. Of the one hundred and fifty Psalms, Sternhold

had supplied fifty-one, Hopkins sixty, all in common meter, and the

rest were contributed by various writers. It also contained metrical

versions of the Canticles, the Ten Commandments, the Athanasian Creed,

the Te Deum, the Lord’s Prayer, an English version of the festival

hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” and several original English hymns.

This psalter had a popularity equaled only by _Hymns Ancient and

Modern_ and the _Gospel Hymns_ series in the recent past. Within half

a century more than fifty editions were issued. By 1841 no less than

six hundred and fifty different editions had been absorbed by the

religious public—more than all other metrical versions combined.

This version was adopted by the Church of England in 1562 and

continued to be used for nearly two hundred and fifty years, despite

its notorious crudities and imperfections, and despite the many

efforts made to supersede it by other versions and by hymns. The

singing of Psalms became universal. At St. Paul’s Cross, after the

service, there were sometimes six thousand persons engaged in singing

Psalms. It was a time of genuine community singing.

VII. THE SCOTCH VERSION

In 1556, John Knox issued his _Anglo-Genevan Psalter_, based on the

1551 edition of Sternhold and Hopkins, with some alterations and

additions. It naturally was greatly influenced by Calvin’s _Genevan

Psalter_. The _Anglo-Genevan Psalter_ is significant chiefly because

of its influence on the Scotch Psalter. Through that, it is the source

of some psalms and tunes still in use—notably, “All people that on

earth do dwell” and “Old Hundredth” to which the Long Meter Doxology

is sung.

The Scotch Psalter developed on a different line. The Psalm editors of

the Scottish Church accepted eighty-seven of the Anglo-Genevan Psalms,

added and somewhat altered forty-two from the final Sternhold and

Hopkins editions, and supplied twenty-one from their own versifiers.

It appeared in 1564 and was adopted by the General Assembly as its

authorized Psalm book.

In 1600 James I began a revision and himself wrote thirty-five of the

Psalms before his death. This psalter was completed by William

Alexander and was issued in 1630, being known as the _Royal Psalter_.

Charles I bound up a revised edition of it with a new liturgy prepared

by the Scotch bishops in 1536, and ordered its exclusive use. But the

Scotch clergy declined with thanks, having no use for “the mass in

English.”

But the question of a revision of this Psalter having been raised, its

deficiencies, which had been passively accepted, rose up into

consciousness. Rous’ version, adopted by the Westminster Assembly in

1643, and hence widely used in England, was made the basis of the new

Scotch Psalter and, after seven years of amending and revision, was

adopted in 1650. It is still used in Scotland and in American

Presbyterian churches whose eyes look back reverently to Scotland.

VIII. ROUS’ VERSION

Rous’ version was made by Francis Rous, Provost of Eton College,

Oxford, a Presbyterian lawyer and a man of public affairs. It was an

improvement on Sternhold and Hopkins, but still left much to be

desired in smoothness of versification and grace of diction, owing to

the continued loyalty to the original phraseology of the Psalms. Hence

it had some “awful examples,” to use Matthew Arnold’s phrase, whose

repetition here might amuse but not edify. But it also had some happy

stanzas that we still are glad to sing, e.g.:

“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want;

He makes me down to lie

In pastures green; he leadeth me

The quiet waters by.”

Compare this with Archbishop Parker’s version of the Shepherd Psalm

written in 1557:

“To feed my neede: he will me leade

To pastures green and fat:

He forth brought me: in libertie

To waters delicate.”

But with the blindness of the versifiers to the need of diversifying

their meters in the interest of varied and attractive tunes, all the

psalms were written in Common Meter.[2]

IX. TATE AND BRADY’S “NEW VERSION”

A new version by two Irishmen, Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, appeared

in 1696. Tate was a literary man, a playwright, a poet, and finally

poet laureate. Brady had a rather varied clerical career in Ireland

and in England, becoming chaplain to King William. This will partly

explain why this version received royal endorsement and gradually

replaced Sternhold and Hopkins in the English Church. It was adopted

by the Protestant Episcopal Church of America in 1789. The fact that

the Nonconformist churches remained faithful to the “Old Version” and

to Rous’ version, no doubt had its bearing on the final acceptance of

the “New Version” by the Established Church.

This “New Version” was a little smoother than the “Old Version,” and

had a little more literary grace, but still was shackled by devotion

to “purity”—to the exact thought and phraseology of the Hebrew Psalms.

Nevertheless, as Gillman says, “this book contained a plentiful supply

of chaff, but perhaps a few more grains of golden corn than

Sternhold’s.” “As pants the hart for cooling streams” and “Through all

the changing scenes of life” are still highly prized, and Tate’s

Christmas Carol, “While shepherds watched their flocks by night”

(which appeared in a supplement to the “New Version”) is a masterly

adaptation of the Nativity story. On the other hand, Montgomery, in

comparing the “New Version” with the “Old Version,” remarks: “It is

nearly as inanimate as the former, though a little more refined.” Of

the “Old Version” he says: “The merit of faithful adherence to the

original has been claimed for this version and need not be denied, but

it is the resemblance which the dead bear to the living.” Old Thomas

Fuller wittily says of Sternhold and Hopkins that “They are men whose

piety was better than their poetry, and they had drunk more of Jordan

than of Helicon.” Thomas Campbell even more harshly exclaims: “With

the best intensions and the worst taste, they degraded the spirit of

Hebrew poetry by flat and homely phraseology, and, mistaking vulgarity

for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime.” From the

literary point of view these dicta are correct enough, but they

overlook what is vastly more important—the high moral and spiritual

uses which these homely versions so amply served.

X. AMERICAN PSALMODY

The Pilgrims brought with them from Leyden Ainsworth’s version of the

Psalms, published in Amsterdam—Genevan rather than English in

character. Its use was largely confined to the Pilgrims and their

descendants. Presently the copies of both versions became rare and the

service of song depended on the “lining out” of the verses.

The first book printed in America was the _Bay Psalm Book_, an

independent version of the Psalms made by Thomas Welde, Richard

Mather, and John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, a committee

appointed in 1636. It was proposed to make it more scriptural than

either of the previous versions used. It appeared in 1640. Its preface

consisted of a discourse urging that psalm-singing was both lawful and

necessary. During the next century and a half no less than seventy

editions were printed. It was improved by Dunster and Lyon and

reprinted in Great Britain, eighteen editions being called for in

England and twenty-two in Scotland. This was America’s first

contribution to the song service of the Mother Country, but by no

means the last.

It may be interesting to see just what literary style this _Bay Psalm

Book_ could display, and a few specimens are herewith given. The one

hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, for instance, was given the

following form:

1. “The rivers on of Babilon

There when wee did sit downe:

Yea, even then wee mourned when

wee remembred Sion.

2. Our Harp wee did hang it amid

Upon the willow tree,

Because there they that us away

led in captivitee,

3. Required of us a song and thus

ask mirth: us waste who laid,

sing us among a Sion’s song

unto us then they said.

4. The Lord’s song sing can wee? being

in stranger’s land. Then let

loose her skill my right hand, if I

Jerusalem forget.

5. Let cleave my tongue my pallate on

if minde thee doe not I

if chief joys or’e I prize not more

Jerusalem my joy.”

Cotton Mather’s rhymeless version was much more sensible in its form,

for it eliminated the chief handicap in producing a literal version in

metrical form.

As in the Psalm versions of England and Scotland, there was a vivid

consciousness of literary and poetic shortcomings; but the sense of

obligation to supply a literal translation of the Hebrew overrode all

impulses toward a smoother rendering. The preface frankly states the

position of the committee: “If therefore the verses are not always so

smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider

that God’s altar needs not our polishing (Ex. 20), for we have

respected rather a plaine translation, than to smooth our verses with

the sweetness of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience

rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the

Hebrew words into English language and David’s poetry into English

meetre.”

There were other American Psalm versions, but the only versions worth

considering are the revisions of Isaac Watts’ Psalms, which will come

up in introducing American hymnody later.

XI. THE VALUE OF THE PSALM VERSIONS

In smiling over this rude psalmody of England, Scotland, and America,

it is always to be remembered that these versions were not a literary

endeavor. Their ambition was to secure ‘purity,’ loyalty to the rather

prosaically conceived doctrines of the originals. There was no thought

of poetry or of literary finish. The meter and rhyme were practical

devices to make congregational singing possible.

_Chapter XIV_

THE ENGLISH HYMN BEFORE WATTS

I. THE EARLIEST ENGLISH HYMN

Just as Gregory the Great did not create the music that bears his

name, nor Luther the congregational hymnody, so Isaac Watts did not

originate the English hymnody of which he is often termed the father.

The Lollards, or Wickliffites, sang metrical psalms, and also hymns,

in the Low Countries, as well as in England, long before Luther, or

Marot, or Sternhold.

Moreover, the emphasis of the Psalms was an ecclesiastical, clerical

attitude, while the people at large to whom the Scriptures had been a

closed book, and the Psalms an unknown language, sang such vernacular

hymns as sprang up among them; so, while we cannot doubt but that they

sang some metrical psalms, based on the Wickliffe English Bible, the

body of their singing was presumably hymnic.

Indeed, we must go back much farther to find the spring of religious

song that was to become a great river of praise. Caedmon, a monk,

originally a swineherd, of the early seventh century, supplied the

earliest recorded English hymns:

“Now must we hymn the Master of heaven,

The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father,

The thought of his heart.”

Undoubtedly the times before Caedmon were resonant with earlier songs,

for the Venerable Bede (673-735) in the next generation records the

fact of a great deal of singing among the people. Indeed, he himself

wrote hymns in Anglo-Saxon, as well as in Latin. Patrick and Colombo

sang psalms and hymns and made them a means of converting the pagans

of Ireland and Scotland.

II. ENGLISH HYMNODY SUBMERGED BY REFORMED PSALMODY

The urge, not only for versifying all parts of the Scriptures,

including genealogies, but of actually singing them with fervor,

submerged the native impulse of song. The religious loyalty to the

letter of the Scriptures that followed closed the door against the

development of the English hymn.[1]

Professor Reeves in his _The Hymn as Literature_ remarks: “As vigorous

and variegated and prevalent as this union of popular poetry and

popular music was in England, it strangely weakened and paled at the

one time in English history when it might have been expected most to

flourish. The Reformation, born of that new freedom of thought and

worship which produces the best hymnody, did not in England, as it

gloriously did in Germany, speak out richly in the native vernacular

hymn.”[2]

III. ENGLISH LITERARY IDEALS UNFAVORABLE TO HYMN-WRITING

But it was not only the blight of a narrow bibliolatry that prevented

the development of the English religious lyric. English poetry had

lost its spontaneity and its gracious simplicity in a self-conscious

devotion to false literary ideals.

The conception of a congregational hymn did not exist among the

literary men of the Reformation and later. Indeed, that Reformation

among the cultured and intellectual classes was not so much a

religious transformation as a political and cultural repudiation of

clerical bonds, and an enjoyment of new liberties. There was some

religious feeling, of course, but it was expressed in elaborate forms,

not in spontaneous simple lyrics that the people could sing.

The technic of the singing hymn had not been developed, nor its

limitations recognized. It took nearly a century before even an

approximation could be reached to the practicability of the Lutheran

hymns, which were written, not by literary connoisseurs, but by men in

close touch with the people, men who had with singleness of mind

striven to win and edify them. As we study the English lyrics,

written, not to be sung, but simply to express the personal feelings

of the writer in the current style and in complicated measures, we see

how far English poets had to go before a practicable singing hymn

could be written.

The conceptions of poetry, the prevalent grandioseness of style, the

studied phrasemaking, the excessive Latinity of vocabulary among

distinctively literary men, made the simplicity needed in a

congregational hymn impossible. Despite Mr. Horder’s enthusiasm over

the possible use Luther would have made of John Milton, the German

hymnody creator could have done nothing with the ponderous

large-planning author of _Paradise Lost_, with his wealth of classical

allusions and mythology, and his phrasing rich with preciosity.

Milton’s Psalm versions, fine as they are, were simply not singable by

the commonalty of his time who were to be depended on to do the

singing. He was a writer of odes, not of singing hymns.

Here is a literary hymn—balancing phrases, piling up antitheses,

consciously seeking striking and euphonious combinations of words:

“I praise Him most, I love Him best, all praise and love is His;

While Him I love, in Him I live, and cannot live amiss.

Love’s sweetest mark, laud’s highest theme, man’s most desired

Light,

To love Him life, to leave Him death, to live in Him delight.”

The writer of the foregoing, Robert Southwell, a Romanist martyr,

writing in prison, could write simple lyrics out of the fullness and

genuineness of his religious experience, but it was not in the

accepted fashion. What Protestant dare refuse to sing this simple hymn

of his?

“Yet God’s must I remain,

By death, by wrong, by shame;

I cannot blot out of my heart

That grace wrought in his name.”

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIC OF WRITING SINGING HYMNS

All these writers, and many others that might be mentioned, had not

acquired the technic of congregational hymn writing. They either did

not recognize the limitations of the singing hymn, or refused to be

hampered by its restraints.

But presently the idea of the singing hymn defined itself. Thomas

Campion in 1613 issued a number of lyrics that combined spiritual

insight, literary grace, and practical availability to a hitherto

unattained degree. Dr. Benson characterizes his

“Never weather-beaten sail

More willing beat to shore,”

as “among the loveliest of the lyrics expressing the heavenly

homesickness.” Campion was a musician as well as a poet, which partly

accounts for the singability of his hymns.

In 1623 George Withers issued a complete hymnbook for the Established

Church. It was made up of Scriptural paraphrases and hymns for special

occasions. The hymns are superior to previous attempts in structure

and method, in their simple piety and practical purpose, and in their

availability for actual congregational singing. But in the midst of

admirable lines there were strange lapses in taste. The hymn whose

first verse began so auspiciously,

“Come, oh, come, in pious lays

Sound we God Almighty’s praise;

Hither bring in one consent

Heart and voice and instrument,”

makes the singing congregation a conductor directing a vast chorus:

“From earth’s vast and hollow womb

Music’s deepest bass may come;

Seas and floods, from shore to shore,

Shall their counter-tenors roar,” etc.

Clever in a way, but hardly devotional!

Withers’ “Musicians’ Hymn” has a very practical hint to the “singers’

gallery,” as well as to the congregation:

“He sings and plays

The songs which best Thou lovest,

Who does and says

The things which Thou approvest.”

What Withers’ influence on subsequent English hymnody might have been

we can only conjecture: the Company of Stationers boycotted his book

because he had secured the king’s order to bind it up with the Psalter

and shut it out from the regular channels of trade. His second

collection, “Hallelujah,” was even more practicable and candidly

didactic in style. But Withers had but a slight, if any, influence,

for Sternhold and Hopkins still ruled the worship of the churches.

His immediate successors in hymn writing, Herbert, Donne, Crashaw, and

Vaughan, were not influenced by his practical spirit and sang to

please themselves, not to lead the congregation.

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a devout soul, full of a usually

charming fantasy and fertile in imagery; but antithesis was still an

allurement to poets in his generation. His “Antiphon” makes an

effective hymn, but the inevitable contrast is still there:

“The heavens are not too high,

His praise may thither fly;

The earth is not too low,

His praises there may grow.”

Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan all share in the quaintness of Herbert and

also in his general hymnic impracticability.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674), the singer of rather worldly songs, but a

literary artist withal, in his “Litany to the Holy Spirit” reaches

more nearly up to the ideal of the singing hymn:

“In the hour of my distress,

When temptations me oppress,

And when I my sins confess,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me.”

But when in the second stanza he descends to a description of a

feverish sleepless night,

“When I lie within my bed

Sick in heart and sick in head,

And with doubts discomforted,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me,”

a doubt of its congruity on the lips of a crowd of worshipers begins

to rise. But when in the fourth and fifth verses one is asked to sing,

“When the artless doctor sees

No one hope but of his fees,

And his skill runs on the lees,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me.

When his potion and his pill,

His or none or little skill,

Meet for nothing but to kill,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me,”

one understands why, despite some fine lines, hymnal editors hesitate

to use it.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691), chiefly remembered by his _Saints’

Everlasting Rest_ and _Call to the Unconverted_ and a mass of other

most useful writings, prepared a metrical psalter which found little

response; he also wrote some poetry, but, as a child of his age,

delighted in antithesis. One of his books of poetry had as its

subtitle _The Concordant Discord of a Broken-healed Heart_. His hymns,

however, are simple in style and make a close approach to the

practicable type. Two of them are still largely in use: “Lord, it

belongs not to my care” and “Ye holy angels bright.” Had the churches

in his day given a fair opportunity, or furnished the inspiration of

demand, Baxter might have been one of our great hymnists, superior to

Watts in his deeper spirituality.

John Austin (?-1669) wrote some excellent hymns for a book of

“Devotions” for family use. Among them is

“Blest be Thy love, dear Lord,

That taught me this sweet way,

Only to love Thee for Thyself

And for that love obey,”

which still finds a worthy place in our hymnals.

About this time (1616) the long poem, “Hierusalem, my happie home,”

appears to have been written. Only the initials F. B. P. are attached

to the manuscript, now in the British Museum. It is conjectured that

they stand for Francis Baker Priest. Out of it have been fashioned two

very useful hymns: “Jerusalem, my happy home,” by Joseph Bromehead in

1795, and “O mother dear, Jerusalem,” by an unknown hand. The debt of

the original to the Latin is quite evident, but it has original values

as well. Aside from its length, a common fault in its time, it

approaches the final type of the congregational hymns very nearly in

its simplicity, devoutness, and in its practicable measure.

Closely allied to the Herbert school of religious lyrics, Bishop

Thomas Ken (1637-1711) had the advantage of belonging to a later

generation in which the conception of the congregational hymn had

begun to crystallize into a definite form. His Morning and Evening

Hymns are both simple in structure—in Ambrose’s iambic long meter—free

from affectations and bizarre rhetoric, easily comprehensible, and

devout and spiritual. They have been accepted as among the best hymns

in the language.

The doxology with which the two hymns close has been sung more

frequently and with greater elevation of mind and heart than any other

four lines in all earth’s literature. There is in this doxology a

nobility, a majesty, a comprehensiveness of praise which have not been

approached elsewhere outside of the choruses found in the Book of

Revelation. English hymnody had at last found its voice, its spirit,

and its model.

The conception of the congregational hymn had now been clearly defined

and, from Bishop Ken on, English hymnody was established as a distinct

department of English lyrical poetry. Hymn writers thenceforward were

content to accept the mediocrity Montgomery later called for. The

difficulty was that the English Protestant churches, still

psalm-fanatic, were not ready to sing the hymns they needed so much

for their highest spiritual development, and which now began to be

supplied.

That the idea of singing hymns of “human composure” was making

progress is evidenced by the issue in 1659 of the first collection of

hymns, _A Century of Select Hymns_, by William Barton (1603-1678). He

had issued a collection of versified Psalms in 1644 and a little book

of Psalms and hymns of thanksgiving in 1651. A little later he

published a review of the current Psalm version discussing its

“errors” and “absurdities.” He issued six collections during his

lifetime, most of whose content we would recognize as hymns. His work

has little interest to us except as it, as well as that of Wither,

Baxter, and Mason, helped to clarify the ideas of the young man Watts.

V. THE IDEAL OF THE SINGING HYMN REALIZED

It was the lack of preparation on the part of the churches, rather

than any essential inferiority to Isaac Watts, that prevented John

Mason (?-1694) from being recognized as the father of English hymnody.

Watts’ superiority lay in his having an intenser consciousness of the

greater value of the free hymn and the strength and ability to force

the issue to a final conclusion.

Mason’s hymns were the first to be used in regular congregational

worship. Twenty editions of his _Spiritual Songs_ were issued;

considering the times and the small population, this was a marvelous

success. This collection may be considered the thin edge of the wedge,

later driven by Watts, between the churches and psalmody. Horder in

his _Hymn Lover_ declares that “rarely did Watts rise to the height of

thought and beauty of expression which are found in Mason’s hymns.”

One of Mason’s most widely used hymns is

“Now from the altar of my heart

Let incense flames arise;

Assist me, Lord, to offer up

Mine evening sacrifice.

Awake, my Love! awake, my Joy;

Awake, my Heart and Tongue:

Sleep not: when Mercies loudly call,

Break forth into a Song.”

High authority claims that Mason’s hymn, “Thou wast, O God, and Thou

wast blest,” is one of the best in the language. Its third verse is

particularly noble:

“To whom, Lord, should I sing but Thee,

The Maker of my tongue?

Lo, other lords would seize on me,

But I to Thee belong.

As waters hasten to their sea,

And earth unto its earth,

So let my soul return to Thee,

From whom it had its birth.”

His influence on Watts was very considerable. George MacDonald says of

Mason’s hymns: “Dr. Watts was very fond of them; would that he had

written with similar modesty of style.” Mason was made to supply many

a good line to the hymns of Watts, we are told by those who have

compared the hymns of the two writers.[3]

The hymns are good, because the writer was good! Richard Baxter styled

him “the glory of the Church of England,” saying that “the frame of

his spirit was so heavenly, his deportment so humble and obliging, his

discourse of spiritual things so weighty, with such apt words and

delightful air, that it charmed all that had any spiritual relish.”

Before closing this chapter, mention must be made of Joseph Addison

(1672-1719), who is so widely known because of his connection with the

famous _Spectator_, a weekly devoted to essays on various topics,

literary and otherwise. While his essays are his chief claim to

literary honor, he wrote five hymns, three of which are found in most

of our larger hymnals: “The spacious firmament on high,” “When all thy

mercies, O my God,” “How are thy servants blest, O Lord.” These hymns

are all most thoughtful and felicitously expressed. They are admirably

adapted for the worship of God, but they too unanimously ignore the

higher attributes of the divine nature as manifested in Jesus Christ,

and the salvation he wrought out for fallen and needy humanity, to

take a high place in Christian Hymnody. The same is true of Psalms, of

course, but they were written before Christ appeared.

_Chapter XV_

ISAAC WATTS AND HIS PERIOD

I. THE HYMNIC NEED OF THE TIME

We have now reached the point in the development of the English hymn

where the shortcomings of the metrical versions of the Psalms were

keenly realized, and where the conception of the practicable

congregational hymn was clarified and the model definitely

established.

Someone of combative courage and of organizing ability was needed who

would break down the wall of mere usage and custom in the churches—of

the sheerly mechanical tradition and mental inertia; all the better,

if he could replace the outworn Psalm versions with practicable

congregational hymns that would more intelligently and efficiently

voice the faith and the experience of God’s people. He needed to be a

man of clear vision of the essential lyric needs of the church, of a

clear conception of the type of hymns best fitted to supply those

needs, of literary culture and adaptativeness, and of a high moral

courage to face and overcome the extreme conservativeness that seems

to be inherent in all ecclesiastical organizations.

II. THE LIFE OF WATTS

In the distinct providence of God, the man appeared, exactly fitted

for the important task. Isaac Watts was born at Southampton, England,

July 17, 1674, the son of a very intelligent and devout schoolmaster,

who during the reign of Charles II was imprisoned and exiled from his

family for his nonconformity. Isaac was extraordinarily precocious,

studying Greek and Hebrew at the age of eight years, writing verses

when a mere child, and attempting Latin and English poetry in his

schooldays. His brilliant scholarship brought him offers of a career

at one of the universities, but he refused, being staunch in his

nonconformity.

He became a Nonconformist minister in 1698 and pastor of the

Independent Church, Berry Street, London, in 1702. His health being

frail, owing to his excessive study as a student, he was given an

assistant, Rev. Samuel Price, with whom he spent “many harmonious

years of fellowship in the Gospel.”

Visiting Sir Thomas Abney, a staunch Dissenter living at Theobalds in

Hertfordshire, for a week, Watts was persuaded to remain with him and

his wife permanently, making his home with them the rest of his life.

He never married. His health was always precarious, and his pastorate

at the Berry Street Independent Church, which ended only with his

death, was largely nominal.

We rarely think of Isaac Watts as anything more than a hymn writer,

but his intellectual activities were wide and his writing outside of

hymnody extensive. He wrote a number of treatises on Theology. His

textbooks on Geography, Astronomy, and Logic were used in the English

universities, and at Yale and Harvard.

III. WATTS AS A HYMN WRITER

Watts had been recognized from childhood as having a talent in the

making of verses. Returning from a church service in Southampton, he

sharply criticized the hymns of Barton—an inferior contemporary of

John Mason. His devout father, a deacon in the church, playfully,

perhaps seriously, replied that he should try his skill in supplying a

better one. The challenge was accepted and he brought his father the

hymn:

“Behold the glories of the Lamb

Amidst his Father’s throne;

Prepare new honors for his name,

And songs before unknown.”

He little realized that it was his life’s most illustrious task to

fulfill the exhortation of the last two lines.

The success of the new hymn when lined out to the congregation and

sung by them led to a demand for more. Thus unconsciously and

unpretentiously was ushered in a new epoch in the devotional singing

of the Christian Church. Presumably this occurred in his twenty-first

year, for this and the succeeding year were spent at home in

Southampton in varied studies and in writing hymns.

These hymns seem to have remained in manuscript for some years,

despite the earnest protest of his younger brother, who declared that

“Mason now reduces this kind of writing to a sort of yawning

indifference, and honest Barton chimes us asleep.” This literary

judgment of young Enoch must not be taken too seriously, except as

expressing his eagerness to have his brilliant brother’s hymns brought

before the public.

It was nearly or quite ten years after the first hymn that a

collection of hymns and odes and other poems, _Horæ Lyricæ_, was

issued, in 1706. It contained twenty-five hymns, four psalm

paraphrases, and eleven religious songs in varied measures and meters.

It also contained elegies, odes, and blank verse of a purely literary

character. In his preface he suggests the spirit and methods which

should later be more fully developed. “The hymns were never written to

appear before the judges of wit, but only to assist the meditations

and worship of vulgar Christians.”[1]

In 1709 the second edition of the _Horæ_ furnished an increased number

of hymns. In the preface of this edition he confesses that in the

hymns of the _Horæ_ “there are some expressions which are not suited

to the plainest capacities, and differ too much from the usual methods

of speech in which holy things are proposed to the general part of

mankind.”

The hymns contained in the more popular _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_ in

1707, and in the augmented edition of 1709, were of a plainer type for

“the level of vulgar capacities.” The edition of 1709 contained two

hundred and fifty-five hymns, seventy-eight paraphrases, and

twenty-two communion hymns. The hymns were in only three meters, Long,

Common, and Short. Watts had an eye single for practicability.

The four Psalm versions contained in his _Horæ Lyricæ_ had a prefatory

note, “An essay on a few of David’s Psalms translated into plain

verse, in language more agreeable to the clearer revelations of the

Gospel,” which makes certain that he had already clearly in mind the

evangelical psalter which, despite his absorption in other tasks and

his long illness in 1712, finally appeared in 1719, “The Psalms of

David imitated in the language of the New Testament and apply’d to the

Christian state and worship.” Watts excluded twelve Psalms entirely

and omitted passages from some of the one hundred and thirty-eight

that were retained, because they were not adapted to Christian use.

Although he never married, Watts was very fond of children. In 1715,

in the midst of his program for the public service of song, his _opus

magnum_, he prepared his “Divine Songs, attempted in easy language for

the use of children.” It was to be used in connection with the

“Catechism” he had prepared for their use. It was the first collection

of its kind and was the forerunner of the immense supply of children’s

songs that was to grow out of the activities of the Sunday school. One

is amazed that the writer of “When I survey the wondrous cross,” or

“Our God, our help in ages past,” could write so tender and graceful a

lullaby as

“Hush, my babe, lie still and slumber,

Holy angels guard thy bed!

Heavenly blessings without number

Gently falling on thy head.”

IV. WATTS’ ARGUMENTS FOR THE HYMN

However kindly we may estimate the value of Watts’ hymns and of his

evangelical metrical versions of the Psalms, we must recognize that

his service as the protagonist of the free hymn is quite as great. His

hymns and evangelical psalter would likely have suffered the fate of

those of Wither and Mason, his immediate predecessors, had he not

written attractive and practicable congregational hymns and versions,

and not accomplished two other results essential to the substitution

of the free hymn for the often grotesque Psalm versions.

He did not simply write a miscellaneous lot of religious lyrics and

shoot them like arrows into the air; he had a clear and efficient

theory of church song, recognizing not only the varied needs, but the

psychology underlying those needs, and produced “a system of praise”

that supplied those needs and conciliated current prejudices.

Again, in his prefaces and in his _Essay towards the Improvement of

Psalmody_, he laid hymnological foundations that not only prepared the

way for the introduction of his own hymns and versions, but also for

such a fresh consideration of the whole subject as led to the

revolution in the English song service; from these have come the

freedom and spontaneity, genuineness and sincerity, definiteness of

purpose, and deepening of personal experience which have blessed

succeeding generations.

His supreme merit, in this definite onslaught on the rigid literalism

of the churches, was that he not only brought destructive criticism,

but supplied an adequate substitute for that which he condemned.

Watts denied the obligation to sing the Bible. The Scriptures were the

Word of God to the soul and the hymn was the work of the soul in

response to God. He further denied that the Book of Psalms was given

as a hymnbook for the Christian Church. It was not even adapted to its

use, for it was distinctly Jewish and not Christian in ideals and

spirit. “Some of ’em are almost opposite to the spirit of the Gospel;

many of them are foreign to the state of the New Testament and widely

different to the present circumstances of Christians.” Before they can

be sung in a Christian service they must be rewritten as if David were

a Christian and not a Jew.

Even allowing that there was an obligation to sing the Word of God,

Watts denied that the metrical Psalm was the pure Word of God. The

demands of meter and rhyme so refashioned and even mutilated the

Psalms that they no longer were the words of the Scripture, nor even

its ideas. Its inspiration suffered a total eclipse under the hands of

the versifiers, and the metrical Psalm became a work of “human

composure” with none of the vital spirit of the free hymn.

Watts could not understand why “we under the Gospel should sing

nothing else but the joys, hopes, and fears of Asaph and David.” He

declared that “David would have thought it very hard to have been

confined to the words of Moses and sung nothing else on all his

rejoicing days but the drowning of Pharaoh in the fifteenth of

Exodus.” He complained that even in those places where the Jewish

psalmist seems to mean the Gospel, excellent poet as he was, he was

not able to speak it plain, by reason of the infancy of that

dispensation, and longs for the aid of a Christian writer.

He set aside the prevalent “superstitious reverence for the letter of

the Jewish Scriptures,” and in an almost defiant spirit declared,

“Though there are many gone before me who have taught the Hebrew

Psalmist to speak English, yet I think I may assume the pleasure of

being the first who hath brought down the royal author into the common

affairs of the Christian life, and led the Psalmist of Israel into the

Church of Christ, without anything of the Jew about him.”

Whatever devotional value we may assign to the Psalms, we must accept

Watts’ fundamental idea that they are not the exclusive formulary of

the use of song in the worship of God and in the life of the Church.

His further contention that not all the Psalms, nor all parts of them,

are adapted to Christian use, we cannot now gainsay. The Jews

themselves only used about forty of them. It was not until centuries

after the Apostolic Age had elapsed that, due to monkish superstition,

all the Psalms were recognized as of equal exclusive use.

So many versions of individual Psalms make such satisfactory hymns and

so many hymns are such faithful transcripts of passages from the

Psalms, or echoes of their sentiments, that the distinction between

psalm versions and hymns in individual cases might well be set aside

entirely, as having no actual basis or value.

V. WATTS’ INSISTENCE ON PRACTICABILITY

While Watts laid the strongest emphasis on the awkwardness and

absurdity of much of the Psalm paraphrasing, he was also impressed

with the unavailability of the literary hymns of his predecessors, or

even of some of his own in his first book. The common people would not

sing them, they were out of their reach; moreover, they were not in

practicable meters and measures, and did not fit the accepted tunes

the people knew. Watts accepted the current Psalm version meters, Long

Meter, Common Meter, and Short Meter, and the Psalm tunes at once

became hymn tunes. It was quite a handicap to a literary hymn writer,

but essential to the practical use of the hymn.

Watts deliberately avoided distinctly literary quality in his hymns,

seeking only lucidity and plainness of expression, all within the

capacity of the common people. To quote from his prefaces, he

“endeavored to make the sense plain and obvious.... The metaphors are

generally sunk to the level of vulgar capacities.... Some of the

beauties of poesy are neglected and some wilfully defaced.”

Dr. Benson, whom it is always profitable to quote, says: “Watts’ work

earns a place in the literature of power, the literature that leaves

esthetic critics cold while it moves men.” Palgrave included nothing

of Watts in his _Golden Treasury_, but elsewhere speaks of him as “one

of those whose sacrifice of art to direct usefulness has probably lost

them those honors in literature to which they were entitled.”

VI. THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF WATTS’ HYMNS

The offensive lines in Watts must be judged with due regard to their

background. The Sternhold and Hopkins version was vastly worse. It was

a time of dry doctrinal preaching and of a literal interpretation of

the Bible which to the preachers was largely a mere collection of

isolated proof texts. In these matters he was speaking in the idiom

and with the accent of his own generation. In the two centuries that

have since passed, the sand and gravel and debris have been washed

away, and our hymnals contain the pure gold of his verse for our

edification and delight. Outside of the hymnbooks of the Wesley

brothers, where can we find such a placer mine of spiritual wealth?

At his best Watts wrote hymns of majesty and ecstatic adoration that

have never been excelled:

“Our God, our Help in ages past,

Our Hope for years to come;

Our Shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal Home.”

How he has made the Long Meter measure sound like the great Open

Diapason of the pipe organ in the following lines!

“Before Jehovah’s awful throne,

Ye nations bow with sacred joy;

Know that the Lord is God alone,

He can create, and he destroy.”

What if John Wesley does add a majestic note or two in the foregoing

hymn; the singer of the whole hymn is the noble spirit of little Dr.

Watts.

Had David himself returned with an English tongue, he could not have

reproduced the spirit of the seventy-second Psalm more nobly:

“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun

Doth his successive journeys run;

His Kingdom spread from shore to shore,

Till moons shall wax and wane no more.”

Solomon’s coronation song (Ps. 72) was no more majestic than this

crowning hymn Watts wrote for his Lord.

But Watts could not only be majestic; he could be tender:

“When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of Glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.”

Is there a tenderer strain in all English hymnody than the third

verse?

“See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”

Not in the same exquisite vein of noble tenderness, but perhaps all

the more useful for its reduced voltage, is his other hymn of the

Crucifixion,

“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?

And did my Sovereign die?

Would he devote that sacred head

For such a worm as I!”

Its last verse has deepened the consecration of unnumbered millions as

they sang the sacred vow:

“But drops of grief can ne’er repay

The debt of love I owe;

Here, Lord, I give myself away—

’Tis all that I can do.”

The list of the great hymns that have come down to us from Isaac Watts

is too long to be given here, but they enrich the pages of all our

hymnals and exalt the spirit of all our church services.

The criticism often urged that Watts wrote too much cannot well be

gainsaid, but the striking fact confronts us that most of the great

hymns were written by men who wrote too much! The same is true of the

composers of our greatest music, as, for instance, Mendelssohn and

Handel. Much writing develops technic, ease, spontaneity,

unselfconsciousness, that make the heights of feeling and expression

more accessible. But what Watts needed was not so much to write less,

but to have a competent editor like John Wesley to eliminate his

vulgar and often grotesque lines.

That Watts should find plenty of antagonists to pick up the gauge of

challenge he threw out was inevitable. His hymns were called “Watts’

Whims” in sardonic derision. It is noteworthy that the opposition did

not prove so heated against his hymns as against his _The Psalms of

David Imitated_ (1719). In daring to amend the Judaism of David he had

committed sacrilege! This volume practically closed his work of

reforming the service of song in the English language. He was but

forty-four years old at this time and he lived thirty years more—spent

in theological, educational, and devotional writings.

The hymns of Watts slowly found their way among the Nonconformist

churches. Before his death a large part of the Presbyterian and

Congregational churches were nearly monopolized by them. However, the

Established Church still clung to the Psalm Versions.

VII. CONTEMPORARIES OF WATTS

A contemporary of Watts, Simon Browne (1680-1732) issued a collection

of hymns in 1720, _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_, designed as a

supplement to Dr. Watts, containing one hundred and sixty-six hymns

which had considerable vogue during the next generation. Now only one

hymn, “Come, gracious Spirit, heavenly Dove,” survives in some of our

hymnals.

Another contemporary was John Byrom (1691-1763), scientist and mystic,

whose “Christians, awake, salute the happy morn” is still a Christmas

favorite and whose “My spirit longeth for Thee” is “terse and tender

in a very high degree.”[2] MacDonald speaks of his few hymns as a

“well of the water of life, for its song tells of the love and truth

which are the grand power of God.”

Another hymn writer of Watts’ day was Robert Seagrave (1693-?), who

added fifty of his own hymns to a collection prepared for his own

church at Lorimer’s Hall, Cripplegate, London, all of which had a high

degree of excellence, of which “Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings”

is found in most of our current hymnbooks.

A greater than any of the above was Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), who

was a close friend of Isaac Watts, although nearly thirty years

younger. He wrote three hundred and seventy-five hymns, most of them

as pendants to sermons, recapitulating and enforcing the points of his

discourse. They were not collected and published until four years

after his death. The fine character and high ability displayed by

Doddridge endeared him to many of the most important people of his

day. The devoutness, literary grace, and adaptation to actual use of

his lyrics were immediately recognized. Their distinctly homiletical

character, combined with deep religious feeling and tenderness, and

their varied topics, greatly appealed to ministers, and they were

recognized as second only to Watts. The Church owes some of its most

useful hymns to him: “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,” “Grace;

’tis a charming sound,” “How gentle God’s commands,” “O happy day,

that fixed my choice,” “My gracious Lord, I own thy right,” are among

the many found in all our hymnals. His relative standard may be

inferred from the use made of leading hymn writers by Dr. Benson in

his _Revised Presbyterian Hymnal_: Watts 49, Charles Wesley 24,

Doddridge 13.

_Chapter XVI_

THE WESLEYS AND THEIR ERA

I. THE INFLUENCE OF WATTS ON THE WESLEYS

The line of hymnic succession between Watts and the Wesleys was direct

and not through Doddridge, for the latter’s hymns did not appear until

1754. One-half of John Wesley’s _American Collection_, the first

hymnbook published in America, issued in Charleston, South Carolina,

in 1737, after two years’ work in the new Colony of Georgia, consisted

of Watts’ hymns. It goes without saying that Watts’ hymnbooks, with

others like Tate and Brady’s _New Version_, George Herbert’s poems,

the hymns of John Austin, of Henry More, and of Norris of Bemerton,

were so well known, and so appreciated, that copies of them were

included among the books carried to America. In early manhood they met

the already elderly Watts, and as they walked they sang together.

Indeed, with Dr. Benson we may “infer that Watts’ _Psalms and Hymns_,

in connection with Tate and Brady’s _New Version_, furnished the

materials for the singing of the ‘Holy Club.’”

It is evident from the list of hymnbooks, and from the list of

Wesley’s selections for his _American Collection_, that Watts was not

the only influence that gave the impulse and fashioned the Wesleyan

ideals of the public song service. It is noteworthy that Barton and

Mason were not included. The High-Church Anglican Wesleys were not so

prejudiced against Watts’ Nonconformist hymns as to exclude them.

II. THE HOME OF THE WESLEYS

With the Wesleys perhaps the strongest influence was that of the

family and the home. Their grandfather, John Wesley, was a

Nonconformist clergyman, and, what is more to the point, a poet. Their

father, Samuel Wesley, was quite a voluminous poet (sixteen volumes),

owing his Epworth rectorship to Queen Mary’s approval of his _Life of

Christ, an Heroic Poem_. One of his hymns, “Behold the Saviour of

mankind,” still appears in some of our current hymnals.

Their maternal grandfather was Rev. Samuel Annesley, LL.D., a

scholarly Nonconformist clergyman. Their mother, Susanna Annesley, is

recognized as a woman of extraordinary force of character, organizing

ability, and intense piety, the “Mother of Methodism,” and even more

gifted than her gifted but less steady and dependable husband. It will

be noted that both grandfathers were dissenting clergymen.

The Epworth rectory life was intellectual, intensely devout, and full

of the singing of psalms and hymns, for it was “a nest of singing

birds.” When students at Oxford, John and Charles used to walk out

into the meadows and sing songs and hymns together.[1]

III. THE MORAVIAN INFLUENCE

As we shall see, another extremely important influence was that of the

Moravians on their personal religious experience, which under the

Moravian guidance, on the Atlantic voyage and later, became intense

and profound, furnishing tremendous motive power for all their work.

The Moravian missionaries brought the realization of the power the

Christian hymn can wield, and of the deep spirituality it may be used

to express. It was not only the hymns the Moravian brethren sang that

impressed John Wesley, but the spirit and genuineness of feeling with

which they sang.

IV. JOHN WESLEY

John Wesley was born at Epworth in 1703. He inherited his mother’s

organizing and administrative ability, no less than her deep religious

nature. He was to Methodist hymnody what John Calvin was to the

Reformed psalmody, its initiator and director. He added a critical

power and a practical sense of relation of means to ends his younger

brother lacked—Charles Wesley wrote the hymns and John winnowed and

edited them. At Oxford he was called the “Father of the Holy Club.”

His aggressive spirit drove him to Georgia as a missionary, where he

was a misfit, but where he was subjected to needed spiritual

discipline, and to the influence of the Moravian pietism and

absorption in spiritual things, so valuable for his symmetrical

preparation for his future work. It led to his conversion—or, if you

prefer, to his baptism of the Holy Spirit—and that of Charles, in

1738, which opened out to them both a new spiritual dimension. It also

led to his interest in the Moravian “Gesangbuch,” or hymnbook, from

the German of which he translated several hymns for his _Charleston

Collection_. On his return to England he took an early opportunity to

visit Herrnhut, Saxony, the parent society of the connection. He was

delighted with the atmosphere of piety and Christian song which he

found there. His pietistic and mystical tendencies were greatly

strengthened by his intercourse with Count Zinzendorf and Rothe whom

he there met.

On his return to London John Wesley kept up his association with the

Moravian brethren for some time; but his active temperament could not

long be content with their quiet, contemplative attitude, nor could he

overcome his dislike for the emphasis they placed on the merely

physical aspects of the life and death of Christ which they had

brought over from the Roman Catholic mystics. So they presently parted

company to the advantage of the aggressive spirit the Wesleys were

developing.

John Wesley was a scholarly man who had acquired all the culture of

seven generations of intellectual family life and of the literary

training of a great English university. He had the critical faculty

well developed, a nice sense of the value of words, and the ability to

marshal them for the expression of his thoughts. His sermons and his

theological treatises reveal his logical and analytical mind. His

feelings were strong, but not of the effusive character.

With this type of mind, it was not strange that as a hymn writer he

would succeed better as a translator than as an original hymnist. His

important contribution, therefore, consisted of translations from the

German of Tersteegen, Gerhardt, Scheffler, Spangenberg, and

Zinzendorf, and the amendment or even recasting of hymns by Watts, or

of poems by George Herbert. Perhaps his greatest work in hymnody lay

in encouraging as well as editing the work of his younger brother,

Charles.[2]

In John Wesley’s plans to elevate the degraded population of England

both spiritually and mentally, the hymn bears an important part. His

keen and critical literary faculty was brought to bear upon its

cultural as well as spiritual aspects, and his drastic corrections and

revisions, as well as his translations, did much to lift the hymnody

of his age to a higher literary plane.

V. CHARLES WESLEY

Charles Wesley was born at Epworth in 1707, being four and a half

years younger than John. He inherited a full portion of the family

religious nature, but with his mother’s mental energy he combined a

double portion of the Wesley poetic temperament. With less of the

rigid will of his older brother, he had a more sensitive spirit, a

more emotional nature, a greater literary impulse. Critics scold that

he wrote too much.[3] As well scold the mockingbird for being so

prodigal of its notes or that it occasionally merely twitters.

When he “got religion,” his religion made him sing. Did he rejoice?

His joy found utterance in a joyous hymn, “O for a thousand tongues to

sing.” Had he trials? What more natural than a hymn of prayer, “My

God, my God, to Thee I cry”? Was there a riot about him? A hymn of

steadfastness, “Thou hidden Source of calm repose,” sang in his heart.

The impulse to write was not always accompanied by creative insight,

so, of course, he wrote inferior hymns. The urge to write was too

spontaneous that it should wait for the critical attitude. Let John

supply that! Charles had the joy of writing and John winnowed the

product. There was chaff, of course, but the golden wheat cannot grow

without chaff.

It must not be assumed that Charles was only a hymn writer.

Immediately on his conversion, he began to preach the need of the new

birth, and for fifteen years he vied with John in field work in behalf

of the new movement. With his background, his culture and education,

his poetic nature and wealth of vocabulary and depth of experience,

Charles might be expected to preach a vivid, glowing, flaming

message—and such was his style. His meetings carried him into all

parts of England, Wales, and Ireland.

What a team the Wesley brothers were! John with his masterly logical

sermons and profound theological writings, Charles with his hymns and

his sermons aflame with feeling, the Annesley organizing instinct in

both of them. What a spiritual force they set in motion that

transformed the spiritual and moral life of England and saved its

soul—nay more, it swept around the whole earth, and determined the

character of nations yet waiting to be born.

VI. CHARLES WESLEY’S HYMNS QUITE SUBJECTIVE

By the necessities of the situation, by the character of the work, and

by his own temperament, Charles Wesley was led to write subjective,

emotional hymns, keeping personal experience to the fore. But his

emotionality was not shallow sentiment, but spontaneous and genuine

feeling, based on clear recognition of the actual truths of the

Scriptures. In a very intense way he had actually experienced the

sorrow for sin, the joy of salvation from its guilt and power,

complete assurance of divine acceptance, the longing for divine

communion, the sense of the love of God as it planned and fashioned

his inner as well as his outward life, the certainty of safety from

the power of sin in sanctification. He could write affecting

invitations to sinners, for he knew their condition and danger, and

also the results of peace and joy, of power and efficiency, that the

acceptance of Christ would bring. The truths of the Gospel in passing

through the crucible of his personality acquired an actuality, a

poignancy of appeal, that made his hymns a mighty power, not only in

the immediate campaigns of the Wesley brothers, but in the life and

work of the Church in the generations to come.[4]

VII. WATTS AND CHARLES WESLEY

That was the difference between Wesley and Watts. The latter was

objective, reasonable, formal. The majesty of a sovereign God appealed

to him. He delighted in the infinite perfections of the divine nature.

He surveyed the wondrous cross. He trembled before it, as did the

children of Israel before the Holy Mount. His attitude was that of the

Old Testament. Watts viewed the sovereignty of God objectively; Wesley

felt the facts of salvation as actual experiences.

Charles Wesley was subjective; he expressed the feelings that the

truths of the Gospel produced in him.[5]

God to him also was great, but as a Saviour, companion, friend. Why

should he tremble? He was not Moses viewing the burning bush, but John

leaning on the breast of Jesus. He shared the ecstasies of the

apostles and disciples portrayed in the New Testament.[6]

So Watts gives dignity and majesty to the early topics of our

hymnbooks on the attributes of God, his worship, the awe of the soul

in the presence of its sovereign Lord in hymns like “Before Jehovah’s

awful throne,” “Great God! how infinite thou art,” “I’ll praise my

Maker while I’ve breath,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,” “Our

God, our help in ages past,” while Charles Wesley fills the sweeter,

tenderer, more intimate departments of salvation, forgiveness,

communion with God, with the odor of the spikenard of his heart in

hymns like “Depth of mercy! can there be,” “I know that my Redeemer

lives,” “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” “Love divine, all loves excelling.”

How well these singers of the Lord’s song supplement each other, and

how much more symmetrical and complete are our hymnals because both

have written in their own lines and styles!

Which is the greater hymn writer? That is a mooted question that need

not be decided here. In Scriptural content the older man is superior,

as, at his best, he is in majesty of style. For formal services of

worship his hymns are more fitting and impressive. On the other hand,

Wesley was superior in quantity and in the number of hymns of high

quality. It must be granted that he is more poetical, more graceful,

more suave and human. His range is more extensive, his emotion deeper

and more noble. In immediate results on the lives of the people

Charles Wesley is incomparably richer than Watts, for his hymns then

and since turned multitudes unto righteousness.[7]

VIII. THE ISSUES OF THE WESLEYAN HYMNS

Space is wanting, and the profit would be slight, to give a catalogue

of the sixty-four original issues of hymns that John published from

1737 to 1790, the mass of them for the use of the evangelistic

campaign. They were largely occasional, issued to meet a pressing but

only temporary need. They varied from a single sheet containing but a

single hymn (Charles Wesley’s hymn praying for his brother’s long

life) to the two volumes with two thousand and thirty short hymns on

Scripture passages. It was not until 1780 that a regular hymnbook “for

the use of the people called ‘Methodists’” was issued, containing five

hundred and twenty-five hymns.

IX. THE METHODIST TUNES

So practical a mind as that of John Wesley, who had from childhood

engaged in sacred song, would not be expected to overlook the great

importance of the tunes to which the new hymns were to be sung. In

1742 he printed a _Collection of Tunes_ in which only three of the

_Old Version_ tunes appeared. Tunes were freely borrowed from the

musical _Supplement to the New Version_, six were secured from German

Moravian sources, and a few were new. Tunes were later supplied by

Handel and Lampe; popular melodies which the Wesleys picked up in

their preaching tours were also adopted.

Some twenty years later fugal tunes became popular among the churches,

but became known as “Old Methodist Tunes,” although they had never

been officially recognized and had first been written in Scotland.

When we regard the quantity and quality of the Wesleyan hymns, or

their adaptation to the spiritual and evangelistic purposes for which

they were written, or the body of teaching they conveyed, or the

spiritual fervor they created and are still creating in millions of

souls, or the influence they exerted on all subsequent hymnody, we do

not find the sweeping statement of Dr. James Martineau, the Unitarian

divine and hymnbook editor, as exaggerated: “After the Scriptures, the

_Wesley Hymn Book_ appears to me the grandest instrument of popular

religious culture that Christendom has produced.”

X. INFLUENCES OPPOSING THE WESLEYAN HYMNS

The contemporary prejudice against the Wesleyan hymnody was very

strong and bitter. There were many influences against them: the

conservative devotion to the psalm versions, “New” and “Old,” the

Nonconformist loyalty to the psalms and hymns of Watts, the

Established Church’s resentment against the revolters against

established rule and custom within her bounds, the formalist objection

to what seemed to them the fanatical, extravagant, and effusive type

of piety, the emotional, subjective, experiential style of the hymns,

and (worst of all!) the low social class that constituted the bulk of

the followers of the Wesleys. The result was that both in Great

Britain and in America the Wesleyan hymns crept very slowly into the

hymnbooks of the churches outside the Methodist movement. It was many

years before any appeared in the English church hymnals; even when

they did, Charles Wesley’s name did not appear with them; it even

happened that other writers were credited with them. In America, where

the Methodists were the Salvation Army of their day, the Wesleyan

hymns were slow of recognition. This was partly due to the general,

almost fanatical, devotion to Watts’ hymnody.

The Arminian attitude of the Wesleys, as against the rigid Calvinism

of both the Established and the Nonconformist churches, led to acrid

theological discussions that intensified the opposition to the

movement they headed. Even among those favorable to the spiritual

reformation was there an element antagonistic to the Wesleys.

Whitefield, Toplady, and the Countess of Huntingdon were leaders in

this revolt.

The fact that Charles Wesley rather monopolized the writing of hymns

undoubtedly had its adverse influence. John Wesley did not encourage

others to write.[8] This accounts for the fact that comparatively few

of their immediate associates wrote hymns, and some of these drifted

into other relations. What else could a man expect who fearlessly

amended, revised others’ hymns, and then warned the general hymnbook

maker regarding the Wesleyan hymns as follows: “Hymn-cobblers should

not try to mend them. I really do not think they are able.”

XI. OTHER METHODIST HYMN WRITERS

Among these transient supporters was Edward Perronet (1726-1792) of

Huguenot stock. He wrote “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” which

makes so noble a climax for many of our services. For a time he was a

preacher in the Wesleyan connection. He then adopted Calvinistic

views, and joined the forces of the Countess of Huntingdon, preaching

under her direction. His caustic Gallic wit, exercised against the

Established Church, offended his patroness and he became the pastor of

a small congregation of dissenters.

Another associate of the Wesleys was Thomas Olivers (1725-1799), who

had small educational advantages, but was an indefatigable worker. One

of his hymns has kept its place in our hymnals, “The God of Abraham

praise.” Montgomery says of it: “This noble ode, though the essay of

an unlettered man, claims special honor. There is not in our language

a lyric of more majestic style, more elevated thought, or more

glorious imagery.”

John Bakewell, the head of a prominent academy at Greenwich, was a

local preacher of whom his tombstone, near to that of John Wesley in

the cemetery of the City Road Chapel, records that “he adorned the

doctrine of God, our Saviour, 80 years and preached his Gospel 70

years.” He is remembered by the hymn, “Hail, Thou once despised

Jesus,” which is found in most of the current hymnals.

XII. CALVINISTIC-METHODIST HYMN WRITERS

There were no poetic restraints felt by the adherents of the

Calvinistic wing of the Methodist movement as met the associates of

the Wesleys, and the number of hymn writers in its ranks is larger.

William Williams (1717-1791), “the Watts of Wales,” spent his life in

working in the Welsh Calvinistic-Methodist connection. Early in his

career the need of appropriate Welsh hymns was so pressing that

recourse was had to a sort of Eisteddfod of hymn-writing in which he

easily won first honors. He was an indefatigable preacher, taking all

Wales for his parish. His chief claim to immortality is his hymn,

“Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,” originally written in Welsh, but

soon used in the Whitefield Methodist Connection in England. His

missionary hymn, “O’er the gloomy hills of darkness,” while not so

popular, has had a wide use.

John Cennick (1718—1755) was originally associated with the Wesleys as

a preacher, but the burning question of Calvinism separated them and

he became associated with Whitefield and later with the Moravians. Two

hymns of his were extremely popular both in Great Britain and in the

early years of Methodism in America: “Jesus, my all, to heaven is

gone,” and “Children of the heavenly King.” The former was used as the

verse basis of a great many “spiritual” choruses in pioneer times. His

“Lo! He comes with clouds descending” was reshaped and rewritten by

Charles Wesley and Martin Madan. The literary quality of his hymns is

not high, but their sincerity and adaptation to universal Christian

experience give them practical value.

Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-1778) was associated with the Wesleys

and with the Calvinistic-Methodist leaders, but was a Church of

England clergyman. He wrote four hundred and nineteen hymns; only a

few continue in use. Notable among these is “Rock of Ages, cleft for

me,” which has been almost universally used and most mercilessly

amended and revised. It has been translated into many languages:

Gladstone having translated it into Latin, Greek, and Italian.

Montgomery says of Toplady’s hymns: “There is a peculiarly etherial

spirit in some of these, in which, whether mourning or rejoicing,

praying or praising, the writer seems absorbed in the full triumph of

faith.” Another hymn of Toplady’s, “Deathless principle, arise,” has

been characterized as “almost peerless,” but it is rather a reading

hymn.

XIII. BAPTIST HYMN WRITERS

While the Methodists were enriching the hymnody of the Christian

Church, the Baptists were not idle. The second reformation of England

did not leave them unaffected, even though they were not officially

associated with it.

Their chief hymn writer was Anne Steele (1716-1778), an invalid of

great spirituality and piety and of much literary felicity as well as

facility. She wrote one hundred and forty-four hymns and thirty-four

versions of psalms. Her hymns are meditative in style, graceful and

gentle in spirit. She is best remembered by her hymn of resignation,

“Father, whate’er of earthly bliss.” Other hymns still widely used are

“Now I resolve with all my heart,” the hymn regarding the Scriptures,

“Father of mercies, in Thy word What endless glory shines,” and the

(for her) enthusiastic hymn of praise to Christ, “To our Redeemer’s

glorious name.” Her vogue in America at one time was very great.

John Fawcett was another Baptist hymnist of note. He issued one

hundred and sixty-six hymns, three of which are standards in our day:

“How precious is the book divine,” “Lord, dismiss us with Thy

blessing,” and “Blest be the tie that binds.” Besides the duties of a

heavy pastorate at Wainsgate (with a salary of less than two hundred

dollars) he did a great amount of literary work. The third hymn

mentioned above has done more for Christian unity than all arguments

and commissions.

Another hymn writer of note, who may be classed as a Baptist, was

Robert Robinson (1735-1790). Converted under Whitefield’s preaching,

he later took a Baptist pastorate at Cambridge. He was very active in

a literary way. He began a _History of Baptists_ in 1781 which

appeared in 1790, but in spite of laborious research it did not reach

the completeness he desired. Besides eleven hymns of but moderate

value written for Whitefield, he wrote a Christmas hymn, “Mighty God,

while angels bless Thee” and the ever-useful and prayerful “Come, Thou

Fount of every blessing.” This was another favorite basis for

“Spiritual” revival choruses in America. There was a lack of

steadiness in his temperament. After writing _A Plea for the Divinity

of Our Lord Jesus Christ_, he later came under suspicion as a

Unitarian and Socinian.

Samuel Medley was a midshipman in the navy, but being sorely wounded

in a terrible naval battle off Cape Lagos, he refused to continue as a

naval officer. During his recovery he was soundly converted under the

influence of his grandfather Tonge. After being at the head of a

school for a time, he accepted a Baptist pastorate. Medley wrote a

number of hymns, of which “O could I speak the matchless worth,”

“Awake, my soul, to joyful lays,” “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and

“Mortals, awake, with angels join,” are still found in most of our

hymnals. He claimed no literary merit for himself, but his hymns have

found a hearty response in England, and even more in America.

Joseph Grigg (1720-1768) was not a Methodist or a Baptist, but a

Presbyterian. He is further noteworthy as an “infant phenomenon,”

having written a very familiar hymn, “Jesus, and shall it ever be?” at

the age of ten years. He was in humble circumstances at first, “a

laboring mechanic.” He was assistant minister in a prominent London

Presbyterian church for four years, then “married well” and retired,

still writing and preaching. His “Behold, a Stranger at the door,”

with a stirring tune by T. C. O’Kane, has been widely used in America

as an evangelistic hymn with a refrain.

_Chapter XVII_

HYMNS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

I. RISE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH

Although the Wesleys were Church of England clergymen, the tide of

religious feeling they set in motion could not sweep over the mass of

the population without its waves dashing across all ecclesiastical and

traditional barriers. But John Wesley’s somewhat arrogant spirit, the

extreme methods which he found necessary to reach the lower classes,

so desperately in need of a new religious impulse, above all, his

sharp reaction against the high Calvinistic theology of the Church,

repelled many who had been deeply affected by the Methodist atmosphere

that enveloped them and had felt a new sense of obligation to bring

back their people to a true religious life.

II. EARLY COLLECTIONS OF EVANGELICAL HYMNS

The effectiveness of the spontaneous Methodist singing was evident

enough and the Evangelical ministers of the Established Church felt

the need of collections of hymns that should achieve the same results

without what seemed to them the doctrinal vagaries and emotional

extravagances of the Wesleyan hymns. Nor were they at first willing to

set entirely aside the psalmody that had served the church for so many

generations.

As might be expected, the earliest collections of hymns for use in the

Established churches were largely based on Nonconformist and Wesleyan

materials, since most of their editors, and the churches they wished

to serve, were under the influence of the Countess of Huntingdon, who

in turn was in close touch with the Calvinistic-Methodist movement.

One of the first of the collections of the Evangelical wing was that

of Martin Madan, _Psalms and Hymns_, containing 170 hymns without

order or arrangement, except that sacramental hymns had a department

by themselves. Madan used a free hand in revising and remodeling the

hymns he selected, sometimes for good, frequently for ill. He was

quite a musician, supplying tunes, thirty-three of which were his own

composition, of which “Huddersfield” and “Helmsley” still occasionally

appear in our hymnals. His book was used to a considerable extent and

helped to hasten the introduction of hymns in the Church of England.

Other collections of the same name and type were issued by Berridge

and Conyers.

More important was Toplady’s _Psalms and Hymns_, issued in 1776.

Despite his virulent attacks on the Wesleys, he used quite a number of

their hymns, without credit and drastically revised. His collection

contained 418 hymns, some by Watts and by other Nonconformists. His

revisions were not wholly on doctrinal grounds, but on literary as

well—“God is the God of _Truth_, of Holiness, and of Elegance.

Whoever, therefore, has the honor to compose, or to compile, anything

that may constitute a part of his worship should keep those three

particulars constantly in view.” In this remark, found in his preface,

Toplady anticipated the later period of the literary hymn by Heber,

Keble, and Milman. This collection continued in use for nearly fifty

years.

III. EVANGELICAL HYMN WRITERS

With the exception of this later collection of Toplady these hymnbooks

were mere compilations. The impulse of this Evangelical wing to write

hymns of their own did not long delay. The most notable of these hymn

writers were John Newton (1725-1807) and William Cowper (1731-1800).

They co-operated in the issue of _Olney Hymns_, so called after the

village of which Newton was the curate.

John Newton was born in London. His mother, who was a pious Dissenter,

and had dedicated her boy from his birth to the Christian ministry and

had tried to train him in preparation for this work, died when he was

but seven years old. He grew up to be a wild, profligate, wicked young

man; he speaks of himself as “once an infidel and libertine, a servant

of slaves in Africa.” At the age of twenty-three he again came under

religious influences and became an ardent Christian.

It was not until he was nearly thirty-nine years old that he entered

the ministry of the Established Church, being appointed curate of the

village of Olney. He had always had an impulse, even during his

wildest years, to read and study and to add to his general culture.

Hence, in spite of his vagrant life (having spent eighteen years on

the sea) and his secular pursuits, he came into the ministry with a

rough-hewn education, and a practical and resourceful attitude of

mind, that served him well in his aggressive ministry. His spiritual

experience was deep and intense. He had been in close touch with

Whitefield, the Wesleys, and other leaders in the great evangelistic

movement.

For his work as a curate in the Established Church, the hymns of Watts

lacked the deep personal spirituality for which his own soul sought

expression. The Wesleys supplied that element abundantly, but their

hymnbooks did not express his Calvinistic attitude, nor fit his local

needs. His own urge to write hymns and his intimacy with Cowper, which

undoubtedly seemed a providence, encouraged him to produce Olney

Hymns, which contained 280 hymns by Newton and 68 by Cowper.

Newton sympathized with Watts in his objection to pronouncedly poetic

elements in hymns; in his preface he remarks that “the imagery and

coloring of poetry, if admitted at all, should be admitted very

sparingly.” The book was dedicated to “the use of plain people,” to

promote the faith and comfort of sincere Christians. To secure these,

“perspicuity, simplicity, and ease” were sought. Yet some of Newton’s

best hymns closely approach the best of his friend, the poet Cowper.

Genuine feeling gave lyric wings.

Of his 280 hymns, the most successful in maintaining a place in our

hymnals are: “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,” “Approach, my soul,

the mercy seat,” “Glorious things of thee are spoken,” “Come, my soul,

thy suit prepare,” “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” “Safely

through another week,” “While with ceaseless course the sun,” “One

there is, above all others.” What a noble chaplet of pearls for his

Lord is this amazing contribution by the former “servant of slaves”!

Newton’s famous coworker on the _Olney Hymns_, William Cowper, was the

son of one of the chaplains of George II and was born in Hertfordshire

in 1731. He was frail and shy, and had a very painful experience among

the boys of the Westminster School which he attended for ten years.

Doubtless his later mental affliction was due in large part to the

bullying of his schoolmates. He studied law, but did not find it to

his taste. At the age of thirty-six he moved to Olney, where he met

John Newton, who became his close friend and protector as well as his

leader in the writing of hymns. He co-operated with Newton’s religious

work as lay reader and wrote his hymns for the cottage prayer meetings

that were a feature in Newton’s work.

While his literary work shows no trace of his melancholia, being

cheerful and even humorous, his hymns frequently show traces of it,

notably in “God moves in a mysterious way” and “Oh, for a closer walk

with God.” Newton’s habit of introspection may have influenced him,

and the obscurity of the people and of the occasions for which he

wrote may have given him a sense of freedom in expressing his deeper,

subconscious experience. He was an exceedingly spiritual-minded man.

It was said of him by one who often heard him, “Of all the men I ever

heard pray, none equaled Mr. Cowper.” He had a vivid and intense

experience when he was converted: “For many succeeding weeks tears

were ready to flow if I did but speak of the Gospel, or mention the

name of Jesus. To rejoice day and night was all my employment. Too

happy to sleep much, I thought it was lost time that was spent in

slumber.”

Cowper’s literary work was done after he was fifty years old—indeed,

after his contributions to _Olney Hymns_ had been made. His hymns were

really preliminary studies for his secular work.

Cowper made a very important contribution to the Christian hymnody of

the ages: “God moves in a mysterious way,” “Oh, for a closer walk with

God,” “Jesus, where’er thy people meet,” “Sometimes a light

surprises,” “There is a fountain filled with blood,” “Hark, my soul,

it is the Lord,” which will all survive as long as devout hearts

meditate and sing. _Olney Hymns_ was very widely accepted and had more

to do with the introduction of hymns into Anglican services than any

other hymnbook up to that time. It was speedily reprinted in America

and was very popular there.

Beyond all its Church of England predecessors, it established the

ideal of the hymn as evangelical, as an expression of personal

spiritual experience, as a vehicle for the conveying of spiritual

truth. It was closely akin to the Methodist ideal, but more sober and

sedate, with less of the poetical element. The hymnbook was the

crystallizing force of the Evangelical party and its unifying

discipline. It did not win the co-operation of the whole Church, by

any means, but it prepared the way for the final acceptance of the

hymn as an inherent part of the Church service in that communion.

While the _Olney Hymns_ continued in use by the Evangelical wing of

the Established Church, there continued to be _Psalms and Hymns_

issued by various compilers, Basil Woodd, Simeon Bidulph, Cecil Venn,

and others, all giving increasing attention to the hymns, and

extending their use, in the church service.

IV. HYMN WRITERS OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL

If in the actual singing hymn up to this time there had been any

definitely literary quality or poetic spirit, it had been in spite of

a theory that the hymn must be plain and simple and adapted to plain

people, as in those of Watts and Newton, or somewhat unconsciously so

by reason of an imagination vitalized by deep feeling, as in those of

Charles Wesley. The hymn had been a practical religious vehicle for

expressing feeling and impressing truth, not an artistic and a

literary effort.

From this time on the Romantic movement in literature began to affect

the ideal of the hymn. Since the hymn was to become a part of the

religious service, instead of a Nonconformist addition to the sermon,

and since the metrical psalm was to pass away because of its literary

shortcomings and absurdities, it was felt that the opportunity had

come to put a higher literary quality, a more vivid imagination, a

more definitely poetic element into the hymn—hence the literary

singing hymn came into being.

This was all the more opportune, since literature was turning to

religion for its themes. Coleridge issued his _Religious Musings_,

Wordsworth his _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, Moore his _Sacred Songs_, and

the libertine Byron his _Hebrew Melodies_. In 1807 the literary

remains of the lamented Henry Kirke White, including his ten hymns,

among which was the sublime “The Lord our God is clothed in might” and

his spiritually autobiographical “When marshalled on the mighty

plain,” were edited by Robert Southey. It is also worth while noting

that from 1809 to 1816 Reginald Heber printed his religious poems and

his hymns. In 1827 John Keble’s _The Christian Year_ made its

appearance with its materials for singing hymns. In the same year the

hymns of Bishop Heber and of Henry Hart Milman greeted the Christian

public.

As early as 1809 Heber was considering the use of a hymnal in his

parish church. In 1811 he published four hymns in the _Christian

Observer_ as specimens of a series he was contemplating. He proposed a

hymnbook that should be “a collection of sacred poetry.” He sought the

help of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey, and other literary men of

prominence, but only Henry Hart Milman, the great church historian,

responded. The ecclesiastical authorities sympathized, but thought the

church unready for an authorized hymnbook.

After Heber’s death in India in 1826, his widow brought the manuscript

back to England and it was published in 1827—not as a hymnbook,

however, but in the form and style of current poetic issues. In this

book appeared fifty-seven hymns by Heber and twelve by Milman. Having

due regard to its size, it was probably the richest contribution ever

made to Christian hymnody.

After the lapse of a century, his hymns are still in current use, many

of them inevitable in every hymnal whether churchly or popular, such

as “From Greenland’s icy mountains,” “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God

Almighty,” “The Son of God goes forth to war,” “By cool Siloam’s shady

rill,” “Bread of the world, in mercy broken,” “Brightest and best of

the sons of the morning.”

The beauty of Heber’s style was recognized from the first. His hymns

were distinctly literary in flavor, poetically conceived, with varied

rhythms and forms of stanza. But he did not transgress the limitations

of the singing hymn, as had the literary men of a century and more

before, nor did he ignore the practicability of the small number of

verses. The hymns were poems, but they were congregational hymns none

the less. But they might have been all this and yet perished by the

way. It was their deep spirituality, their lucid expression of

Christian truth, transmuted by intense conviction and personal

experience into a personal appeal that was abiding, that have made

them immortal.

Dean Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) was a brilliant scholar and church

historian and a poet of great reputation. His hymns are strong,

churchly, thoughtful to a high degree, but they lack the poetic charm

of those of Heber. Of the eleven that appeared in Heber’s posthumous

collection, and of others that were printed later, only one, his Palm

Sunday hymn, “Ride on, ride on in majesty,” is certain to be included

in every hymnal. The litany, “When our hearts are bowed with woe,” and

“Oh help us, Lord, each hour of need,” are only occasionally used.

Like Saul among the prophets, we find the author of _Lalla Rookh_,

Thomas Moore (1779-1852), enrolled among our English hymn writers. The

charm of his secular verse and songs is found also in his _Sacred

Songs_, from which his ever-useful and tender “Come, ye disconsolate”

has been taken; it is found in most of our hymnals. Less often do his

“Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea” and “O Thou who driest

the mourner’s tear” find a place. Not directly associated with

ecclesiastical circles and lacking in religious fervor, he yet

deserves a place among distinctly literary hymn writers.

No small factor in the development of the literary hymn was _The

Christian Year_ by John Keble (1792-1866). It was not a collection of

hymns, but a series of poems appropriate to all the several sacred

times and seasons; but out of it were salvaged a number of hymns that

have served the needs of high liturgical churches on special days.

_Hymns Ancient and Modern_, the High-Church hymnal so popular in Great

Britain and its dominions, contains no less than eleven of these

adapted hymns. The Christian Church at large is a grateful debtor to

this devotional poetry for the two hymns, “Sun of my soul, thou

Saviour dear,” the evening hymn, and “The voice that breathed o’er

Eden,” the wedding song. Beyond the value of these excerpts from his

poems was the poetic stimulus that enriches all subsequent hymnody by

raising the literary quality of the ideal hymn.

It was this literary quality of the work of the foregoing writers,

their definite recognition of the liturgic needs of the Church, and

their high church ideals and sympathies, that won the final victory of

the hymn over the metrical psalm in the Church of England. This party

had been the last stronghold in England of metrical psalmody.

V. CONTEMPORARY HYMN WRITERS

Although contemporary with the foregoing romantic school, Thomas Kelly

(1769-1854), originally an Evangelical Church of England clergyman,

later on an Independent, was not particularly influenced by them. He

was an indefatigable hymn writer; his collection of _Scripture Hymns_

finally contained 765 hymns, all original. His ideal was still that of

Watts, Wesley, and Newton—the useful hymn. He had no conscious

striving after literary quality, but, like Newton, frequently rose to

a high standard in this particular when lifted by his theme. He was an

earnest, pious, zealous, enthusiastic preacher, and liberal with his

large wealth. His influence in Ireland was widespread and counted

largely for piety and for evangelistic aggressiveness.

Some of our most widely used hymns are from his pen: “Hark, ten

thousand harps and voices,” “Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious,”

“On the mountain’s top appearing,” “The Head that once was crowned

with thorns,” “Zion stands with hills surrounded.”

Another distinguished contemporary, James Montgomery (1771-1854), was

probably more directly influenced by the literary impulses of the

times. A Moravian layman, the son of a Moravian minister, he was a

professional writer and editor of a secular newspaper of considerable

influence. For years a worldling, he was forty-two years old before he

publicly professed his acceptance of Christ.

He had written quite a good deal of secular poetry up to this time;

now he turned to writing hymns, which he had ceased to do since he was

a boy of fourteen. His poetry was highly appreciated at the time, but

it is now forgotten, although his hymns keep his memory green. He had

served a full literary apprenticeship and had formulated his theories

of the hymn—its character, its content, its limitations—before he

began writing, so that his hymns have an average excellence and

effectiveness that can be paralleled only by those of Bishop Heber.

His critical attitude is very evident in his introduction to his

second book, _Christian Psalmist_: “The faults in ordinary hymns are

vulgar phrases, low words, hard words, technical terms, inverted

construction, broken syntax, barbarous abbreviations that make our

beautiful English horrid even to the eye, bad rhymes, or no rhymes

where rhymes are expected, but above all numbers without cadence.” It

is not surprising that, with this keenly critical approach, he made

many alterations in Cotterill’s _Selection of Psalms and Hymns_, which

he was asked to edit, nor that he almost rewrote the Moravian hymnbook

on which he labored for twelve years.

The list of Montgomery’s widely accepted hymns is very large: _The New

Methodist Hymnal_ has 8, the _New Presbyterian Hymnal_ 9, _Hymns

Ancient and Modern_ (1904 Ed.) 13.

The most widely used of Montgomery’s hymns are: “Angels from the

realms of glory,” “Forever with the Lord,” “Hail to the Lord’s

Anointed,” “Hark the song of jubilee,” “In the hour of trial,” “Prayer

is the soul’s sincere desire,” “Oh, where shall rest be found,” “The

Lord is my Shepherd, No want shall I know.”

VI. MINOR HYMN WRITERS

There are some minor writers in this and the succeeding generation

that deserve passing mention. The man of a single hymn sometimes

strikes twelve.

Among these is John Marriott (1780-1825), a Church of England vicar

whose “Thou, whose almighty word” is in the first rank because of its

dignity and sustained feeling. It is one of our best missionary hymns.

James Edmeston (1791-1867), a London architect, served his day and

generation with hundreds of hymns for adults and children; only one of

them has become a permanent addition to English hymnody, the evening

hymn, “Saviour, breathe an evening blessing.”

Another layman, Sir Robert Grant (1785-1838), was conspicuous in his

day as a statesman, and finally as Governor of Bombay; he was a man of

deep piety and elevation of mind. He wrote a number of thoughtful and

impressive hymns, but he made his most permanent contribution to the

Christian Church’s sacrifice of praise in his noble “Oh, worship the

King, all-glorious above,” which is in the first rank for its noble

poetry as well as its profound devotion.

Another writer of high merit is the butcher’s son, Henry Kirke White

(1785-1806), whose death at the early age of twenty-one years, after

writing at the age of seventeen some poems of such merit as to arrest

the attention of the literary world, was a distinct loss to English

hymnody. How great that loss can be judged from the high quality of

his “The Lord our God is clothed with might,” “Oft in danger, oft in

woe,” and his Christmas hymn, “When marshaled on the nightly plain.”

His struggles with poverty in seeking an education, with skepticism in

finding peace of soul, with dread disease to which he had to succumb,

invest his story with a poignant pathos.

Another hymnist deserving attention was Bernard Barton (1784-1849), a

Quaker banker, twenty of whose hymns came into general use. Two of

them seem to have won a permanent place in our hymnody, “Lamp of our

feet, whereby we trace” and “Walk in the light! so shalt thou

know”—not great hymns, but extremely useful.

Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847) entered the church as a profession, but

presently was led into a deep religious experience by attending the

dying bed of a neighboring clergyman who, too, had looked upon his

work as a means of livelihood. The fruit of this experience was the

hymns that have been so loved and appreciated on both sides of the

ocean. The favorites among them are “Abide with me! Fast falls the

eventide,” “Jesus, I my cross have taken,” “As pants the hart for

cooling streams,” and “Praise, my soul, the King of heaven.” The

pathetic story of his last days has touched the hearts of God’s people

as they have sung his swan song, “Abide with me”—the finest evening

hymn of the Christian church—if it is accepted as an evening hymn.

That a Unitarian, Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), should have written so

noble a hymn about the cross of Christ as “In the cross of Christ I

glory,” expressing all its spiritual implications, can be explained

only by his orthodoxy of heart. His superficial reasonings were the

outgrowth of his early educational and social environment, and were

not in co-ordination with his deeper convictions. He was a voluminous

writer. His extraordinary genius for languages is revealed in his

series of “Specimens” from the poetry of no less than five European

languages. Politically he was even more conspicuous than Sir Robert

Grant, but, like him, his name will be ever revered for a single great

hymn, “In the cross of Christ I glory.” Other hymns in common use are

“Watchman, tell us of the night” and “God is love; his mercy

brightens.”

Josiah Conder (1789-1855), the compiler of the _Congregational Hymn

Book_, wrote fifty-six hymns for it, one of which is very impressive

and worshipful, “The Lord is King! lift up thy voice,” which will

undoubtedly live through coming generations. His other hymns are

uniformly good and of a high literary standard, but with less appeal.

VII. THE HYMNS OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

Cardinal Newman held that John Keble was the originator of the Oxford

Movement[1] by his great Assize sermon on “The Great Apostasy”

preached at Oxford, and by his emphasis of the church’s calendar in

his _The Christian Year_; but he can hardly be associated with the

school of hymn writers that grew out of it, for some of them

repudiated the literary hymn entirely.

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was the leader of the movement back to

the ideals of the pre-Reformation church. He wrote some poetry,

notably “The Dream of Gerontius,” and a few hymns. Of these, “Lead,

kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom” is the most widely known,

because of its attractive music, as he himself testifies. “Praise to

the Holiest in the height” is really a more serviceable hymn for

actual church services.

His disciples, Edward Caswall (1814-1878) and John Mason Neale

(1818-1866), opened new veins of hymnic wealth in their translations

from the Latin and the Greek, with which they greatly enriched the

treasury of sacred song. In the enthusiasm evoked by their success,

the suggestion was seriously made that all the post-Reformation

hymnody be set aside to give way to the medieval and even earlier

hymns!

Caswall devoted himself to the Latin medieval hymns and sequences and

made some surpassing translations, or, if you please,

transformations—e.g., “Jesus, the very thought of Thee,” “The sun is

sinking fast,” “My God, I love Thee, not because,” and “When morning

gilds the skies” from the German. He was a Church of England man, but

in 1847 he entered the Roman Catholic Church, following his leader,

Dr. Newman.

Dr. Neale did not leave the English Church, but was quite prominent in

High-Church circles. He was intensely interested in the liturgics of

his church, which led to his studies of the early Greek church and its

breviaries. He brought to his translations of Greek hymns a literary

skill, a spiritual insight, and a fervor that made him the primate

among those who found their inspiration in these ancient books of

service and breathed into these ancient lyrics the breath of modern

life. Among his most notable successes are: “Art thou weary, art thou

languid?” “Christian, dost thou see them?” “The day is past and over,”

“Fierce was the wild billow,” “’Tis the day of resurrection,” “Brief

life is here our portion,” “Jerusalem the golden.” It must be

remembered that these are not literal translations, but English hymns

made up of ideas suggested by phrases in the originals. Only a poet

imbued with devout feelings, responding to the vague suggestions of

the often obscure originals, could have produced them.

Another disciple of Cardinal Newman who also followed him into the

Roman Catholic Church was Frederick W. Faber (1814-1863), a poet by

the grace of God, a devout Christian, a man of intense convictions,

but somewhat temperamental and impulsive. Among his many good hymns

are: “My God, how wonderful thou art,” “There’s a wideness in God’s

mercy” (sometimes beginning “Was there ever kindest Shepherd”), “O

Paradise! O Paradise,” “Hark, hark, my soul! angelic songs are

swelling,” “Faith of our fathers! living still.” Few that sing the

last-mentioned hymn realize that it refers to the faith of the Roman

Catholic saints and that the hymn had to be cleansed of its Mariolatry

before being used in our Protestant hymnals. Nevertheless, in its

present form it is a very impressive and valuable hymn that has been

redeemed from the propagandist vagary of its original writer.

Still under the influence of the Oxford High, or Anglo-Catholic

Church, we find Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander, (1823-1895), the writer

of many hymns, especially for children, among which are a number that

promise permanent usefulness: “There is a green hill far away,” “Jesus

calls us, o’er the tumult,” “The roseate hues of early dawn.”

Bishop W. W. How (1823-1897) wrote a number of excellent hymns for his

hymnal, _Psalms and Hymns_, some of which have since found their way

into other hymnals. Perhaps those that have appealed most are “O

Jesus, Thou art standing,” “We give Thee but Thine own,” “O Word of

God incarnate,” “Soldiers of the cross, arise,” “Summer suns are

glowing.” His hymns are thoughtful, devout, and full of tender

feeling; their literary quality is admirable.

A very copious writer of the same generation was Frances Ridley

Havergal (1836-1879), whose devotional poetry touched the heart of her

generation to a remarkable degree. Her pen was quite facile, and not

all she wrote had more than transient value: but some of her hymns the

Christian Church will permanently treasure: “Take my life, and let it

be,” “I could not do without Thee,” “True-hearted, whole-hearted,”

“Lord, speak to me, that I may speak,” “I gave my life for thee.” Miss

Havergal was a woman of profound Christian experience, which is voiced

by her hymns.

Among the later writers is Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1927), voluminous

writer on a variety of topics as well as a fairly popular novelist. He

wrote the stirring “Onward, Christian soldiers” for a local

processional of school children and assured himself of an immortality

by a half hour’s writing that all his laborious literary work would

not have won him. He also wrote an appealing evening hymn, “Now the

day is over,” that Joseph Barnby has made popular by his pleasing

tune, “Merrial.”

In spite of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns and a number of minor

poets, and in spite of a wealth of charming folk songs, to prove that

the spirit of song dwells in the Scottish breast, Scotland has made

but a small contribution to English hymnody. The metrical psalm ruled

the Scotch religious heart with a rod of iron. Only during the last

generation has Scotia almost unwittingly made an important

contribution. Horatius Bonar (1808-1889) was an industrious writer on

many topics. He allowed no hymns to be sung in his church, but by a

strange anomaly he issued three series of _Hymns of Faith and Hope_—in

1856, 1861, and 1866. While these hymns were being increasingly sung

around the world, his church sang metrical psalms! More than one

hundred of his hymns are in common use. Among them are the following:

“I heard the voice of Jesus say,” “I lay my sins on Jesus,” “Go, labor

on; spend and be spent,” “Beyond the smiling and the weeping,” “A few

more years shall roll,” “I was a wand’ring sheep,” “When the weary,

seeking rest.”

Another Scotchman, George Matheson (1842-1906), the blind preacher,

has written, among many others, a hymn whose beauty and mystical

suggestiveness has rapidly given it wide usefulness: “O Love, that

wilt not let me go.” Fortunate in having a very pleasing and effective

tune, St. Margaret by Albert L. Peace, it promises to be a permanent

fountain of blessing.

_Chapter XVIII_

AMERICAN HYMNODY

I. THE TRANSITION FROM PSALMODY TO HYMNODY

The metrical versions used in New England were Ainsworth’s in Plymouth

and vicinity under Pilgrim influence, and Sternhold and Hopkins’,

where Puritan influence controlled. The New England ministers were

scholarly and knew their Hebrew Bible. The Sternhold and Hopkins

version was unsatisfactory, not so much for its literary deficiencies,

but because it was not literal enough, did not reproduce the Hebrew

minutely enough. This led, as we have seen in Chapter X, to the Bay

Psalm Book of 1640, which was widely adopted, although Sternhold and

Hopkins still had its partisans.

These versions could not but find sharp critics among a more or less

scholarly ministry and in time their absurdities weakened their hold

upon the New England churches.

The utter collapse of the congregational singing due to the lack of

tunes in the psalm books, and the absence of competent precentors,[1]

hastened the revolt among some of the Churches against the versions.

Yet the tyranny of “use and wont” kept most of the churches in line,

only a few of them adopting the later version of Tate and Brady.

The interest aroused by the “singing school,” and by the organization

of choirs due to the multiplication of tune books, both English and

American, delayed the abolition of the older metrical versions and

postponed the introduction of Watts’ Imitations and Hymns for several

decades, but the complaints from the larger and more cultured churches

and their scholarly ministers became more vociferous.[2] The

combination of the absurdities of the metrical versions, and those

created by the senseless repetition made necessary by the fugue tunes

then in use, became unendurable.

II. THE INTRODUCTION OF WATTS’ HYMNS

Watts’ _The Psalms of David Imitated_ was very well adapted to serve

as an entering wedge. It brought a certain sanction by making David’s

Psalms the foundation. They were still psalms, not hymns, and so

satisfied to some degree the claims of tradition, and placated those

who would have balked at hymns of “human composure.” Benjamin Franklin

in 1729 was the first to reprint the Imitation, but complained that

the copies remained on his shelves unsold. The demand evidently grew,

for in 1741 he issued a second edition. The first reprint of Watts’

Hymns appeared in 1739 in Boston. Three years later, in 1742, Franklin

reprinted them in Philadelphia, and years later still, they were

republished in New York.

Whitfield’s visit to America and the outburst of singing of the Great

Awakening (1742), with its profound religious experiences that could

find no adequate expression in the Psalms alone, gave Watts’ Hymns a

larger opportunity. In 1744 the singing of Watts’ Hymns was one of the

diversions of the people when they met together.

It was not until after the Revolution that the introduction of Watts’

Psalms and Hymns became general. There were a number of issues with

such abridgments or changes as were made necessary by Watts’

references to British conditions, by Joel Barlow, a patriotic poet,

author of the _Columbiad_, and later U. S. Minister to France, and by

Nathan Strong, Samuel Worcester, and Timothy Dwight, the distinguished

president of Yale College. All these had considerable vogue,

especially the last which contained metrical versions of the Psalms

Watts had omitted and other psalms versified anew. President Dwight’s

“I love Thy kingdom, Lord” appeared as a versification of Psalm 137.

It is a classic, one of the two leading hymns on the Christian Church,

and is rarely omitted in our hymnals. Besides the Psalms it contained

263 hymns, 168 of which were by Watts.

The contentions which had occurred over methods of singing—the

“Deaconing” or lining out of the hymns, the use of choirs, the fugal

tunes—now gave way to differences over the use of various editions of

Watts, or over the use of hymns in church service. The tradition,

happily unjustified now, that the music of the church constituted “the

war department” seems to have been originated during that century of

conflict.

III. THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN HYMNODY

Wherever Watts had been able to overthrow the tyranny of the metrical

versions, he seemed to have instituted a tyranny of his own, to the

detriment of the development of an American hymnody. But here and

there lonesome birds were singing songs of their own, early harbingers

of the springtime of American sacred song.

Samuel Davies, the eloquent President of the College of New Jersey,

now Princeton University, began writing hymns in the middle of the

eighteenth century that were accepted in English hymnbooks before they

became generally known in America. Their quality may be judged from

his hymn of consecration:

“Lord, I am thine, entirely thine,

Purchased and saved by blood divine;

With full consent thine I would be

And own thy sovereign right in me.”

The other verses are equally good, if not superior.

Mather Byles, the brilliant Tory preacher of Boston, was a poet of no

mean pretentions and in close touch with Swift, Pope, and Watts. He

wrote hymns that served their purpose in his day and generation, but

have not been recognized since, partly because of his political

attitude and his advanced views, being one of the first to use Watts’

Hymns in his congregation. His somewhat oratorical style is evident in

his hymn on the greatness of God:

“Who can behold the blazing light?

Who can approach consuming flame?

None but thy wisdom knows thy might;

None but thy word can speak thy name.”

Another early songbird was Samson Occom, the Mohegan Indian, who

raised the money in England which later became the financial nucleus

of the present Dartmouth College. His autobiographical hymn, “Waked by

the Gospel’s joyful sound,” was widely used in England and translated

into Welsh, among whom it was used in their revivals and “led many

hundred sinners to the cross of Christ.”

Harry Alline (1748-1783) was the most copious hymn writer of that

early day, his _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_ containing four hundred and

eighty-seven Hymns, all from his own pen. His

“Amazing sight, the Saviour stands,

And knocks at every door!

Ten thousand blessings in his hands

To satisfy the poor,”

was quite a favorite for many years, but was finally submerged in the

larger tide of sacred song that sprang up through the years.

The scholarly and eloquent Nathan Strong in his _Hartford Selection_

used several hymns of his own. His patriotic hymn, “Swell the anthem,

raise the song,” has had a long life of wide usefulness.

While Watts still reigned supreme during the next quarter of a

century, the impulse and the ability to write acceptable hymns was

rapidly developing. Eccentric Elder John Leland (1754-1851) among a

lot of almost amusing trash wrote an evening hymn that had very wide

acceptance. Dr. Duffield characterizes it as a “classic in its

unpretending beauty,” and Dr. Charles S. Robinson esteemed it so

highly as to exclaim, “May it live forever and ever!” Unfortunately

the supply of fine evening hymns is so great that in the competition

Leland’s hymn has fallen by the way. The last verse will enable the

reader to savor its quality:

“And when our days are past,

And we from time remove,

Oh, may we in Thy bosom rest,

The bosom of Thy love.”

How many ministers who sing “Coronation” so heartily are aware that

the composer, Oliver Holden (1765-1844), was a hymn writer as well as

a musician? Yet one of his hymns had a wide use in both America and

England:

“They who seek the throne of grace

Find that throne in every place;

If we live a life of prayer,

God is present everywhere.”

After a long and useful life, it, too, has practically disappeared

from our hymnals.

IV. COLLECTIONS OF AMERICAN HYMNS

By 1824 the evangelistic movement, partly a heritage from the Great

Awakening, partly due to the Methodist aggressiveness, and partly to

the religious needs of a widely scattered and pioneer population, made

it evident that the hymns of Watts and his school, with minds set on

worship in more or less formal services for the edification of the

elect, and ignoring the needs of an urgent discipling, were not fitted

for revival work. Rev. Asahel Nettleton, an evangelistic minister

greatly interested in foreign missions, issued his _Village Hymns_,

containing six hundred hymns, only fifty of which were by Watts. Some

of Charles Wesley’s hymns were included, but most of these were

credited to other authors. While other English sources were drawn

upon, the book was noteworthy for the American hymns that appeared in

it. Hymns by Davies, Occom, Alline, Strong, and Dwight were used. An

eager quest for new American hymnists was rewarded by contributions

from William B. Tappan (“’Tis midnight; and on Olive’s brow” and “The

ransomed spirit to her home”); from Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (“I love to

steal awhile away”); and from Abby B. Hyde (“Dear Saviour, if these

lambs should stray”).

William B. Tappan (1794-1849) was a largely self-educated man, having

attended school but six months. His hymn “There is an hour of peaceful

rest” was widely published in America and England, and on the

Continent, and used to be inevitable in the hymnbooks of sixty years

ago. His “’Tis midnight; and on Olive’s brow” still holds its place,

though largely descriptive, but none the less impressive and useful.

Mrs. Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (1783-1861) still is represented in most of

our hymnals by her “I love to steal awhile away,” with its pathetic

story of her misunderstood habit of prayer among the scenes of nature.

Greater than the hymn, valuable as it has been, is her contribution to

the progress of Christ’s Kingdom in the work of her missionary son,

Rev. Samuel R. Brown, in China and Japan and that of her grandsons in

the latter country.

But the revival took on an intenser form under the preaching and

praying of Charles G. Finney and, bright as was the spirit of the

_Village Hymns_, it called for something more vigorous and with a

greater appeal to the unsaved people who were to be won, especially in

the music. Rev. Joshua Leavitt, a Congregational minister, a militant

reformer, enemy of intemperance and slavery (a dangerous attitude in

those days), and an ardent believer in the revival work of Finney,

issued his _The Christian Lyre_ in 1830, which created quite a

sensation. Its hymns did not differ much from those of _Village

Hymns_, but it was more practical in that it supplied the music on the

page opposite to each hymn, no small advance on the ponderous tune

book that had to be held in one hand and the hymnbook in the other.

Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings had been editing these tune books

filled with dull and stupid music, in whose abundant chaff an

occasional grain of gold occurred, which the Christian Church has been

glad to cherish. The music in _The Christian Lyre_ was bright and

popular, being secular melodies the people were singing. Leavitt had

taken a leaf out of the book of the old mass-writers, who used popular

melodies for their descants, and of Luther and Bourgeois, in taking

popular tunes to reach the people. It was an anticipation of Horace

Waters’ policy in his _Sabbath School Bell_ in 1859. It was also an

anticipation of Moody and Sankey’s _Gospel Hymns_, except that Leavitt

had no Fanny Crosby or Lydia Baxter to supply new texts, and no

reserve of popular music by Lowry, Doane, Bliss, and others to draw

upon.

As Horace Waters stimulated Bradbury into developing the popular

Sunday school music, one of whose by-products was the Gospel song, so

Leavitt stirred up Mason and Hastings to begin the issue in 1832 of

_Spiritual Songs for Social Worship_, in twelve parts, more nearly the

archetype of the future _Gospel Hymns_. _The Christian Lyre_ left no

residuum for future generations, but Spiritual Songs, edited by men of

wide experience, in touch with the most cultivated clerical circle of

the day, one of them a hymnist of both facility and felicity, made

important permanent contributions not only to American but to

universal Christian hymnody.

In this collection appeared Thomas Hastings’ “Hail to the brightness

of Zion’s glad morning,” “Gently, Lord, O gently lead us,” “How calm

and beautiful the morn,” “Child of sin and sorrow.” Here also appeared

his enlargement of Thomas Moore’s “Come, ye disconsolate.” Add to

these his tunes “Ortonville,” “Retreat,” “Zion,” “Toplady,” and others

and his other hymns, “Return, O wanderer, to my home,” “Delay not,

delay not, O sinner, draw near,” “The Saviour bids thee watch and

pray,” and it will be seen that Thomas Hastings, even if he is not in

the first rank as hymnist or composer, deserves well of the Christian

Church.

In this same volume of Spiritual Songs first appeared Rev. Samuel F.

Smith’s two great hymns, “The morning light is breaking” and “My

country, ’tis of thee.” He was still a theological student,

twenty-four years of age, when these were written. The theme of the

latter was suggested in a general way by Lowell Mason, who needed a

patriotic song for his children’s singing schools, and who supplied

him with some music he had recently received from Germany. During a

leisure moment his eye fell on “Heil dir im Sieger-Kranz,” the German

“God Save the King,” written to the English tune, “God Save the King.”

This latter fact he did not know, but liked the tune and was moved to

write unknowingly our National Hymn. Sung by Lowell Mason’s children’s

chorus, it was rapidly introduced and was presently _viva voce_

accepted as the long-desired National Anthem. Practically an

improvisation, not intended for wide use, it is open to criticism; but

it is greatly superior to its only competitor for national honors,

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” because of its practicability in singing,

its dignity, and its noble expression of the American spirit. That it

refers to hills and not to prairies, and speaks of “pilgrim’s pride”

(without the capital) is open only to captious criticism.

His “The morning light is breaking” was due to the missionary spirit

that was prevalent in the theological seminaries during that period.

It is the peer of Heber’s “From Greenland’s icy mountains” as a

missionary hymn; many recent critics greatly prefer it.

Another great hymn that made its premier appearance in _Spiritual

Songs_ was “My faith looks up to Thee,” by Dr. Ray Palmer (1808-1887),

set to one of Lowell Mason’s best tunes, “Olivet.” Meeting Dr. Palmer

on the street, Mason asked him whether he had not an appropriate hymn

for his forthcoming book; young Palmer remembered he had some verses

in his pocketbook and handed them to Mason. Meeting Palmer a few days

afterwards on the street, Mason with great earnestness exclaimed: “Mr.

Palmer, you may live many years and do many good things, but I think

you will be best known to posterity as the author of ‘My faith looks

up to Thee!’” The prophecy, so literally fulfilled, speaks well for

Mason’s critical acumen. Ray Palmer, despite Bishop Wordsworth’s

objection to the pronouns of the first person, wrote “My faith,” “I

pray,” “my guilt,” for his hymn was not intended to be sung, but

simply to express his own spiritual experience. It was a personal

prayer none the less that it took a metrical form. It is one of the

great factors in its world-wide appeal that it becomes the personal

expression of every individual who sings it.

But Dr. Palmer was not the author of only a single song: he wrote many

others of almost equal value. Writing a sermon on the words of Peter,

“Jesus Christ, whom having not seen ye love,” he was suddenly

overwhelmed by his rapture of love for the Christ, and, the sermon

forgotten, he wrote down the hymn the church will never allow to die:

“Jesus, these eyes have never seen

That radiant form of thine;

The veil of sense hangs dark between

Thy blessed face and mine.

I see thee not, I hear thee not,

Yet art thou oft with me;

And earth hath ne’er so dear a spot

As where I meet with thee.”

In his dying hour he was heard to repeat with broken voice the last

stanza of this hymn:

“When death these mortal eyes shall seal,

And still this throbbing heart,

The rending veil shall thee reveal,

All glorious as thou art.”

Other important hymns of Dr. Palmer’s are: “Come, Jesus, Redeemer,

abide Thou with me,” “O Jesus, sweet the tears I shed,” “Take me, O my

Father, take me,” “O Christ, the Lord of heav’n, to Thee,” “Come, Holy

Ghost, in love.” His translation of “Jesu, dulcedo cordium,” the Paris

cento of “Jesu, dulcis memoria,” by an unknown Spanish abbess, is most

highly esteemed: “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts.” This cento is

made up of selected verses from “Jesu, dulcis memoria,” from which

Edward Caswell took his admirable “Jesus, the very thought of Thee.”

Dr. Leonard Bacon (1802-1881), the son of a missionary among the

Indians of Michigan, is noteworthy in two particulars: he issued, at

the age of twenty-one, the first collection of missionary hymns

printed in America, and he wrote the New England patriotic hymn still

used in our churches,

“O God, beneath thy guiding hand

Our exiled fathers crossed the sea;

And when they trod the wintry strand

With prayer and psalm they worshiped Thee.”

Born in Detroit, he sang the praise of the divine hand that founded

the New England churches.

V. EPISCOPAL HYMN WRITERS

While the Anglican Church remained faithful to the traditional

metrical versions well into the nineteenth century, the American

Episcopal Church was hospitable to hymns much earlier. Already in 1789

the House of Bishops ratified the addition of hymns to the psalter.

From decade to decade the demand for additional hymns grew until in

1823 William A. Muhlenberg, a rector of Lancaster, Pa., issued his

_Church_ _Poetry_, consisting of psalms and hymns, which was adopted

by the rectors of other Episcopal churches. In 1827 appeared _Hymns of

the Protestant Episcopal Church_, the majority of whose hymns were by

Watts, Doddridge, Steele, and Charles Wesley. Its most distinctive

feature was the new hymns supplied by five Episcopal writers, Dr. H.

U. Onderdonk, Dr. William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877), Bishop

George W. Doane (1799-1859), J. W. Eastburn, and Francis S. Key

(1779-1843).

Of Dr. Onderdonk’s nine hymns one came into general use, “The Spirit

in our hearts.”

Dr. Muhlenberg was more successful, for three of his five are

recognized as a part of American Hymnody: “I would not live alway; I

ask not to stay,” “Shout the glad tidings, exultingly sing,” and the

baptismal hymn, “Saviour, who thy flock art feeding.”

Bishop Doane was represented by two hymns, both of which still find a

place in our hymnals: “Thou art the way; to thee alone,” “Softly now

the light of day.” The latter is one of our most acceptable evening

hymns. Fully as useful is his vigorous missionary hymn, which, with

its very appropriate tune, “Waltham,” by J. Baptiste Calkin, is adding

inspiration everywhere to the cause,

“Fling out the banner! let it float

Skyward and seaward, high and wide;

The sun, that lights its shining folds,

The cross, on which the Saviour died.”

Francis S. Key, the well-known writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner,”

to whom Baltimore has erected an elaborate statue, furnished a fine

hymn of praise, “Lord, with glowing heart I’d praise Thee.”

VI. UNITARIAN HYMNODY

The production of original hymns in New England took a peculiar

course. After Samuel F. Smith, the spirit of praise left the Orthodox

churches and took refuge with the ostensible Unitarians. The reaction

against the rigid and harsh Calvinism was not so much against the

doctrine of the deity of Christ, as against the false corollaries

drawn metaphysically from the noble doctrine of the Sovereignty of

God, as well as the crass, materialistically conceived, conception of

the state of the impenitent dead, that was painted so luridly and

offensively in song as well as in sermon.

Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843), was the son of Professor Henry Ware, who

held the chair of Divinity in Harvard College for thirty-five years.

He himself became professor of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastoral Care in

the same institution in 1830. The pastor for thirteen years of a

prominent Unitarian church in Boston, he never wavered in his faith in

the deity of Jesus Christ. How otherwise could he have written that

triumphant Easter hymn:

“Lift your glad voices in triumph on high,

For Jesus hath risen, and man cannot die;

Vain were the terrors that gathered around him,

And short the dominion of death and the grave.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), America’s first great poet, wrote

five hymns for Henry D. Sewall’s Unitarian Church hymnal in 1820. He

was a member of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in New York

City. Yet in 1865 he could write a hymn containing the following

stanza:

“Lo! in the clouds of heaven appears

God’s well-beloved Son;

He brings the train of brighter years;

His Kingdom is begun;

He comes, a guilty world to bless

With mercy, truth, and righteousness.”

In 1875 he could still write in a hymn on “The Star of Bethlehem,”

“Yet doth the Star of Bethlehem shed

A luster pure and sweet;

And still it leads, as once it led,

To the Messiah’s feet.”

An even more remarkable Unitarian was Oliver Wendell Holmes

(1809-1894), the great physician, but even greater poet. He had the

reputation of being rather radical in his religious views; he was a

humorist whom human life rather amused than impressed seriously

(though he was tender enough to human suffering), but, when a hymn

seemed an appropriate close for one of his genial essays, he could

write,

“Lord of all being, throned afar,

Thy glory flames from sun and star;

Center and soul of every sphere,

Yet to each loving heart how near.”

But unless in the deeper depths of his soul there still lingered faith

in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, how could he write,

“O Love divine, that stooped to share

Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,

On thee we cast each earthborn care;

We smile at pain while thou art near.”

Especially that last verse of unshaken faith:

“On thee we fling our burdening woe,

O Love divine, forever dear;

Content to suffer while we know,

Living and dying, thou art near.”

What might not Oliver Wendell Holmes have done for Christian hymnody,

had he had Charles Wesley’s evangelical experience and piety?

Another Unitarian deserving recognition was Edmund Hamilton Sears

(1810-1876), who is not remembered because of his successful pastoral

career of forty years, nor by his theological treatises and religious

writings, but by his two Christmas hymns, perhaps the best written in

America (not forgetting Bishop Brooks’ “O Little town of

Bethlehem”)—“Calm on the listening ear of night” and “It came upon the

midnight clear.” The first was written soon after his graduation from

Harvard College in 1834, and the other in 1849 after he had been in

the pastorate over a decade. Of course, he was a firm believer in the

deity of Christ, else he could not have written these hymns.

After Dr. Ray Palmer, our best American hymnist is John G. Whittier

(1807-1892), who never aspired to such honors! His hymns have been

most deftly extracted from longer poems and, despite their being mere

fragments, are distinctive hymns in progress of thought and structure.

Moreover, they are the very choicest passage in these longer poems.

The additional marvel is that this Unitarian Hicksite Quaker, who was

not taught to sing hymns in his youth, should have given finer

expression than any other writer to the sense of present intimate

communion with Christ:

“But warm, sweet, tender, even yet

A present help is He;

And faith has still its Olivet,

And love its Galilee.”

VII. LATER ORTHODOX HYMN WRITERS

To this generation George Duffield, Jr. (1818-1888), may be said to

have belonged. His hymn, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus,” is never

omitted from any reputable collection of hymns, liturgic or popular.

He was a foremost figure in the Philadelphia revival of 1857 and 1858,

being associated with Alfred Cookman, the Methodist, and Dudley A.

Tyng, the Episcopalian, whose dying words suggested the hymn.

Old Dr. Lyman Beecher was a giant in his day, but his chief glory was

in his remarkable family of children. While Henry Ward was most

conspicuous in his day, he was hardly more so than Harriet Beecher

Stowe (1812-1896), the author of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, which, with

Hanby’s _Darling Nellie Gray_, prepared the heart of the North to buy

at a tremendous cost of treasure and blood the Emancipation

Proclamation. But Mrs. Stowe is not simply a historic character whose

work is done; she is living still in her hymns, notably the exquisite

morning hymn, “Still, still with thee, when purple morning breaketh,”

a fitting mate for Lyte’s evening hymn, “Abide with me; fast falls the

eventide.”

Mention should be made of Anna Warner (1820-1915), whose children’s

hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” set to Bradbury’s simple

pentatonic melody has girdled the globe. Other hymns by Miss Warner

are “One more day’s work for Jesus” and “We would see Jesus; for the

shadows lengthen.”

Among later American hymn writers is Mary Artemisia Lathbury

(1841-1913), who wrote “Break Thou the bread of life” (not a communion

hymn, by the way) and “Day is dying in the West,” with William F.

Sherwin’s tunes, which are to be found in all our hymnals and which

are very tender, very useful.

The American Episcopal Church has supplied some admirable hymns

through Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe (1818-1896), who wrote “Oh, where

are kings and empires now,” the almost apocalyptic “We are living, we

are dwelling,” and the missionary “Saviour, sprinkle many nations,”

all hymns of high worth; and Bishop Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), whose

“O little town of Bethlehem” is a favorite Christmas carol.

Mrs. Frances Crosby Van Alstyne (1820-1915), familiarly known as

“Fanny Crosby,” would be the premier hymn writer of America if the

criteria were quantity and wideness of use. There can be no question

as to the evangelistic and devotional value of her hymns, whatever

their literary quality or permanent appeal may be. “Safe in the arms

of Jesus,” “Rescue the perishing,” “Blessed Assurance,” “Pass me not,

O gentle Saviour,” “Saviour, more than life to me,” “I am thine, O

Lord, I have heard thy voice,” “Jesus, keep me near the cross,” and

many others will probably be permanent in hymnals and song collections

of a popular and evangelistic type.

Valuable hymns of the same practical gospel song type have been

written by Mrs. Lydia Baxter, Philip Paul Bliss, Annie Sherwood Hawks,

Mrs. Ellen Huntington Gates, Rev. E. A. Hoffman, Miss E. E. Hewitt,

Mrs. C. H. Morris, President J. E. Rankin, D.D., and many others.

Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss (1818-1878), daughter of the saintly and

greatly beloved Rev. Edward Payson, wrote _Stepping Heavenward_, a

book that stimulated and cheered multiplied thousands and lifted their

spiritual ideals. Of her 123 _Religious Poems_, one has won a

permanent place in our hymnals, “More love to Thee, O Christ.” It is

not a substitute for Mrs. Adams’ “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” but a

complement.

Other writers of single hymns that the Church has used with great

effect are Dr. Washington Gladden’s (1836-1918) “O Master, let me walk

with Thee,” a hymn of Christian service; Dr. Sylvanus Dryden Phelps’

“Saviour, Thy dying love;” Dr. Edward Hopper’s “Jesus, Saviour, pilot

me;” Dr. Joseph Henry Gilmore’s (1834-1918) “He leadeth me, O blessed

thought;” Ernest W. Shurtleff’s (1862-1917) “Lead on, O King eternal;”

Frank Mason North’s (1850-1935) “Where cross the crowded ways of

life”; the second, third, and fourth of the songs just mentioned have

a Gospel song origin.

More recent writers are Rev. Frederick L. Hosmer and Rev. William C.

Gannett in whose _The Thought of God_ are found hymns of deep piety

and strong religious feeling. Room is made for two stanzas of Dr.

Hosmer’s “Found,”

“O Name, all other names above,

What art thou not to me,

Now I have learned to trust thy love

And cast my care on thee?

What is our being but a cry,

A restless longing still,

Which thou alone canst satisfy,

Alone thy fullness fill?”

A more important recent hymn writer is Rev. Louis F. Benson, D.D.

(1855-1930), the editor of the current Presbyterian hymnals. This

history of Christian hymnody cannot close more fittingly than to quote

part of a stirring hymn by this greatest of American hymnologists:

“Forward! singing ‘Glory

To our Lord the King’;

Forward! Trusting only

In the name we sing.

See the day is breaking

And the road points far;

March, with eyes uplifted

To the Morning Star.

Blessed is the Kingdom;

Blessed be the King!

Crowned is every duty

His commandments bring.

Now to serve like soldiers,

Now to work like men;

Oh, to love as God loves

And to conquer then.”

THE SINGING CHURCH

PART III

PRACTICAL HYMNOLOGY

_Chapter XIX_

THE STUDY OF HYMNS

I. IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY OF HYMNS

It has been said that the two great books which every minister should

study are the Bible and human nature. A third great book may be added,

in which the foregoing two unite in a new combination—the Hymnbook.

In that collection of hymns the truths of the Bible find their

expression in a new form. They are no longer Oriental in spirit, based

upon human experiences under different conditions and in a different

intellectual atmosphere, but modern, and strong with a fresh vitality.

They have passed through the crucible of intense personal feeling and

experience, and have been recast in forms more comprehensible to a

different race and to a different age.

Next to his library of comment upon the Bible, and of exposition of

its doctrines, should be that of the minister’s hymnological books

giving the history, the illustrations, and the methods of making

effective the hymns he uses in his congregation.

II. PERSONAL ADVANTAGES OF SUCH STUDY OF HYMNS

The first line of the study of hymns should be contributory to his own

personal development.

_Literary Pleasure._

A great delight awaits the minister of cultivated taste and

sensibility, for there are not only ten really good hymns, as a famous

literary doctor[1] once insisted, but hundreds of them, whose

distinction and beauty of phraseology, whose fresh and orderly

development of ideas, and whose elevation and glory of thought give

unfailing literary pleasure. How can one read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s

“Still, still with Thee,” that best of American morning hymns, without

exquisite delight?

“Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh,

When the bird waketh, and the shadows flee:

Fairer than morning, lovelier than daylight,

Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee.”

Prominent among these literary hymns will be that hymn of majestic

praise by Sir Robert Grant:

“Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above,

Oh, gratefully sing his power and his love;

Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of days,

Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.

Oh, tell of his might, oh, sing of his grace,

Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space:

His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,

And dark is his path on the wings of the storm.”

Here are majesty and beauty of thought, flawless phraseology, and

musical numbers. No editor has found excuse to alter or amend it.

Even Isaac Watts, who boasted his freedom from literary trammels and

who illustrated that freedom all too often and too perversely, proved

his latent poetic powers in the noble poetry of

“Our God, our Help in ages past,

Our Hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home.”

That the literary quality of Adelaide A. Procter’s hymn, “My God, I

thank Thee who hast made,” is high no one would deny:

“My God, I thank Thee, who hast made

The earth so bright,

So full of splendor and of joy,

Beauty and light;

So many glorious things are here,

Noble and right.”

The minor chord in the third verse but renders more poignant the high

glory of her praise:

“I thank Thee more that all our joy

Is touched with pain;

That shadows fall on brightest hours,

That thorns remain;

So that earth’s bliss may be our guide,

And not our chain.”

There is a mine of inestimable literary wealth awaiting the search of

discriminating taste.[2]

_Literary Culture._

But many ministers of limited native susceptibility to literary and

poetic beauty, and perhaps of none too efficient literary

opportunities, will not be able at once to enter into the delight of

the literary qualities of hymns. All the more will it be important for

them to study their hymnal for the sake of its opportunity for

deepening their capacity for enjoying literary values. Their

imaginations need to be stimulated. Their response to the charm of

musical phrases, to the clearness and lucidity of the thought

expressed, to the fitness of the unexpected and pleasing metaphors

used, to the nice selection of the words employed to weave a garb of

beauty for the message the hymn is intended to convey, can be and must

be developed, if not only the proper appreciation of the hymns but

also their highest efficiency as preachers are to be secured.

Few preachers realize the importance of this literary culture; yet,

apart from his deity, Jesus Christ was the greatest literary man the

race has developed. His parables, his similes, his aptness of phrase,

his wit, his clearness of style, despite the great topics on which he

discoursed, cannot be paralleled in any literature. The literary value

of the Gospels is one of the reasons of their agelong and race-wide

appeal.

The effort of the preacher to sensitize his mind and spirit, in order

to appreciate what his hymnal offers, will give him more of the

extraordinary winsomeness of his Master’s style.

While not all hymns are distinctly literary in style and vocabulary,

most of them have some poetical and imaginative qualities, and a great

many of them have marked literary value. A careful canvass of these

values will develop literary discrimination and taste. Hymns like

Keble’s “Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear” and Heber’s “Brightest and

best of the sons of the morning” must stimulate genuine literary

appreciation. To segregate carefully in his mind the genuinely

literary hymns—those that are full of imagination, symmetrical in

structure, gracious in phraseology—will be a literary exercise of

inestimable value.

_Development of Emotional Nature._

But the finest literary discrimination and the highest literary

delight cannot be secured without an emotional responsiveness that

ministers do not always bring to their reading of hymns. But this

emotion must not simply be poetic, it must be spiritual, based on an

actualization of the profound spiritual truths expressed in the hymns.

The most common fault among ministers is an aridity of mind, a dryness

of feeling, a habit of abstract, academic thinking which have no

response to the emotional values in the doctrines they preach. It is

the secret of many an empty church, of many a barren pastorate.

To some men who lack emotional and poetic insight, the hymnbook may

appear dry and uninteresting. It certainly is unappealing to the

unspiritual man, no matter how poetical he may be, and this will

account for the occasional attack upon the hymns of the Christian

Church as being without poetical power or merit. But the Christian

minister, who deals with spiritual things, for whom the emotions of

the human heart are a great opportunity, ought to find in the study of

his hymnbook a great deepening of emotional intuition.

Here he comes in touch with the saints of the Church who have risen to

the greatest heights of spiritual insight, and who have sung because

the feelings within them were so impelling that they could not do

otherwise than sing. His own deficient emotion and his own dull

insight into spiritual truth are here inspired and stimulated until he

too stands upon the mountaintop. For his own spiritual edification,

therefore, there is nothing, outside the Bible, so likely to be of

spiritual help as the hymnbook. When he is discouraged, its hymns of

inspiration and encouragement cannot but lift the cloud. When his

heart is dull, and his vision of his Lord obscured, such hymns as

“Jesus, I love Thy charming name,” by Philip Doddridge,

“Jesus, these eyes have never seen

That radiant form of Thine,”

by our own Ray Palmer, or

“Jesus, the very thought of Thee

With sweetness fills my breast,”

by that unknown saintly abbess of the Middle Ages, surely will once

more set his spiritual pulses in motion and thrill him with the

vitalizing vision of his Lord.

It is with this emotional attitude alone that a minister should study

his hymns; otherwise, he will fail in realizing any of their values.

To come to them coldly dissecting them with knife and scalpel is to

miss their beauty, their spiritual appeal. The minister who prays over

his sermon would do well to pray with equal fervency over the hymns he

studies and selects. If he vitalizes them for himself, that fresh

vision of their meaning will reach the congregation directly and

indirectly.

III. THE PRACTICAL VALUES OF INDIVIDUAL HYMNS

Not the least important consideration in the study of hymns is clearly

to envisage their several effective values. To know the literary worth

and the spiritual stimulus of a given hymn is most desirable; but to

realize what spiritual results it is fitted to secure, and how, is

even more important. Each hymn has its individual force, its

individual adaptation to definite mental and spiritual results; for

the minister not to recognize these varying effects is like the

failure of a physician to know the differing reactions of baking soda

and strychnine. To announce “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” when

the situation calls for the tenderness of “How sweet the name of Jesus

sounds,” is malpractice none the less that it is so frequently done.

_Classifying Hymns by Their Nature._

It will be helpful to classify hymns, deciding to which group each one

belongs. Some are purely didactic, bearing instruction rather than

emotion. Others are meditative, combining elements of instruction and

personal experience. Another class expresses personal experience and

the resultant emotion; such hymns may be tender or joyous or even

exultant. Taking another step upward, we find hymns of inspiration and

exhortation, fundamental expressions of faith and enthusiasm. Rising

high above all the foregoing are the hymns of worship and adoration,

thanksgiving and praise.

This is the primary process in evaluating the practical possibilities

of hymns. It is in these pigeonholes of his memory that the minister

finds the hymn called for by a given situation.

_Classifying Hymns by Their Fitness for Definite Purposes._

Then there is the classification of fitness for different purposes,

organizing them according to the particular work each is fitted to do.

Some hymns are distinctly liturgical, fitting only into a solemn and

stately service by the great congregation—e.g., Faber’s “My God, how

wonderful Thou art,” Watts’ “Before Jehovah’s awful throne,” or

Tersteegen’s “Lo, God is here: let us adore.”

In a less formal class are Van Dyke’s “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,”

Grant’s “Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above,” “Praise the Lord!

ye heavens, adore Him,” and many others in which rejoicing in the Lord

takes a less majestic but none the less genuine form, fitting smaller

assemblies and what without derogation may be called ordinary church

services.

Hymns of still another class, represented by Robinson’s “Come, Thou

Fount of every blessing,” Wesley’s “O Love divine, how sweet Thou

art,” Keble’s “Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear,” are still

distinctly worshipful, but have an intimacy of communion in which

tenderness and joy veil the sense of infinite majesty.

The foregoing classes of worshipful hymns are available for the

regular services of the church, although some of them call for a

preparation of the worshipers for their intelligent and sincere

singing. They are helpful to devout people in their approach to the

Triune God.

Jesus Christ is not only God in the fullest, truest sense; he is our

Redeemer, our Mediator, our Sharer of the deeper experiences of the

soul, our Comrade in the march of life, our intimate Friend in time

and eternity. Hence, there are many hymns of praise and adoration of

Jesus Christ that are elevated in mood, even majestic, like Wesley’s

“Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing,” Robinson’s “Mighty God, while

angels bless thee,” Hammond’s “Awake and sing the song,” which will

fit into the most exalted service of worship. There are many others

like “Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature,” Medley’s “Oh, could I

speak the matchless worth,” Havergal’s “O Saviour, precious Saviour,”

which are keyed a little lower, but are still most appropriate for an

average church service.

In addition to these there are hymns of communion with Christ, of love

for and delight in him, yea, even of intimate affection, like

Caswall’s “My God, I love Thee, not because,” Newton’s “How sweet the

name of Jesus sounds,” Palmer’s “My faith looks up to Thee,” which are

so fine in feeling, so heartfelt, so intimate, that they require

preparation of the congregation before they can be sung sincerely.

Some of them are so intense, like “I need Thee every hour,” “My Jesus,

I love Thee, I know Thou art mine,” and Palmer’s “Jesus, these eyes

have never seen,” that their use seems limited to assemblies, small or

large, entirely made up of earnest believers. Indeed, there are many

of our intensest hymns of devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ that can

be worthily sung only in prayer meetings where there is profound

emotion to be expressed. Some of them cannot be sung by the general

congregation except when the tide of religious fervor runs high.

Without further analysis, enough has been said to show that in the

practical classification of hymns two major factors must be

considered: the character, depth, and quality of the emotional burden

of the hymn, and the character and the emotional responsiveness of the

people who are expected to sing it. Ignorance of the former and lack

of proper diagnosis of the latter will bring defeat to the minister

who is depending on his hymns for help in securing spiritual results.

IV. THE MINUTE STUDY OF HYMNS

There can be no adequate knowledge of a hymn without a survey of the

whole field of hymnology. It is necessary to understand the character

and limitations of the hymn, to visualize its history and development,

in order to secure its proper interpretation and use. It is

unfortunate that too many ministers are satisfied with this general

knowledge which is, after all, only a preparation for the study of the

individual hymn. It is only in the individual hymn that the point of

contact with practical results is reached. One may know all about

Isaac Watts and yet know so little of his great hymn “When I survey

the wondrous cross” as to announce it at a church banquet before all

the people are done eating! Imagine John, Peter, and the rest munching

dried figs or dates as they stand before the cross on which their

Master is dying!

Only as the individual hymns are fully understood as to their meaning,

and as to the methods required to get that meaning transformed into

experience and character, can hymnology become a practical force.

_Analysis of the Hymn._

1. The first step is the investigation of its structure. The form of

the stanza, the kind of measure used, the proper occurrence of

accents, the schedule of rhymes all are important, controlling the

music and the reading of the hymn.

The logical structure is even more important as governing the

development of thought. Recognition of the relation of the several

verses to the general plan of the hymn will reveal their individual

value and prevent mutilation when circumstances demand omission of

verses. This structure is more evident in didactic and homiletical

hymns, of course, but the progress of thought usually lies near the

surface. The doctrinal teachings should be clearly and explicitly

thought out.

2. There is a logic of emotion more or less paralleling that of

thought. There are ebb and flow of feeling, radical change of feeling,

one feeling merging into another, that must be recognized. The

climaxes of interest in the succeeding verses, rising higher and

higher and culminating in the supreme climax of the last verse, should

be noted that they may be expressed in the reading and the singing.

This recognition of the emotional character of the hymn is absolutely

essential to its real effectiveness. The hymn is fundamentally an

expression of emotion, and only as such has it practical value.

3. After this general analysis of the structure and thought and of the

general emotion of the hymn, there will need to be a study of its

detailed phrases. The minister ought to study it line by line and

phrase by phrase. The Scriptural allusions need to be located and

their connections noted. What did Charles Wesley mean in his great

hymn, “Love divine, all loves excelling,” by the phrase in the second

verse, “the second rest”? Why did he pray “Finish, then, thy new

creation”?[3] What is the Scriptural justification for the phrases of

Newton’s “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds”?[4] In Doddridge’s

“Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,” what Biblical authority has he

for “cloud of witnesses,” or the ideas of “prize” and “race”?[5] What

did Watts mean in the third verse of his “Not all the blood of

beasts,”

“My faith would lay her hand

On that dear head of Thine,

While like a penitent I stand

And there confess my sin”?

Without the picture of the high priest laying his hands on the head of

the scapegoat and confessing the sins of the people before sending it

out into the wilderness (Lev. 16:21), what meaning can these lines

convey?

_The Background of the Hymn._

1. The interpretation of the hymn cannot be complete without a

recognition of the person who wrote it. His type of mind, his

responsiveness to divine truth, his conception of the work of the

Church, stamp themselves on the product of his pen. The personality of

Watts, of Wesley, of Whittier, and of Faber interpret their several

hymns.

Knowledge of the circumstances under which a given hymn was written

will add to the value and correctness of the interpretation, by giving

a sense of actuality to the thought and feeling expressed.

2. The age in which a hymn was written will be a large factor in its

interpretation. The sheer objectiveness of the ancient hymns, the

meditativeness of the medieval hymns stressing the sufferings of

Christ on the cross, the worship character of the pre-Wesley hymns,

including those of Watts, the warm, tender, experiential hymns of the

Wesleyan Revival, all stamp their several hymns ineffaceably with

their characteristics. “A mighty fortress is our God” bears the

_stigmata_ of the opening battles of the German Reformation. “Jesus,

the very thought of Thee” is permeated by the peace and ardent piety

of the Spanish nunnery whose devout abbess wrote the Latin original.

“Stand up, stand up for Jesus” sounds the militant note of the great

Philadelphia revival of 1857 and the Antislavery campaign that was so

soon to drench the South with the noblest blood of both sections.

Watts’ hymns must be analyzed in the light of the prevailing psalmody,

of the religious aridity of his time, and of the formalism, not of the

Established Church only, but of that of the Nonconformist societies as

well. Wesley’s hymns cannot be understood except as expressing the

struggle between extreme worldly-mindedness, sensuality, and social

decay outside of the Church, allied with the mere formalism and the

cold and sheerly pharisaic morality within, on the one side, and the

emphasis of conversion, profound religious experience, and aggressive

evangelistic propaganda on the other. The objectivity and essentially

liturgic spirit of Watts’ hymns and the subjective warmth and the

poetic glow of those of Charles Wesley immediately become full of

meaning and historic vitality.

3. The greater hymns gather about themselves the noble associations of

the many generations which have lived and died with their lines upon

their lips. Would “Rock of Ages, cleft for me” or “Jesus, Lover of my

soul,” if written now, speedily win the place they now hold in our

Christian hymnody? Would “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing” be

widely sung, if it were not that in England and America it had been an

impressive voice of worship in chapel and home, in stately church, and

in mountain schoolhouse on the American frontier? Lips now trembling

with age lisped them in childhood; memories of father and mother, of

thrilling religious experiences, when the very heavens seemed to open

to the soul, cluster about them.

4. Only in this way can he secure a clear idea of what parts of a hymn

will serve his immediate purpose, which lines and phrases will enrich

his discourses or bring his points to an incandescent glow, or which

verses when sung will assure the definite effect he has in mind. There

may well be occasions when he will want his people to sing, not the

first verse of Whittier’s tender hymn, “We may not climb the heavenly

steeps,” but the second,

“But warm, sweet, tender, even yet

A present help is He;

And faith has still its Olivet,

And love its Galilee,”

or the even more comforting third verse,

“The healing of the seamless dress

Is by our beds of pain;

We touch him in life’s throng and press,

And we are whole again.”

Such a study in interpretation will greatly enhance the spiritual

values of the hymns to the minister himself, enriching mind and heart.

It will make it possible for him to interpret them to his people. To

any person the hymn is what he understands it to mean, no more; its

effect on him is in due proportion to the completeness of his

interpretation of it. The minister, therefore, is in duty bound to

supply each singer in his congregation with an accurate and complete

understanding of the hymns that are sung.

_Making a Hymnal of His Own._

The minister who has given his hymnal the study that has been

suggested will wish to garner and organize the materials he has thus

won. He will proceed to make a little hymnal of his own by selecting a

given number of the hymns that appeal to him—say one hundred—in his

regular hymnal. This will constitute his inner hymnal to which from

time to time he will make additions.

These hymns will be marked in his own copy of the church hymnal, a

wide margined one, or an interleaved one, if it can be secured. As he

analyzes each one, finding the joints in its structure, he will

indicate the results by lines of division with the proper captions.

His dissection of the phrases will disclose more or less obscure

allusions needing explanation, like “Siloam’s pool,” “Mt. Nebo’s

lonely height,” “Gog and Magog,” “Ebenezer” and many others that

convey no meaning to the average mind. These should be underlined for

explanation. Some phrases are so suggestive, so packed with meaning,

that their value eludes the ordinary singer—for instance, the second

verse of Monsell’s “My sins, my sins, my Saviour.” These should be put

in quotation marks to remind the preacher to unpack by spirited

comment their wealth for the edification of his people.

Numbers referring to his card index or commonplace book will bring to

mind helpful facts about the hymn, or its writer, or illustrations

that will quicken both mind and heart. Enclosing a verse or verses in

brackets will mark those that can be omitted without wrecking the

symmetrical progress of the thought. That will eliminate the usual

thoughtless phrase, “We will omit the third verse.” If there is a

choice of tunes, the most practicable one can be indicated; or a tune

better known to the congregation elsewhere in the hymnal may be

suggested with its number.

Verses to be read by the congregation, or to be sung by the choir or

by a soloist, before being sung by the people may be starred. Changes

of force, or speed, may be marked _p._ for soft singing, or _f._ for

loud singing. A passage marked _rit._ will be retarded, or hurried if

marked _accel._ A repeat sign, _bis_, after a verse will suggest that

a verse may be profitably repeated. Scripture references will suggest

passages that can be used to emphasize the sentiment of the hymn, such

as Genesis 28:10-13, for the hymn, “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” _M_

before a verse may mark it as a memory verse to be sung with closed

hymnal. _P_ may indicate that it is a prayer, to be sung before the

long prayer. Dates connected with a hymn will show when it has been

sung, and so prevent its unduly frequent repetition from mere force of

habit. Every alert-minded minister will have methods and devices of

his own that should be recorded in connection with the hymns so

treated.

Such a hymnal, individual, practical, wealthy in resources, will be of

incalculable value to the wide-awake, aggressive minister, rendering

him independent of moods, of dull spirits, of disturbing environments.

He needs but open his hymnal, a treasure house of practical

suggestions, and his resources, immediately accessible and fully

prepared, await his use.

A personal hymnal like this will not be made in a day or a month. Week

by week, as hymns are selected, they are fully investigated and

studied and their points recorded in the preacher’s copy. His skimming

of newspapers and magazines, his daily experiences, his hearing of

addresses and sermons; his reading of history and literature, no less

than his study of hymnological literature, will pay heavy tribute to

such a royal treasury.

The books of hymnic material, pretty largely historical, are fairly

numerous, and their help should not be despised, for they offer very

useful illustrative matter. Robinson’s _Annotations upon Popular

Hymns_ is not as up-to-date nor as scholarly exact as the later

Duffield’s _English Hymns_, or as Nutter and Tillett’s _Hymns and Hymn

Writers of the Church_, but is richer anecdotally and more suggestive

of expository comment. Dr. Benson’s still later _Studies of Familiar

Hymns_, Series I and II, will be found very rich in practical

material. The present writer’s _Practical Hymn Studies_[6] offers help

most ministers need. The matter found in these and other like

collections should be carefully sifted and recorded. A condensation of

the selected items, particularly of the longer anecdotes, may be ample

for all practical purposes.

Is it necessary to suggest again that all this varied material should

be well organized in a loose-leaf blank book small enough to be

carried about or, better yet, in a rebound, interleaved hymnal?

In making such a thorough study of as many hymns as he has leisure to

analyze, the minister is really editing a hymnal of his own, none the

less his own that it is embedded in the larger collection. There are

very few preachers who do not have such an inner hymnal made up of the

hymns they are in the habit of using; the pity is that it is

frequently so small, so poorly selected, so unsymmetrical, so

dependent on an unresponsive memory, and so lacking in the materials

that would help to make the hymns effective.

_Memorizing Hymns._

A large number of hymns should be committed to memory for his own

mental enrichment and comfort. It will enlarge his devotional

vocabulary, his power of expression of spiritual things—nay more,

increase the spontaneity and spirituality of his thinking and feeling,

for memory lies nearer the springs of subconscious intuition and

impulses than the printed word. A wealth of spiritual thought, of

sanctified imagination, of vibrant religious feeling, of apt and

expressive phrase and vocabulary, is provided by such a well-stocked

memory.

The subconscious mind will furnish the fitting quotation, whether he

writes his sermon or speaks _ex tempore_. In unexpected emergencies,

when there is no time to leaf over the hymnal for a verse to be sung,

the mind automatically supplies it. In personal work, in cheering the

sick, in comforting those who mourn, in inspiring the lagging and

discouraged ones, the apt quotation will be exceedingly effective.

There are moments in a service, unexpected episodes of an emotional

character, climaxes of feeling in a discourse, when a verse of a hymn

sung by the congregation will exceed in impressiveness any oratorical

outburst; if the minister can trust his memory, he can carry the

faltering memories of his people and realize an effect otherwise

impossible, not only not losing any momentum, as he would if it were

necessary to refer to the hymnal, but indefinitely increasing it. The

great hymns of the Church should be made a part of his mental

furniture, become a large share of his clerical working capital. He

should not be satisfied to have less than a hundred hymns at his

mental fingers’ ends for efficient use at a moment’s notice.

V. A STUDY OF METHODS OF USE

But it is not enough to gather the materials and study the individual

hymns. A magazine of blasting powder has immense possibilities of

power; but unless methods are invented for applying that power to

desired ends, it is a liability and not an asset. Having learned all

about hymns, the next study is how efficiently to use them, to

organize the best methods of exploiting the social, mental, and

spiritual values their singing offers.

_Using Hymns in Sermons._

Few ministers utilize the possibilities of apt Scripture quotations in

their sermons; fewer still know how to draw on the treasures found in

their hymnals to increase interest and intensify emotion. In many

cases the very finest climax to a section of a sermon, or to the

sermon itself, will be found in one or more verses of a hymn which

brings the emotion of the theme to its high culmination. There is no

lack of material; for the expression of every Christian doctrine that

lends itself to lyric feeling there are intense and poignant phrases

and lines steeped in transcendent emotion. Abstract truth has

intellectual value of course, but has spiritual value only when

transmuted into the gold of intense conviction in the heart of true

believers. It is the genuine hymn that raises the temperature to the

transmuting point, if properly introduced and emotionally used.

_Studying Responsiveness of the Congregation._

The intelligent preacher will study his congregation and its

capacities of song to determine what he can do. He will canvass their

responsiveness to certain classes of hymns, solemn, cheerful,

aggressive, meditative, emotional, didactic—literary, popular. Their

taste in the tunes to be used will need to be carefully considered. It

would be folly to announce “When the Roll is Called up Yonder” in a

congregation used to singing and enjoying Luther’s “Ein’ feste Burg

ist unser Gott”; equally so to ask a congregation that enjoys singing

“There’s sunshine in my soul” to sing Iron’s version of the “Dies

Irae.”

A survey must needs be made of the musical resources and of the

adaptability of musical helpers. In some cases such adaptability needs

to be trained and developed. Their pliancy in rapidly taking up new

methods, and executing unexpected plans of the preacher quickly, will

require training.

_Studying Methods of Announcement and Securing Participation._

An important study will be how to announce and introduce the hymns in

such a way as to awaken the interest and to win the sympathetic

attention of the members of the congregation, and also how to help the

people to sing with their minds and hearts, as well as with their

vocal cords.

The methods to be used in securing full participation in the singing,

without losing sight of the deeper meaning of the hymn, will need to

be formulated or borrowed from successful leaders of song. The problem

is not met by merely urgent demands that everybody sing; they must all

be moved upon to want to sing. Can it be done by illustrations, by

moving anecdotes, by tender appeals bearing on the thought and feeling

of the hymn in hand? The kind of anecdotes and how they are to be

used, before or during any given hymn, will call for careful

discrimination. How shall the preacher acquire the power of

introducing a hymn in a very few well-chosen words, vibrant with the

feeling the hymn expresses, striking the spiritual key connecting up

the hymn with the religious purpose of the whole service? Year after

year, by observation of other ministers and song leaders, by his

reading, by experiments of his own, he will acquire a body of

efficient methods with which to vitalize his song service.

_Studying Use of Hymnal for Specific Purposes._

This will include methods of using hymns for specific purposes. Is his

congregation indifferent with regard to some particular line of work

that he wishes to present—missions, for instance: what hymns, and

methods of using them, will stimulate their minds and prepossess them

for this as yet unappealing topic? Are they careless or irreverent in

mood as they gather: can he sober their minds and awe their souls with

a consciousness of God’s actual presence with a solemn hymn and its

impressive tune? How shall he use the singing of the hymns to affect

and win the unsaved whom he plans to invite to accept Jesus Christ as

Saviour and Master? In a thousand ways the intelligent and adroit

minister can make his hymns count largely in accomplishing his

beneficent purposes.

VI. A STUDY OF THE TUNES

One of the most important lines of study will be that of the tunes to

which the hymns are to be sung.[7] To use a botanical figure, a hymn

will not bear fruit unless it is pollenized by a vital tune. Who would

be even aware of Cardinal Newman’s “Lead, Kindly Light,” if it were

not for Dykes’ tune? Without Lowry and Doane’s music what recognition

would the modest lyrics of Fanny Crosby have won? Wesley’s “Hark, the

herald angels sing” owes the wideness of its Christmas use to

Mendelssohn’s tune. Tennyson’s “Sunset and Evening Star” and “Sweet

and Low” were brought to wide public attention by Barnby’s two

settings. Without the wings of melody few hymns would get very far in

place or time. A mediocre hymn with a good singable tune will do

vastly more good than a great hymn with an impracticable one.

Hence it is the minister’s business to study the tunes. Not the notes,

not the harmony: he can leave them to his musical experts, if he has

them. He must study the singability of the tune, its appeal to his

particular people, its adaptation to the sentiment of the hymn with

which it is associated. Its age, its traditional or conventional use,

its style, its composer, its elaboration of harmony—all these are

merely incidental. That it is singable, fitted to express and

intensify the sentiment of the hymn, to give it access to the hearts

of the congregation, to create the contagion of feeling in the

assembly—these are the essentials of a good tune.

Just as the sales departments of our great manufacturing

establishments make an intensive study of the psychology of

salesmanship in all its phases, so the ministry of the church, in its

schools of preparation and in its several organizations, should

increase its efficiency as salesman of vital religion by a like study

of the psychology of the hymn and of its use.

_Chapter XX_

THE PRACTICAL USE OF HYMNS

I. THE HYMN AS A MEANS TO AN END

While our discussion attempts to consider every phase of the Christian

hymn, its chief interest to us lies in it as a means to an end. It may

be a work of literary art, the expression of a noble genius admirable

in itself; it may be an interesting epitome of some noble doctrine

that calls for appreciation of its lucidity and comprehensiveness; but

for us its primary quality must be its adaptation to meet spiritual

needs, in other words, its usefulness in religious work. In some way

it must help in the work of the church, if it is to come within the

sweep of our present horizon.

II. ANALYSIS OF PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF HYMNS

There are two values in the singing of hymns that must needs be taken

into consideration: one is the sheerly musical or nervous value; the

other is the message or burden of the hymn. The two must co-operate

for the best results.

There are two lines of application in using hymns: the one is the

expression and further intensification of an existent religious

feeling; the other, the creation of religious interest or emotion

where none exists. The two types of hymns must be clearly

distinguished, if proper and efficient use is to be made of them.

The first type is worshipful, religiously emotional, based on personal

experience, tenderly meditative. The second is didactic,

inspirational, or hortatory.

III. THE USE OF HYMNS FOR CREATING RELIGIOUS INTEREST

In selecting hymns for the opening of a religious meeting, the

existing nervous and emotional condition of the congregation is an

important factor. That condition may be due to an unlimited number of

influences. Are they gathering under the open sky, in a tent, in a

rough tabernacle, or amid churchly surroundings? What is the character

and background of the assembled people? In a distinctly unreligious

environment, the crowd will be disorganized, in a nervous flutter, in

a secular state of mind, more consciously interested in securing a

desirable seat than in the purpose of the meeting. The people need to

be psychically organized as a unit, need to have their attention

concentrated on the occasion of the meeting, need to be brought into a

religious state of mind. There is nothing better than the singing of a

hymn to secure these very essential results. The unifying effect of

common action, the nervous calming of the music, the religious

suggestiveness of the hymn itself, all will co-operate in creating the

proper attitude of mind.

What hymn shall we use to secure such a diversified result? Shall it

be “My faith looks up to Thee,” or “O Love that wilt not let me go”?

They are both superexcellent hymns, but they would be utterly out of

place. They belong to the first type, the expression of existent

religious feeling; but there is little or no such feeling under the

proposed circumstances. The people are not in a state of mind to sing

them sincerely and earnestly. It would lead to the all too common

hypocrisy of indifference.

Moreover, the tunes to these hymns are not of the organizing or

stimulating type, fine as they are. They are tunes of expression of

existing feeling, not of exhilaration or inspiration.

For such a miscellaneous crowd as has been described, a much less

emotional hymn with a somewhat livelier tune is called for, such as

“Blow ye the trumpet, blow,” “Come, we that love the Lord,” or

“Onward, Christian soldiers.” In most cases a lively Gospel song, such

as “Sunshine in my soul,” “Rescue the perishing,” or even, in extreme

cases, “Brighten the corner where you are” is more effective. The

problem is not so much that of making a religious impression, as of

preparing the people to receive a religious impression. To use tender,

deeply emotional, profoundly spiritual hymns for such preliminary

treatment is to flout psychology.

If the congregation meets in a church or other distinctly sacred

edifice, the religious associations will simplify the problem. In

part, at least, the secular attitude will have given place to a

hospitality of mind for religious ideas and impressions. Under

favorable circumstances the nervous strain will relax and religious

susceptibilities will begin to function. These nervous and mental

transformations of mood will be deepened by the organ prelude, if that

has been wisely selected and effectively played.

In some conservative, devout congregations where solemn earnestness is

the prevailing mood, and the bowed head on entering the pew is not a

mere convention, the usual Doxology may be used after the call to

worship; but usually an introit, such as “The Lord is in His holy

temple” or “Oh, come, let us worship,” sung by the choir, will be the

wiser preparation for the preacher’s invocation. The “Gloria Patri”

should prepare the congregation for some solemn hymn of profound

worship, such as “My God, how wonderful Thou art,” or “Lord of all

being, throned afar.” By the time this is sung, the members of the

congregation should be united in sympathy and responsiveness to the

worshipful exercises that follow.

If the service is to be a joyous one, with an aggressive purpose, the

hymns should still be strictly worshipful, but more animated. “Come,

sound His praise abroad,” “Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above,”

or “Kingdoms and thrones to God belong” should be the unifying

spiritualizing agency.

But if the social instincts are allowed to find expression as the

people gather, and more or less furtive conversation and even gossip

are heard, or worse yet, if the Sunday school has overflowed into the

auditorium or, for lack of separate room, has occupied it, and the

going out of the school and the coming in of the congregation make a

confusion that submerges the hallowed associations of the place, a

much more difficult problem is faced, and a more conscious effort must

be made to prepare the people in mind and heart for the experience of

the hour.

The prelude must be calculated to cover disturbing sounds and to call

the people to order—an entirely different type of prelude from that

used in the previous hypothetical situation. Once quiet and order are

secured, the music may begin a quieter, more religious movement. But

the high ecstasy of the Long Meter Doxology is out of the question. An

earnest Call to Worship by the preacher, and a quiet sentence or

introit by the choir, will hush the people’s minds into sympathy with

the invocation, that may possibly be somewhat longer and more earnest,

which in turn will prepare them for a sincere and thoughtful

participation in the “Gloria Patri.” The wise and observant preacher

will have been able to anticipate their state of mind and decide

whether they are ready to Sing with sincerity “O day of rest and

gladness,” “Safely through another week,” or the more elevated “Holy,

holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” or “Before Jehovah’s awful throne.”

By the time this hymn is sung, the fate of the service has practically

been settled. The people will have been won and are ready to go on to

a deeper interest and to a fuller yielding of themselves to the

influence of the service; or they are dull and unresponsive, even

somnolent, with an unconscious resentment that they have not been

stirred and quickened. The failure of the service is assured, unless a

miracle happens.

If the minister is a slave to the conventional order of service, that

miracle will not happen. He may be so complacent over the smooth

unfolding of the wonted numbers as not to recognize that the interest

in the minds of his people has dropped.

In such a situation the best means to redeem it is a hymn with a

profound appeal. But it cannot function, if it is used in the

ordinary, conventional way. If the minister is alert and senses the

stupor that is shadowing the minds of his people, and if the success

of his service is more important to him than the mechanical regularity

of the usual order of events, he can bring the miracle to pass by the

use of the next hymn in an unexpected, thrilling way.

If the scheduled hymn does not lend itself to his purpose, he can

exercise the audacity without which no public man can hope to succeed,

by changing it to one that will, and by that act will storm the first

defense of Morpheus, the god of sleep. Of course, he will always keep

in mind practical considerations of teamwork with his musical helpers,

taking enough time in introducing the substituted hymn in an

interesting way to enable them to find it and decide to what tune it

is to be sung. Usually that takes but a moment. Announcing the hymn,

he will explain the message of the hymn in doctrine or in feeling, as

a preliminary to its intelligent and sympathetic singing; or he may

make emotional comment, or relate a fitting anecdote that will grip

the feelings, leaving historical data for some other occasion; or he

may ask the congregation to join him in silent prayer for divine

guidance into the heart of the hymn to be sung; or he may ask his

people to read the first verse in concert, in order that they may sing

it with more intelligence; or if he has a sympathetic soloist, he can

ask him or her to sing a verse, letting the people sing the rest of

the hymn.

If the people are submerged in indifference and stupor, he may treat

the whole hymn in like fashion, verse by verse, always careful to make

his few words count, for prolixity will defeat his purpose. He will be

even more careful that there shall be a _crescendo_ movement of

increasing impressiveness and deepening feeling.

Such a jolt to the passive attitude of an unresponsive people,

genially administered in a confident manner, and with sincere feeling,

will waken the most indifferent congregation and avert the impending

defeat. It will make the frequent use of such unusual methods

unnecessary by creating a latent expectation of the unexpected.

Fortunate is the minister who has a native sensitiveness to the tides

of feeling that ebb and flow in his congregation, to whom the faces

and attitudes of his people are an open book. Most ministers must

develop such a power by keen and persistent observation and by

intelligent experimentation. This psychical _en rapport_ is very

important to the minister. As well might an organist play without

hearing his instrument as for a minister to be ignorant of the states

of feeling of his congregation. He is a blind man trying to paint a

picture.

Some ministers think themselves lacking in magnetism, in sensitiveness

to outside influences, and make no effort to develop their latent

powers. This inferiority complex is wrong; the very sense of

limitation is a proof that the capacity for it exists. It is too

essential to the largest success that a man should not use every

possible effort and method to develop it.

IV. THE HYMN AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR TEACHING TRUTH

Another practical use of the hymn that will prove very valuable is to

make those hymns that are didactic or meditative the occasion of

discussing for a few minutes the doctrines they express, and so to

teach, to bring back to memory, or to vitalize the articles of their

faith which average Christians are apt to forget. There are Christian

beliefs that do not call for elaborate discussion in a sermon, that

are best impressed by emotional treatment in connection with a hymn.

“Depth of mercy! can there be,” with a background of pure-minded

Charles Wesley’s consciousness of sin, will give an opportunity of

impressing the people with sin’s subtle and soul-destroying power.

“There is a fountain filled with blood” will be the basis of a very

short but a clear and tender exposition of the atonement made for sin

by Christ on the cross. That a person may be conscious of salvation,

of acceptance by God through Jesus Christ, will find fitting

explanation in an exposition of “Rock of Ages, cleft for me.” What

better opportunity for emphasizing the Christian’s dependence on

Christ could be afforded than a study of “Jesus, Lover of my soul”?

Our inability to understand the ways of God’s providences, and our

need of a faith that does not demand explanations, may well be

stressed in an analysis of “God moves in a mysterious way.” A score of

such hymn discussions at irregular intervals during the year would

prove illuminating, and help to remove the haze that prevents clear

definition in the minds of the people of the doctrines on which their

spiritual life must rest. Singing the hymn after such comments will

make it more effective and fasten the Christian teachings in the minds

of the hearers with links of steel.

V. HYMN SERMONS AND HYMN SERVICES

The versatile and adaptable preacher, full of resources, quick to take

advantage of unusual methods, will find the Song Sermon, or rather the

Hymn Sermon, a most attractive and impressive way of using hymns.

Instead of finding an appropriate proof text from the Scriptures for

each leading point of the discourse, search out a hymn, or a single

verse, expressing it in a lucid and emotional way and have it sung by

the congregation, by the choir, or by a soloist. Comment on the hymn

and its illustration, consonant with the development of the general

theme, will supply a new line of most interesting materials. Care must

be taken not to let the hymn hem the momentum of the sermon, but to

make it add to the tide of interest. There will be no time for playing

the tune or to find the hymn, while the preacher is silently waiting.

Close connection and sharp attack are absolutely essential. Such a

sermon will be sure to win a great hearing.[1]

A less formal use of hymns may be made in the Song (or Hymn) Service

in which eight or ten hymns with historical, illustrative, and

devotional comment are sung by soloists, choir, and congregation. Less

valuable in formal teaching than the Hymn Sermon, it will probably win

larger popular acceptance. Such a religious service should not be

allowed to degenerate into merely a Sacred Concert.

VI. THE USE OF HYMNS IN EMERGENCIES

There are occasional disturbing and disorganizing occurrences during

services—a violent storm, a noisy epileptic, a fanatical intruder, a

fire where a panic would be disastrous—when it is important to keep

the disturbance down to a minimum, or even to control the

congregation. The singing of an efficient hymn is often the solution

of the problem when there is a leader of presence of mind (preferably

the minister) who will promptly start it. It must be a hymn that

everybody knows; it must not be a tender, experiential hymn, but one

with a stirring spirit to a stimulating tune that everybody can sing,

such as “Onward, Christian soldiers.”[2]

Such occasions sometimes suggest fitting hymns that turn what might

have been disaster into a spiritual victory. In such a case there must

be a peculiar fitness to the difficulty, an adaptation to the form it

takes. In case of a death, or paralytic stroke, the hymn will not be

loud, but tender like “Rock of Ages,” “He Leadeth Me,” or “The Sweet

By and By.” Softly sung, the episode will be turned from a shock into

a deep spiritual impression.

_Chapter XXI_

THE SELECTION OF HYMNS

I. SELECTION SHOULD SECURE UNITY OF SERVICE

Next in importance to the minister’s selection of his text comes the

selection of his hymns. If he has a clear conception of the real unity

of his service, it will appear in this more than in anything else.

_Narrow Conception of Unity._

If the minister is a narrow, mechanically-minded man, with a sense of

the need of mere logical unity, he will make the subject of his sermon

the governing consideration in all parts of his service. The hymns

will needs be all or nearly all didactic, the type with the least

emotional or inspiring value.

The early hymns of the service will in an ineffective way anticipate

the points of his discourse and, in so far as they have effectiveness,

weaken by their more lucid and concise statement the discussion in the

sermon. As the congregation usually does not know what the topic of

the discourse is to be, the pertinency of the selection is not

evident. The same is true of the Scripture lesson, if it is read

before the long prayer. Logically the whole basis of selection is

absurd.

_Broader Conception of Unity._

The sermon is simply a co-ordinate part of divine service, not its

governing feature to which all things else must be subordinated. The

early hymns should not be selected with reference to the theme of the

sermon; the last hymn should sum up not so much the ideas of the

sermon as its emotional values.

_Unity Based on Purpose._

Among heathen people instruction must be the leading purpose of any

meeting held for their benefit; but among well-taught Christian

people, the chief purpose should be worship, to which the sermon

should be simply one of several aids. The hymns should be emotional,

worshipful, and not exclusively didactic, and should harmonize with

the sermon by being subordinated, with the sermon, to the

clearly-conceived worshipful purpose of the entire service. Dr. Austin

Phelps, more than three-fourths of a century ago, enunciated the right

policy: “It aims at unity of worship, not by sameness of theme, but by

resemblance of spirit. It would have a sermon preceded and followed,

not necessarily by a hymn on the identical subject, but by a hymn on a

kindred subject, pertaining to the same group of thought, lying in the

same perspective, and enkindling the same class of emotions.” To

announce the theme of the coming sermon in the first hymn, to read a

Scriptural passage as a basis for it, to grope around that theme in

the prayer, to emphasize another phase in the second hymn, is a case

of professional egotism so flagrant that its only shocking mitigation

is that it is the accepted clerical estimate of the situation.

Now every service, of whatever form or character, is properly intended

to bring the soul into conscious relation with God. Every phase of the

soul’s activities is to be brought under the influence of this

dominating purpose. As it cannot comprehend God in His completeness at

any one moment, different attributes of His nature and the varied

relation of these several attributes to manifold human needs furnish

an endless abundance of worshipful themes. They will appeal to the

understanding through the truth, to the heart through an emotional

realization of that truth, and to the will by the choices offered to

the soul’s supreme tribunal. Here, then, in this clearly-conceived

phase of worshipful attitude, you find the basis for the logical unity

of the service—a living unity that moves heart and will as well as

reason.

There is in this no fetter to the intellectual activity of the

preacher, but rather a fresh stimulus and source of suggestion. It

brings to bear vital forces within the speaker’s own soul that too

often find little exercise, and changes the emotional elements of the

service, the prayer, and the music—now too often mere haphazard,

characterless excrescences—into definite sources of power for the

realization of the desired spiritual results.

A preacher whose heart is a barometer of the spiritual condition of

his people has no difficulty in finding subjects and texts for his

sermons. If the needs of his people press upon him, those needs

furnish an arc light that illuminates the Bible, and a suggestiveness

that brings him an embarrassment of homiletical riches. Given a clear

recognition of a definite immediate need and the consequent definite

purpose, it will not only make sermonizing easy but will control the

rest of the service. Not the theme of the sermon, but the purpose of

the service as a whole, will be the organizing vitality.

II. SUGGESTIVE SELECTIONS OF HYMNS

Here is an earnest pastor who is impressed with the growing

materialism, or worldliness, of his people. How shall be best dredge

the stagnant shallows of their souls? He decides, not upon a single

sermon, but upon a series of services with cumulative power, whose

whole outlook shall be upon the Person and Character of God as the

basis of his claims upon his creatures. There will be sermons upon

these high themes of course, but they will call for noble and elevated

co-ordinate co-operation in the rest of the service. Now these sermons

should all be peculiarly worshipful, but that worship will be set to

different keys.

_Hymns for Service on God’s Omnipotence._

The sermon on the Divine Omnipotence calls for a noble enthusiasm. The

hymns should be majestic and joyful. After profoundly worshipful

preliminary exercises it will not be wise to sing Watts’ hymn,

“Let all the earth their voices raise,

To sing the great Jehovah’s praise,

And bless His holy name,”

to the tune “Ariel” for the first hymn in spite of its appropriateness

of thought: first, because it is not sufficiently elevated, and

secondly, because the tune is too light. Watts’ more majestic hymn,

“Before Jehovah’s awful throne,

Ye nations bow with sacred joy,”

sung to “Old Hundredth,” would be more harmonious with the general

purpose of the service. By the time the second hymn is reached there

must be some exhilaration of spirit. It will not be desirable

therefore to select

“All people that on earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice”;

first, because it is in exactly the same key of feeling as the

previous hymn; second, because for that reason no tune is quite so

fitting to it as “Old Hundredth,” which is already provided for; and

third, because the presumable intensifying of feeling by this time

calls for a brighter text and more spirited music. But it must be a

hymn of worship, none the less; we choose, therefore,

“Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above;

Oh, gratefully sing His power and His love,”

the interrupted dactylic measure and triple time tune giving both

dignity and movement.

If the prelude was a joyfully majestic composition, the anthem one of

elevated praise—e.g., a “Venite” or a “Jubilate”—the responsive

reading and the choir responses reverent and worshipful, the long

prayer of the preacher exalted with genuine adoration (forgetful of

the routine catalogue of petty petitions), and the Scripture passage

noble with inspiring truth, the service might close at this point as

having already realized its prime object of worship. There must have

been something radically wrong in the spirit and management of it, if

the preacher does not find his people responsive and himself

inspiringly attuned to his noble theme. At the close of his discourse

on the Divine Omnipotence, his people will presumably be ready to sing

“Let all on earth their voices raise,

To sing the great Jehovah’s praise,

And bless His holy name.”

to the exhilarating movement of the tune “Ariel.” The organist’s

postlude will be characterized by a joyful solemnity, some strong

_maestoso_ movement.

_Hymns for Service on God’s Love._

A service devoted to the worship of God, as manifested in His love,

offers a wider range of possibilities. Is it the love manifested in

the atonement? there may be the somber element of the crucifixion

combined with its nobly elevated aspects; is it the love manifested to

His children? there will be a chastened ecstasy in the hymns and

prayers; is it the love that consoles and comforts? there will be the

tender and sympathetic development of the theme—each will call for its

own selection of hymns. As the last is perhaps the most difficult, let

us see what program we should prepare for it.

_a._ Tender Service.

The organ prelude will be soft, sweet music, full of chromatic chords

that melt one into the other, or a tender, emotional melody with soft

accompaniment. The usual opening doxology will give way to an introit,

sung very gently by the choir, set to a text expressing divine

sympathy or a prayer for help. The invocation will be a plea for God’s

manifest presence among His needy people. The first hymn sung by the

congregation will sustain the feeling already established,

“Lord, we come before Thee now,

At Thy feet we humbly bow,”

sung to the tune “Aletta” or “Pleyel’s Hymn.” The responsive reading

may be the forty-second and forty-third Psalms. The choir, having been

advised in good time what was desired, sings some sympathetic setting

of the twenty-third Psalm, or of the forty-second Psalm, or of the

hymn “Just as I am.” If the preacher has kept step in his heart with

the emotional progress of his service, the long prayer will be an

expression of the need of the people and of a tender appreciation of

God’s loving sympathy, closing with an ascription of praise to His

limitless love. The people ought now to be ready to sing

“Love divine, all loves excelling,

Joy of heaven, to earth come down.”

After the discourse, a hymn in direct didactic relation to it may be

sung in a bright and joyous spirit:

“God is love; His mercy brightens

All the path in which we rove.”

The postlude will be tenderly joyous and sympathetic in style.

There are many preachers whose nervous organizations would not enable

them to adjust themselves to so tender an emotional key in developing

the service. On the other hand, many congregations would not follow

it, but would be lulled to sleep by it.

_b._ Joyful Service.

They would be entirely right in selecting as the opening hymn one of

general praise and worship:

“Come, Thou Almighty King,

Help us Thy name to sing,

Help us to praise”;

or even the quietly majestic hymn,

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee.”

The second hymn may be more prayerful and tender:

“Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,

Pilgrim through this barren land,”

or

“When all Thy mercies, O my God,

My rising soul surveys.”

The final hymn may be more didactic:

“God is the refuge of His saints,

When storms of sharp distress invade”;

or the more stirring and forceful

“Give to the winds thy fears;

Hope, and be undismayed”;

or that wonderful paean of faith in the divine love and providence,

“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,

Is laid for your faith in His excellent word.”

In this case the postlude will be bright and joyous, preferably with

some soft and tender episodical passages.

_Hymns for a Missionary Service._

The preacher plans a missionary discourse: what is his order of

service to be?

That means an aggressive, spiritual program whose purpose is

stimulation of enthusiasm, of courage, of conquering faith, of bold

decision.

The organist will be asked to play a bright prelude with pronounced

but dignified rhythm, and striking harmonic progressions. The anthem

by the choir may be based on some text of praise from the Psalms with

stirring, somewhat rhythmical music that will stimulate the nerves of

the people rather than soothe them. The responsive reading should be a

Psalm of triumph, say the ninety-sixth. The long prayer for once may

drop out of the omnibus conventionality and lead the people in

magnifying the irresistible power and the conquering love of God, with

enough reference to current sorrows in the congregation to serve as a

contrast, to make the realization of the strong right arm of God more

vivid.

The hymns should be in keeping with this joyous recognition of God’s

invincibility and assured triumph.

The first hymn may be Charles Wesley’s “Oh, for a thousand tongues to

sing.” This is worship—mingled with faith and with aggressive purpose,

it is true, but nevertheless distinctly worship.

An equally appropriate selection from Charles Wesley would be “Ye

servants of God, your Master proclaim.” Care should be taken that the

tune used for either is vigorous and well known. A dull tune for

either would be a stumble on the threshold of the service.

The point in the service has not yet been reached where a distinctly

missionary hymn is called for; aggressiveness in the Lord’s service is

still the mood to be created. There would be a choice between

Shurtleff’s vigorous “Lead on, O King Eternal,” with its specific

dedication of self to any forward movement of the Christian Church, or

Baring-Gould’s marching hymn with its American tune written by an

English composer, “Onward, Christian soldiers,” which can hardly fail

to stimulate the pulses of a presumably already stirred congregation,

unless it is sung in a drawling, unaccented way.

If by this time the congregation is not prepared to be thrilled by an

unexpected missionary sermon, eloquent with an appeal hardly to be

equaled by any other topic connected with the Church’s activities,

there has been something wrong with the preacher or his people.

At the close of the sermon the hearts of the people will be glad to

express themselves either in Smith’s “The morning light is breaking,”

or in Watts’ noble Christianized version of the seventy-second Psalm,

“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun.” For once the organist can pull

out all his stops and play a brilliant but not flippant postlude

without disturbing the mind and nerves of thoughtful and devout

people.

In these suggested programs it has been evident that the unity is one

of feeling and not of logic. This gave room for the interest which the

unexpected supplies. There must be progress of feeling as well as of

thought. The long prayer or the music after it, be it organ or choir

or hymn, should be the climax of emotion. It should be allowed to

subside a little during the announcements and offering, in order to

rise to a still higher climax in the sermon and closing hymn.

In a tender, sympathetic service there is more danger of not taking

the audience with you. If the music and the feelings suggested by the

hymns are too quiet and depressing, there is danger of its acting as a

lullaby, putting the people to sleep. Many a preacher wonders why some

of his hearers are asleep before his text is fairly announced. In nine

cases out of ten, it is due to the depressing character of the music

used in the devotional part of the service.

III. IMPORTANCE OF THE TUNES

As has been incidentally suggested in the course of the illustrative

progress, no small importance is to be attached to the selection of

the tunes to be used with the hymns. The preacher cannot always afford

to trust the compiler of the hymnal which he uses. That learned

gentleman does not know what tune the preacher’s people can sing with

a given hymn to the best advantage. He has to meet the difficulty of

providing every hymn with an appropriate tune without having

well-known and effective tunes enough to go round; he cannot repeat

them over and over, but must use less popular tunes. Who shall judge

him harshly, therefore, if in this dilemma he occasionally follows his

own personal taste rather than the vaguely conceived needs of

miscellaneous congregations.

But the minister must study the tunes in his hymnal lest he limit his

song service to the small number he happens to know well. To use a

dozen or so tunes again and again will cut the nerve of musical

interest in his musical helpers and in his congregation as well.

Hence, it is the minister’s task to re-edit the hymnal in part,

remating hymns and tunes in order to secure the greatest results with

his own people. Nor need he suffer with a sense of presumption. The

important consideration is the results of the singing of hymns in an

effective way, not loyalty to his church hymnal at the expense of

those results.

_Chapter XXI_

THE ANNOUNCEMENT AND TREATMENT OF HYMNS

I. THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF HYMNS

It may seem quite superfluous to give any attention to the mere

announcement of hymns; but in many cases the spiritual success or

failure of the congregational song is determined there. It is

generally assumed that any one can announce a hymn and initiate its

singing, but probably the least successful work of ninety-nine out of

a hundred ministers is their management of the service of song in

their churches. The writer remembers one minister who would baldly

announce the number and then turn round and stare at the choir and

organist until they began to sing. The awkwardness and helplessness of

the man invariably produced a most unfortunate effect upon the

congregation. Many ministers announce the number and read the first

line. It makes no difference whether the first line is complete in

meaning or not; they have identified the hymn.

Like a great many others of their professional brethren, they used the

hymn perfunctorily as a traditionally necessary part of the service,

with which they really had little or nothing to do; that it has any

relation to the needs or the objects they have in view for the service

does not occur to them. The unpardonableness of an aimless sermon need

not be emphasized, but why should it be easier to forgive a preacher

for aimlessly selecting and announcing hymns?

Many churches have hymn boards and even bulletins, making the

mechanical interruption caused by the preacher’s announcement of the

numbers unnecessary. The people presumably have found the hymn by the

time the tune is played through.[1]

Of course, if these devices for announcing the hymn are absent, the

preacher must announce the number. If he does so in a listless,

mechanical way, he will unconsciously give the congregation an

unfortunate emotional keynote, and, in turn, it will sing in a

listless, mechanical way. The psychical and emotional value of the

singing of the hymn is already discounted. If it has been announced in

a joyous, or, at least, in an interested spirit, with only a happy

phrase or two, giving a cue to the spirit in which it is to be sung,

the congregation will respond in kind. Twenty seconds of effective

introduction will make the difference between success and failure.

It should be emphasized that a live preacher will not allow the

regular order of service to prevent needed comment on the hymn as it

is needed. The order of service has advantages, but if it robs the

preacher of freedom and spontaneity, it becomes a curse. Too rigidly

followed it makes for dullness and boredom. The congregation should

not be allowed to feel that any departure from it is a doubtful

liberty on the part of the preacher. Opportunity should be made to

dispel any such idea.

If a hymn is curtly announced, or courteously suggested with a

“please” or a “kindly” (as if to sing it were a special favor to the

preacher), and if no hint is given as to the message to be conveyed,

or as to the feeling which is to be expressed, how can the minister

hope that the merely improvised singing of an unexpected hymn, perhaps

with an unknown tune, will have any stimulating, not to say spiritual,

value? If the hymn is well known, it is probably a great hymn, and

what gathering of saints can rise at a moment’s notice to its

spiritual altitude?

What intelligent minister would presume suddenly to ask a trained

elocutionist to read to his audience a poem he had never before seen?

Or what honest lawyer would ask a client to sign a legal paper

involving obligations without explanations or previous reading? Yet,

every Sunday, congregations are asked to sing hymns they have never

noticed, expressing they know not what sentiments, promises, or

consecrations, in the most solemn and exalted manner. Is it ethical?

Is it efficient?

II. THE TREATMENT OF HYMNS

If a congregation is to sing a hymn, not thoughtlessly and

mechanically, but intelligently and with feeling, it must be prepared

for the devout exercise. It is the minister’s task to tune his people

up for the individual hymn, and create the habit of finding meaning

and genuine feeling in all the hymns they sing. Stupid singing is a

habit: why not create a habit of singing thoughtfully and feelingly?

That may be done; but it cannot be done overnight. It will call for

persistent training, for a wealth of resources, and for an unbroken

attitude of genuineness of emotion on the part of the preacher. It is

no small undertaking to transform sleepy church members into sons of

praise.

We may add to the obligations involved still another. If the hymn to

be sung is not merely didactic or meditative, but distinctly emotional

in character, is it not the preacher’s duty to create in those who are

to sing at least the beginnings of the emotions he asks them to voice?

A rapid sketch of blind Matheson’s experience before writing “O Love

that wilt not let me go” will set the heartstrings of the congregation

quivering in the emotional key of the hymn. A vivid picture of the

death of Christ on the cross in a dozen sentences will inspire a

preacher’s people to sing “Beneath the cross of Jesus” with genuine

emotion. Drawing a picture with rapid touches of the charge of the

Light Brigade as it went to its death at Balaklava, and quoting a few

lines of Tennyson’s poem, will stir the pulses for the singing of

“Lead on, O King Eternal.” “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire” may

be introduced by a few tender sentences on the vital necessity of

prayer to a sincere Christian. A minute’s resume of the influence of

the cross of Christ on an individual life, or on the upward sweep of

the human race under its influence, will give the people a clue to “In

the cross of Christ I glory.” The tender aspect of the atonement made

by Christ for sin may be solemnly suggested before singing “Alas, and

did my Saviour bleed?”

Where a hymn has allusions not likely to be recognized by the average

singer, they ought to be made plain. How many of the millions who have

sung the well-known hymn, “Come, thou Fount of every blessing,” knew

what the word “Ebenezer” signified? Striking phrases, packed with deep

thought and feeling, like Matheson’s

“I lay in dust life’s glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be,”

should have their treasures brought to light, lest the average

churchgoer should overlook them. In other words, there should be a

rapid exposition of unusual and also of over-familiar hymns, so that

the congregation may sing with its mind and heart.

The range of possible comment is so wide, and the opportunity of using

it is so limited, that only the most striking and impressive

illustrations should be considered for actual use. Rhetorical and

anecdotal illustrations should be used sparingly—only when they

promote an exalted and distinctly spiritual state of mind. They are

apt to be prolix, to distract the mind from spiritual contemplation.

They are permissible with joyous, aggressive, victorious hymns rather

than with those that are tender, emotional, subjective.

The inexorable limitations of time must always be borne in mind. When

a hymn is announced the people expect to sing, not to listen to a

hymnological dissertation or to a long-winded anecdote. The simile or

metaphor, or other oratorical comment, must explode with a very short

fuse of preliminary remark. The anecdote must be compact, shorn of

unessential preface or background, and reach its peak of interest, or

of appeal to feeling, with the succinctness of an epigram. Better

limit the illustrations and comments to those that can gracefully and

lucidly be uttered in one or rarely two minutes.

Discussions and illustrations of hymns are often confined to the hymns

as hymns, which is rarely necessary. It is not the hymn that needs

emphasis, much less its writer: it is the message, the burden, the

feeling of the hymn that is to be enforced. An instance of the saving

of a “down and outer” from the Jerry McAuley mission in New York, or

the Pacific Garden mission in Chicago, will create more responsiveness

to “Rescue the Perishing” than biographical facts about Fanny Crosby

or about the composer, W. Howard Doane. The anecdote of missionary

success from the last missionary bulletin or magazine will lead a

Congregation to sing “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” more

enthusiastically than an explanation of Watts’ having metricized the

seventy-second Psalm with a free hand, making the Jew, David, sing

like a Christian. Illustrating the sense rather than the form of the

hymn will be found very much more thrilling to the people.

In evening services of song, or in midweek lectures, historical

backgrounds will be very helpful and interesting. A series of lectures

on the great hymns of the Church, or even a general survey of the

development of our Christian hymnody, will lay the foundations of a

more intelligent song.

In such services, anecdotal illustrations may have a large place. They

need not be emotional under such circumstances, just so they add

interest and understanding.

As an occasional variation in the introduction of the hymn, why not

have the congregation read it? “It is not done?” All the more reason

for doing it! They will get more actual values out of the reading of

the hymn and its subsequent singing than in any other way; the very

unusualness of the method will give additional effectiveness. Single

stanzas can be most impressively treated in this manner. In singing

Isaac Watts’ great hymn, “When I survey the wondrous cross,” ask the

people to read the third verse softly,

“See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”

and then sing it very softly and note the effect.

The same method may be used with Mrs. Alexander’s children’s hymn,

“There is a green hill far away,” which adults have adopted for their

own; have them read the last verse,

“Oh, dearly, dearly has He loved,

And we must love Him too,

And trust in His redeeming blood,

And try His works to do,”

and then sing it quite emotionally.

A great many people deprecate the minister’s reading of the hymns. But

that is because so few ministers are able to read hymns with any

degree of impressiveness or reality. Perhaps half the ministers who

read them leave no desirable impression whatever as the result, for

the reading has been without even a thoughtful sense of the meaning of

the hymn, much less of its emotional force. To allow one’s voice to

fall at the end of every line, or to make a habit of having a rising

inflection at the end of each first line and a falling at the end of

each second, without variation, is so vile, from an elocutionary

standpoint, that one cannot wonder that the general congregation

prefers its omission.

On the other hand, if the minister’s mind and heart are profoundly

awake to the thought and feeling of the hymn that is to be used, if

the minister has a definite purpose which he wishes to realize through

the singing of that hymn, if the whole song service is thoroughly

vital and earnest, he cannot help reading the hymn in such a way as to

impress and interest his people. One need not be a well-trained

elocutionist to do this. The genuine feeling will develop a natural

elocution and will even neutralize faulty habits and mannerisms of

reading that would otherwise make it unendurable.

The fact that the hymn is a familiar one may be only an additional

reason for reading it, instead of being an imperative reason for

omitting its reading. As coins long in circulation often lose their

superscription, these familiar words often lose their meaning and

reality by constant use, and these may be restored by intelligent and

emotional reading.

A mere habit of reading a hymn through is sheer mechanism, the fatal

enemy of interest. The situation, the purpose in view, the character

of the service and the time allotted to it, even the preacher’s own

passing mood—all are factors that need to be considered.

At this point it is well to drop a word of warning against the

unintelligent omission of verses. Some ministers invariably restrict

the number to be sung to three or four. If there are five verses, they

invariably omit the fourth, or announce, “We will sing the first three

verses,” no matter what the development of thought may be. One of the

most painful manifestations of ministerial thoughtlessness and

indifference to the congregation’s share of the service, is this

brutal mutilation of the hymns. The preacher wishes a little more time

for his sermon, so he robs God and his people of some of their worship

by singing the pitiful remains of a hymn he has deprived of its unity,

its progress of thought, and perhaps of its best stanzas. Or he has

preached too long and closes with a single verse of some great hymn,

unwittingly losing the best climax his sermon could have had. Because

of the same egotism and his obsequious regard for the tyranny of the

dinner hour, he cuts out the reading and proper introductions of his

hymns throughout the service.

The irony of the situation is that by this neglect of his hymns the

preacher fails to create the enthusiasm and responsiveness of his

hearers essential to the larger success of his sermon. “There is that

withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.” (Prov.

11:24.)

It may well be that some of the ministers who read this practical

section will throw up their hands at the idea of working out the

rather daunting array of suggestions for exploiting the hymn in their

church work. The pastor’s task is such a varied one, with such a mass

of details, all of seeming importance, that he is in danger of wasting

time on comparative trifles, of “puttering” around, feeling very busy

while accomplishing little. A common remark at the close of the day

is, “I’ve been busy as a nailer all day and can’t see that I have

accomplished anything!”

It is this time that is lost by lack of concentration which could

quite comfortably be devoted to hymnological studies. The difficulty

in most cases is not lack of time, but lack of interest, lack of

realization as to how great a contribution the hymn service can make

to the success of his work.

God has put into the throat of every member of this preacher’s

congregation a marvelous musical instrument with a wide range of tones

and of extremely appealing cadences, of great power to express the

emotions of the heart of the singer, and to suggest and stimulate the

feelings of the minds and hearts of the hearers: is the minister

justified in neglecting the opportunity it offers to arouse and

quicken the mental and spiritual natures of the people for whose

religious life he is responsible?

Is it not a crying piece of egotism, in view of the proven efficiency

of hymn singing, to depend exclusively on his own preaching for the

realization of the spiritual ends to which his life is devoted? When

ministers realize the positive power the hymn service can exert, they

will not begrudge the occasional hours for studying and planning it

which are necessary to its full success. That success will create

A SINGING CHURCH

EPILOGUE

_Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter._ Eccl. 12:7.

In traversing the long history of the human use of song in religious

services, rites, and ceremonies, we have found that

1. The hymn has been recognized in every age, in every generation, by

every race, whether savage or cultured, under every sky, as an

expression of religious emotion, and as the generator of such emotion.

2. Religious emotions are of various types. It may be the earnestness

of strong conviction; it may be the hot indignation against sin and

evil, against neglect of the soul’s highest obligations. It may be the

depressing sense of conscious unworthiness, rising into repentance for

sin, into the tenderness of grateful recognition of the divine love

and forgiving grace, expressed in tears, joy over the assurance of

salvation expressed in beaming countenance or in ejaculations of

delight, or even in shouts of victory. The human heart becomes an

Æolian harp from which the winds of the Spirit of God evoke an

infinitude of melodies, grave and solemn, tender and sweet, joyous and

triumphant, or vigorous and inspiring,—a very symphonic orchestra.

3. As an expression of religious emotion the hymn has been effective

in moving the human will, stubborn in its revolt against God, by

intensifying the mental and spiritual power of religious ideas.

4. The religious idea is primary, of course, but its emotional

response in the heart gives it vitality. It is the team of idea and

its normal emotion that exerts the power of the hymn. An abstract

idea, abstract because its emotional reflex has been abstracted, has

no motive power.

5. In the effective use of the hymn the clear apprehension of its

ideas must be enforced by the vital reproduction of the original

emotion of its writer which urged its composure. A dry hymn written

without vitalizing feeling has no power to inspire; it gives no sense

of reality. Dry sermons, not pollinated by emotional vigor, can bear

no fruit. The effectiveness of sermon or hymn will be determined by

the intensity of the feeling behind it.

6. The emotional appeal must be genuine, both writer and singer must

be sincere. Artificial emotion, the mere pretense of a feeling that

does not exist, has no power. It is not merely unappealing, it is

offensive.

7. But emotion necessarily implies an intelligence and a

susceptibility to be moved—in other words, a personality. It also

implies that one person’s feelings can call forth like emotions in

other persons. The merely outward expression may even create a like

emotion among others who do not fully apprehend the primary idea that

set the original emotion to vibrating, creating a very contagion of

feeling.

8. It follows that in actual aggressive work, largely depending on

emotional transmission, the minister or the leader must supply the

initiating impulse. If the minister has a dry mind—there are ministers

who desiccate every topic they discuss—religious ideas suffer a blight

of aridity, killing all sense of reality, this sense of reality being

the _sine qua non_ of all spiritual effectiveness. If he is fortunate

in having a vivid imagination and a heart responsive to religious

truth, he can multiply his mental gifts twentyfold by intensifying the

truths he expresses.

9. Treated in this way, the hymn becomes the peer of the sermon in

influencing power, and assures the minister eager for spiritual

results a large harvest of souls, saved and spiritualized.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

INTRODUCTION

[1]Genesis 4:21, 23.

[2]Genesis 31:27.

[3]Exodus 15:1-21.

[4]Numbers 21:16, 17.

[5]Psalm 90.

[6]Joshua 6:16.

[7]Judges 5:1-31.

[8]I Samuel 2:1-16.

[9]I Samuel 10:5.

[10]I Chronicles 9:22; 11:4, 11:5.

[11]Mark 14:26.

[12]Acts 16:25.

[13]Colossians 3:16.

[14]James 5:13.

[15]Revelation 5:9; 7:9-12; 11:15-18; 14:2,3; 15:3,4; 19:1-7.

CHAPTER I

[1]Dr. Phelps goes on to say, “Yet the greatest of these, that grace

which above all else vitalizes a true hymn, is that which makes it

true—its fidelity to the realities of religious experience.”

[2]“A hymn must have a beginning, middle, and end. There should be a

manifest graduation in the thoughts, and their mutual dependence

should be so perceptible that they could not be transposed without

injuring the unity of the piece; every line carrying forward the

connection, and every verse adding a well-proportioned limb to a

symmetrical body. The reader should know when the strain is

complete, and be satisfied, as at the close of an air in music.”

(James Montgomery.)

[3]Dr. Parks, back in 1857, remarks: “That is not always the best

church song which sparkles most with rhetorical gems. There are

spangled hymns which will never excite devotional feeling.”

[4]Sung at President McKinley’s funeral.

[5]Greece never had a sacred book, she never had any symbols, any

sacerdotal caste organized for the preservation of dogmas. Her

poets and her artists were her true theologians. (Renan, in

_Studies in Religious History_.)

[6]“Even when deeds and events of an innocent and pure character are

thus sung, there is nothing more of spiritual worship in it than

in the recitation of an epic poem. The singer confesses no need,

asks no blessing, reveals no yearning, expects no response. There

is no communion of thought and feeling, no aspiration for purity,

no laying hold of moral strength.” (Rev. G. O. Newport, a

missionary in India, quoted in _The Hymn Lover_.)