Sweet Saviour, bless us e’er we go,
though I wish he had used another epithet; and I certainly could not
draw a rough pen through Cowper’s tender line
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power.
There is something due to the men who wrote thus. If they loved much,
we should let them speak their love to all the ages in terms of strong
affection, and our colder hearts may learn to burn within us as we
draw near with them to Him who ‘sought us Himself with such longing
and love.’
Bad taste is an error of judgement, not irreverence, but it has very
much the same effect upon the worshipper, and it is to be regretted
that some very great hymns, consecrated by ten thousand sacred
memories, are marred by phrases which will not bear comment or
meditation. If the hymn were new, not many modern books would include
Cowper’s lines
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
but nothing could long preserve in common use Watts’s verse—
His dying crimson like a robe
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then am I dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.
3. Closely allied to reverence is _Dignity_, the elevation and
refinement of thought and language which beseem the worship of God.
Nor is it any disadvantage to the less enlightened or less educated in
the Christian assembly that they should learn to speak the language of
the family of God. Dignity is not necessarily obscure or pompous. It
represents what is worthy of man’s thought when it is engaged on the
highest of all themes. The intrusion into the most sacred moments of
what is mean or vulgar in sound or association is a grievous offence.
Hymns belong to the _belles lettres_ of the literature of devotion; to
be familiar with them should be in itself a liberal education.
4. _Beauty._—‘Intercourse between God and the human soul,’ said Dr.
Johnson, ‘cannot be poetical’—a characteristically dogmatic assertion
for which there might be some excuse in his day, but which succeeding
years have overwhelmingly disproved. A hundred years ago it was
necessary to include in a hymn-book compositions that compensated for
their lack of poetry by their undoubted piety, but we have such a
wealth of song at our disposal that there need be nothing poor,
prosaic, commonplace in our hymnals. Watts’s greatest error was his
excessive tenderness for ‘vulgar capacities.’
5. _Simplicity._—We may say of great hymns what Tennyson said of great
men—they are
In their simplicity sublime.
Heavy words are rightly to be regarded as fatal to a good hymn.
Charles Wesley was peculiarly prone to use words which make hymns
impossible in public worship. Who desires in prayer or praise to use
such words as ‘consentaneous,’ ‘implunged,’ ‘choral symphonies’?
The best hymns are made up of short words, and have a large
preponderance of monosyllables. The words, too, should be such as men
use in the more serious intercourse of daily life. It goes without
saying that colloquialisms and words with mean associations are not
fit for the sanctuary, but the finest hymns are often those which the
plain man recognizes as written in his own tongue.
Bishop Ken’s great hymns are models of simple directness of thought
and expression, and so are some verses of Pope’s _Universal Prayer_.
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do;
This, teach me more than hell to shun,
That, more than heaven pursue.
If I am right, Thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way!
Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
6. _Fervour._—If there is no fire or glow in a hymn, it might as well
be prose as poetry. Indeed, many hymns are so prosaic, so _wooden_,
that it is difficult to see how they can ever