When the seventeenth century opened there were, as we have seen,
hardly any English hymns except such as may be taken from metrical
versions of the Psalms. With the new century a new era begins; and
though we are not yet in what George Macdonald calls ‘the zone of
hymn-writing,’ we are soon able to gather the materials of a hymn-book
of the modern type. It would be quite possible to compile a very good
hymnal from writers who preceded Dr. Watts, if a wise editorial
discretion were exercised in the omission of unsuitable verses and the
revision of phrases offensive to modern taste.
Amongst the hymn-writers of the seventeenth century one name is
pre-eminent—Thomas Ken (1637-1711), Bishop of Bath and Wells. His fame
rests upon his three great hymns—Morning, Evening, and Midnight—for
little else in his voluminous poetical works is suited to the worship
of the sanctuary. In all the Christian choir there is no worthier name
than that of Thomas Ken, whom neither fear nor flattery could move
from the strait path of duty. He lived in the spirit of his own lines—
Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear;
Think how all-seeing God thy ways,
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.
He spent his earlier years of ministry in quiet places, amongst those
who honoured and loved him, but later had some curious experiences as
Lord Dartmouth’s chaplain at Tangier, where he testified with his
accustomed resolution against evil-doers and evil-speakers, coming, as
Samuel Pepys records, into collision with the afterwards infamous
Colonel Kirke, because he preached against ‘the excessive liberty of
swearing which we observe here.’
Amongst all the heroes of his day there was none with a more serene
courage than ‘little Ken,’ who would not receive Charles’s mistress at
his house—‘No, not for his kingdom’—and thus won his bishopric in as
unlikely and as creditable a fashion as ever bishopric was earned.
After that one is not surprised to find him, as one of the seven
bishops, saying to James II, ‘We have two duties to perform, our duty
to God and our duty to your Majesty. We honour you, but we fear God.’
Nor need we wonder that, notwithstanding his resistance of James’s
illegal demands, he could not bring himself to take the oath of
allegiance to William of Orange. Ken always had that infirmity of
noble souls, ‘a weakness for the weaker side.’ As Dean Plumptre well
says, ‘If he was in doubt it was safer, in quite another sense than
that in which others counted safety, to take the losing and not the
winning side.’
Ken was deprived in 1791, and the bishopric was offered to Beveridge,
then Archdeacon of Colchestor. Had Ken been translated to heaven, or
to Canterbury, Beveridge would have accepted the preferment with
delight, for he had no nonjuring scruples and wished to be a bishop.
But he too was a saint, and not unworthy to be Ken’s successor; so he
would not take the place from which Ken had been thrust out, and
waited thirteen years for ‘preferment,’ becoming Bishop of St. Asaph
in 1704.
When Ken left the episcopal palace, Lord Weymouth honoured his own
magnificent mansion of Longleat by welcoming Ken to its hospitable
shelter, as Sir Thomas Abney, in widely different circumstances, made
the great Nonconformist hymn-writer his guest twenty-five years later.
Longleat was Ken’s home for twenty years. There he died, after long
and acute suffering, soothed by the writing of hymns, and by the
thought that they would be sung on earth while he praised God in
heaven.
’Twill heighten even the joys of heaven to know
That in my verse the saints hymn God below.[69]
Ken’s hymns, as we now sing them, are selected from the thirty-seven
verses of the originals, which were intended in the first place for
the scholars of his old school—Winchester. As in most other cases, the
popular selection is amply justified. The hymns abbreviated are much
more serviceable alike for public and private devotion than if they
were transferred _in extenso_ to our hymn-books. Like Sternhold,
Herbert, and Watts, Ken was a musician, and loved to accompany himself
on the lute or organ.
The morning hymn, which consists of fourteen verses, falls into three
sections, addressed (1) to the soul, (2) to the angels, (3) to God. In
the evening hymn two verses are addressed to the guardian angel. The
following verses from the morning hymn are not usually found in modern
hymnals—
Influenced by the Light Divine,
Let thy own light in good works shine:
Reflect all Heaven’s propitious ways,
In ardent love, and cheerful praise.
Awake, awake,[70] ye heavenly choir,
May your devotion me inspire,
That I, like you, my age may spend,
Like you, may on my God attend.
May I, like you, in God delight,
Have all day long my God in sight,
Perform, like you, my Maker’s will;
O may I never more do ill!
Had I your wings, to heaven I’d fly,
But God shall that defect supply,
And my soul winged with warm desire,
Shall all day long to heaven aspire.
I would not wake, nor rise again,
Even heaven itself I would disdain;
Wert not Thou there to be enjoyed,
And I in hymns to be employed.
Heaven is, dear Lord, where’er Thou art,
O never then from me depart;
For to my soul ’tis hell to be
But for one moment without[71] Thee.
The special charm of Ken’s hymns lies in their simplicity and
suitability. In the plainest words he asks for just what every
Christian feels that he needs, morning and evening, his whole life
through. They are the first great English hymns, and are worthy to
lead the devotions of the Church.
Ken’s influence upon later poets has been great. Charles Wesley,
Keble, and Christopher Wordsworth were, to some extent, inspired by
his hymns on the Festivals, whilst Newman desired to add Ken to the
Calendar of English saints, and actually prepared a service for use on
‘Ken’s day.’[72]
Archbishop Alexander, himself a poet, preaching in Wells Cathedral at
the festival commemorative of the bicentenary of Ken’s consecration,
said—
Outside the Psalter, no lines have ever been so familiar to English
Christians as Ken’s Morning and Evening Hymn. Other hymns have been
more mystical, more impassioned, more imaginative—have perhaps
contained profounder thoughts in their depth, have certainly
exhibited richer colouring upon their surface. But none are so
suitable to the homely pathos and majesty of the English Liturgy;
none are so adapted to the character which the English Church has
aimed at forming, the sweet reserve, the quiet thoroughness, the
penitence which is continuous without being unhopeful. They are
lines which the child may repeat without the painful sense that they
are beyond him, and the man without the contemptuous sense that they
are below him. They appeal to the man in the child, and the child in
the man. They are at once a form of devotion, a rule of life, a
breath of prayer, a sigh of aspiration. They are the utterances of a
heart which had no contempt for earth, but which is at home among
the angels. When we listen to them, or repeat them with congenial
spirit, in whatever climate we may be, the roses of the English dawn
and the gold of the English sunset are in our sky.[73]
Montgomery wrote of Ken’s three hymns that, ‘had he endowed three
hospitals, he might have been less a benefactor to posterity.’[74] The
importance of his hymns as setting a standard of simplicity and
directness can hardly be overstated. Yet it is curious how slowly they
won general acceptance. They were not printed in the supplement to the
Book of Common Prayer till 1801, and though John Wesley included them
in his _Psalms and Hymns_, 1738, he omitted them from his later
publications and from his hymn-book. Dean Plumptre, however, says that
both the hymns had appeared in some of the earlier collections of
hymns for congregational use by English clergymen between 1750 and
1760. The three hymns are given in the _Moravian Hymn-book_ of 1754.
After Ken the seventeenth century had no sweeter hymn-writer than John
Austin (1613-69), who left St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1640, on
becoming a Romanist. He wrote two volumes of _Devotions in the Ancient
Way of Offices_. These were ‘a family piece among Catholics,’ and were
much used by devout Protestants. The nonjuring Bishop Hickes edited
them for Protestant use, and John Wesley included seven of the hymns
in his Charlestown hymn-book—a larger number than by any other author
except Watts. Austin did not complete his work. ‘Death, for which he
had fitted his soul by a well-spent life, interrupted his labours....
When he perceived death immediately seizing its prey, he gave up the
ghost with these remarkable words: ... “Now, heartily for heaven,
through Jesus Christ!”’[75]
Austin’s hymns are used chiefly outside his own communion,[76] though
Romanism has no English hymn-writer to compare with him till the time
of Faber. In the _Arundel Hymns_ his verses are attributed to W.
Austin (a Protestant contemporary). The following hymn illustrates the
similarity of Austin and Faber’s writing. Few readers would guess that
one of these four verses was written two centuries after the others.