THE
HYMN-BOOK OF THE
MODERN CHURCH

BRIEF STUDIES OF HYMNS AND HYMN-WRITERS

THE THIRTY-FOURTH FERNLEY LECTURE

BY
ARTHUR E. GREGORY, D.D.
PRINCIPAL OF THE CHILDREN’S HOME AND ORPHANAGE EDITOR OF ‘BOOKS FOR BIBLE STUDENTS,’ ETC.

London
CHARLES H. KELLY
2, CASTLE ST., CITY ROAD; AND 26, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1904

PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.

To
My Children

‘Better than all the ballads

That ever were sung or said.’

PREFACE

This lecture consists of a series of essays introductory to the study of English hymns, in which I have tried to give some account of the sources from which the Church gathers its sacred songs, and to sketch briefly the growth of the modern hymn-book. It has been necessary to omit several sections which I had intended to include, and this volume covers a portion only of the ground indicated by the title. I may, perhaps, some day be able to carry the work a stage nearer completeness.

It may be thought that I have given disproportionate space to certain periods and to certain hymn-writers. If so, I can only say that they seemed to me specially interesting or important. In quotations, especially from less-known writers, I have taken as much liberty as possible, and I think this is the redeeming feature of the lecture. In extended quotations I have usually given the preference to hymns not readily accessible to the general reader, and have only occasionally quoted hymns to be found in the Methodist Hymn-book.

To the hymns of the Wesleys I have given considerable space. The subject was chosen for me in view of the publication of the new Methodist Hymn-book, and the occasion seemed to require a somewhat detailed survey of the early Methodist hymns. Nor do I think that many will consider the attention given to them more than their intrinsic value justifies. ‘After the Scriptures,’ wrote Dr. James Martineau, ‘the Wesley Hymn-book appears to me the grandest instrument of popular religious culture that Christendom has ever produced.’[1]

Delightful as this work has been to me, the book has been written under great pressure and amid countless interruptions. I have had to redeem odd minutes and the evening hours when a long day’s work had already been done.

I have to acknowledge constant obligation—much more extensive than is indicated by frequent reference—to Dr. Julian’s monumental Dictionary of Hymnology, which has lightened the labour of research for all students of hymns.

To my friend, Dr. J. T. L. Maggs, I am under manifold obligations which I most gratefully record. Dr. Maggs read a great part of the book in MS, and the whole in proof; and I am also indebted to him for calling my attention to, or procuring for me, some important books of reference. Mr. W. Garrett Horder has also given me the benefit of his advice and criticism—all the more valuable because his judgement has often differed from my own.

It is a pleasure to mention the valuable help rendered me by some of my friends connected with The Children’s Home, and especially by Miss F. L. Moon (now Mrs. Carey), who most kindly relieved me of the greater part of the burden of the actual preparation of the MS. for the press. My son, Benjamin A. Gregory, has prepared the Index, verified quotations, and helped me in many other ways.

No Fernley Lecturer has had a more attractive theme. I wish its treatment had been more worthy. But with all its imperfections I trust that He who inhabiteth the praises of Israel may deign to bless my little book to the edification and comfort of some who read it.

CONTENTS

[Introduction] 1 [I. A True Hymn] 6 [II. Hymns of the Bible and the Early Church] 29 [III. Early Modern Hymns] 62 [I.—Sixteenth Century] 62 [II.—Seventeenth Century] 80 [IV. Eighteenth-century Hymns] 122 [I.—The School of Watts] 122 [II.—Hymns of the Methodist Revival] 155 [III.—The Olney Hymns] 224 [IV.—Addison, Toplady, and Others] 243 [V. Nineteenth-century Hymns] 254 [I.—Anglican Hymns] 254 [II.—Free Church Hymns] 285 [III.—Roman Catholic Hymns] 315 [ Conclusion] 323 [ Appendix] 333 [ General Index] 339 [ Index of Hymns and Verses] 343

THE HYMN-BOOK OF THE MODERN CHURCH

INTRODUCTION

The source and inspiration of Christian song is the word of Christ. ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.’ The common phrases of common life cannot satisfy the soul filled with the Spirit and rich with the wealth of Christ’s indwelling word. Religious emotion finds truer and more fitting expression in poetry than in prose. If God had not given to His Church poets, as well as apostles, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, the best that is in us could never have been uttered. Words and phrases that are large enough for intercourse with our fellows become cramped and inexpressive when we speak to God. Praise and penitence alike would often be silent in the congregation of the saints if they could not at once veil and reveal their profoundest feelings in psalms and hymns. Poetry gives to devotion those robes of glory and beauty without which it would, at times, be almost unseemly to join in the public worship of God or to disclose the heart’s secrets in the presence of fellow-worshippers.

Our theme, then, is peculiarly sacred, since it deals with the spiritual songs in which earnest and sincere men have uttered, in the very presence of God, their most secret thoughts, confessions, and aspirations. Every true hymn was first spoken by one man to God alone, was prayed before it was sung, though now it may be heard daily from ten thousand voices. Harsh or flippant criticism is out of place here, an irreverent impertinence, like the interruption of private prayer. In the study of hymns

Put off thy shoes from off thy feet;

The place where man his God shall meet

Be sure is holy ground.[2]

Yet St. Paul himself reminds us that the word of Christ is to dwell wisely as well as richly in our hearts. ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.’ ‘Next to a sound rule of faith, there is nothing of so much consequence as a sober standard of feeling in matters of religion.’[3] Morbid, insincere, fanatical, or exaggerated emotion is as much to be deprecated as doctrinal error, and its evils are at least as disastrous. The diffusion of false or superficial sentiment in the household of the faith is like the spreading of a subtle disease which saps the strength and mars the beauty of devotion, while error bears a charmed life if it comes in the words of a familiar and attractive hymn. Moreover, it is in the hymns of the Church rather than in its formal declarations of faith and doctrine that we find the truest and generally the most favourable revelation of its character. Hymnology is a more important element in the history of religion than most Church historians and theological writers have recognized.[4]

The present time is in many respects peculiarly appropriate for a consideration of the growth and development of the hymns of the modern Church. We are in a state of rest or pause after tumult. The great religious ‘movements’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are matters of history, and we can regard even the most recent of them calmly and without the prejudice which while conflict rages may, not altogether unfairly, be regarded as patriotism. The Methodist Revival, the Evangelical Awakening, the Oxford Movement, the Salvation Army Campaign, the Undenominational Evangelism of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, may all be taken into account in considering the material and character of the hymn-book of the modern Church.

Again, it is interesting to remember that of the hymn-writers of the nineteenth century few survive. For the moment there is neither evangelist nor poet to give us new songs. Our fathers made hymn-books; we re-edit them. Within the last few years the standard Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican,[5] and Methodist hymn-books have appeared in new and revised editions, whilst in the Arundel Hymns we have the most recent Roman Catholic hymnal. Dr. Barrett’s Congregational Church Hymnal, issued in 1887, is of the modern type, though it preserves many of the features of the older Nonconformist books. Mr. Garrett Horder’s Worship-Song represents the taste of an individual, not of a committee or community; but it is in many respects the best and most complete collection of the hymns of the modern Church. These books enable us to discover current opinion and taste in regard to hymns which are worthy to take their place in the service of the Christian sanctuary, and both in their unity and diversity are of great value as indicating the life and thought of the Churches they represent.

In this lecture I shall attempt—

1. A brief preliminary inquiry into what constitutes a true hymn, suited for use in Christian worship.

2. A very brief review of the relation of the Hebrew Psalter to the Christian Hymnal, and a passing glance at the hymns of the New Testament and of the early Church.

3. A more detailed survey of the rise and development of modern English hymns and their use in the Church since the Reformation.

Such a study, however unskilfully guided, cannot, I hope, be altogether without interest or edification, since it brings the student into fellowship with the sweetest and the saintliest souls, and bids him join in spirit the choir invisible who praise God day and night in His temple.

I regret that the limits assigned to my lecture make it impossible to refer to translations from the Greek, Latin, German, and other languages. These form a most valuable and an increasing portion of all modern hymnals. They furnish abundant material for a separate volume.

I
A True Hymn

When my revered father, more than thirty years ago, delivered the fourth Fernley Lecture, he laid this down as the first scriptural Church principle—‘The Church is not a thing of rigid definition.’ I may adapt that phrase to my own subject, and say, A hymn is not a thing of rigid definition.

Commenting on the note which closes the second book of Psalms, ‘The prayers [LXX. hymns] of David the son of Jesse are ended,’ St. Augustine gives this definition:

Hymns are praises of God with singing, hymns are songs containing praises of God. If there be praise, and not praise of God, it is not a hymn. If there be praise, and praise of God, and it is not sung, it is not a hymn. It is necessary, therefore, if it be a hymn, that it have these three things: both praise, and praise of God, and that it be sung.

In commenting on Ps. cxlviii. he repeats this rule in almost the same words. The definition commends itself at once as excellent, and in regard to a large number of hymns adequate; but even when the widest sense is given to the words it is much too narrow and would exclude many of the truest hymns. Indeed, it is impossible to deny the title to innumerable compositions which do not fulfil these conditions. Many a verse of which it may be said, This is not a hymn, demonstrates its right by the fact that it is hymned by the Church from age to age.

St. Augustine’s third canon may be accepted without hesitation. A poem that cannot be sung may speak in the sublimest accents of devotion, yet it is of necessity unsuited to the service of the Christian choir. Spenser’s ‘Hymn of Heavenly Love’ is a glorious example of this form of praise. Indeed, there are some stanzas which a skilful hand might make available for use in the congregation.

O blessèd Well of Love, O Flower of Grace,

O glorious Morning Star, O Lamp of Light!

Most lively image of Thy Father’s face,

Eternal King of Glory, Lord of Might,

Meek Lamb of God, before all worlds behight,[6]

How can we Thee requite for all this good?

Or what can prize that Thy most precious blood?

Yet nought Thou ask’st in lieu of all this love,

But love of us for guerdon of Thy pain:

Ay me! What can us less than that behove?

Had He requirèd life of us again,

Had it been wrong to ask His own with gain?

He gave us life, He it restorèd lost;

Then life were least, that us so little cost.

But He our life hath left unto us free,

Free that was thrall, and blessèd that was banned;

Nor ought demands but that we loving be,

As He Himself hath loved us afore-hand;

And bound thereto with an eternal band,

Him first to love that us so dearly bought,

And next our brethren to His image wrought.

Many of Herbert’s and of Miss Rossetti’s poems are of the same type. We would give much to add them to our hymnals, but they would be out of place there. They belong to the manual of devotion.

That the primary idea of a hymn is praise may also be granted, but even so ‘praise’ must be given an extensive connotation, that it may include whatever directly or indirectly glorifies God. St. Paul’s exhortations show how much more than the offering of adoration is included in the province of Christian song. Our hymn-book, like the Hebrew Psalter, must have not only its songs of high thanksgiving, its sacrifice of praise, but also its prayer of the penitent as he poureth out his soul unto God, its sin-offering as well as its thank-offering, its intercessions and meditations, its instructions and exhortations, its lighter songs and melodies. ‘Every feeling which enters into any act of true worship may fitly find expression in a hymn.’[7]

Dr. Johnson declared that sacred poetry must always be poor because ‘the topics of devotion are few, and being few are universally known; but few as they are can be made no more.’ To this criticism Keble replied in his essay on Sacred Poetry—

How can the topics of devotion be few, when we are taught to make every part of life, every scene in nature, an occasion—in other words, a topic—of devotion? It might as well be said that connubial love is an unfit subject for poetry, as being incapable of novelty, because, after all, it is only ringing the changes upon one simple affection, which every one understands. The novelty there consists, not in the original topic, but in continually bringing ordinary things, by happy strokes of natural ingenuity, into new associations with the ruling passion.

There’s not a bonnie flower that springs

By fountain, shaw, or green;

There’s not a bonnie bird that sings

But minds me of my Jean.

Why need we fear to extend this most beautiful and natural sentiment to ‘the intercourse between the human soul and its Maker’?[8]

If, on its subjective side, sacred poetry has a wide range of topics, how manifold and how magnificent are the themes presented by the historic facts upon which faith rests, and by the great truths of the gospel! In Johnson’s day no one understood how large a realm belonged to the Christian singer, but we have no cause to complain of sameness or dullness in the songs of the Christian choir.

St. Augustine’s second canon need not be regarded as implying that every hymn must be formally addressed to God. The very hymns (the psalms) upon which he was commenting abundantly justify our use of hymns which are rather uttered in the divine presence than actually spoken to God. The 103rd Psalm is as truly a hymn of praise, and that of God, as the 104th. After the same self-exhortation, ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul,’ the one continues in the form of a devout meditation, in which the consciousness that God hears is never for a moment absent; while the other at once addresses ‘the Majesty on high.’

O Lord my God, Thou art very great;

Thou art clothed with honour and majesty.

Both might have ended with

Let my meditation[9] be sweet unto Him;

civ. 34.

or, in the words of another psalm—

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation[9] of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight,

O Lord, my Strength, and my Redeemer.

xix. 14.

Devout meditations which do not actually speak to God are amongst the best and most truly devotional hymns. Watts’s spiritual song,

There is a land of pure delight,

is an example of the hymn which is only indirectly a prayer; whilst

When I survey the wondrous Cross

illustrates the meditation which is partly the communing of the soul with itself, and partly (perhaps in this case only in the second verse) a direct address to God. Yet each is a true hymn. The ideal exercise of the Christian hymn-writer is the practice of the presence of God.

Not only, then, are the subjects of sacred song infinitely varied, but the forms it may assume are many. In the poet, as well as in the prophet, God speaks ‘in divers manners.’ This is seen in St. Paul’s twice repeated classification, ‘psalms, hymns, spiritual songs,’ and by the directions he gives for the use of song in the Church.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians he writes:

And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father.

In the Epistle to the Colossians:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto God. And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Psalms are, no doubt, primarily, if not exclusively, those of the Old Testament, which would naturally form the basis of the hymn-book of the Christian Church. It would have been the worst ingratitude, the most crass stupidity, if such a treasure actually in their hands and in their hearts had not been adopted in the services of the first Christian worshippers, even though it must soon have been felt that some psalms were as little in harmony with the spirit of the new dispensation as the law which Christ Himself enlarged and enlightened.

Hymns ‘would more appropriately designate those hymns of praise which were composed by the Christians themselves.’[10] Of these, as we shall note in the next chapter, some fragments remain, and they are specially characteristic of Christian worship. ‘It was of the essence of the Greek ὕμνος (hymn) that it should be ... addressed to a god or hero, that is, a deified man.’[11] Christianity inherited the Hebrew psalm, it adopted and consecrated the Greek hymn.

Ode, or song, is a more general term, qualified and limited by the epithet ‘spiritual,’ and may be regarded as justifying our use of many modern hymns which a severe or narrow taste would reject. Bishop Beveridge understood it to include ‘all sorts of songs upon any spiritual subject.’

Probably the three terms were not very rigidly distinguished, though they are convenient for describing various classes of devotional poetry. In the title of Ps. lxxv. the LXX. gives the three words: ‘among hymns, a psalm for Asaph, an ode concerning the Assyrian.’[12]

The variety of form which the songs of the Christian temple may assume is seen to be of the utmost value when we consider how large a part the ministry of song has in Christian life and worship. Although Jehovah is ‘exalted above all blessing and praise,’[13] yet does He sit ‘enthroned upon the praises of Israel.’[14] ‘Praise waiteth for God in Zion.’ The ancient summons to worship is—

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,

And into His courts with praise.

c. 4.

The walls of the city of God are called Salvation, and her gates Praise.[15] The mystic Jerusalem is the true ‘city of praise.’[16] The one offering of the Christian temple is its perpetual eucharist,[17] ‘the sacrifice of praise.’[18] The high praises of God are in the mouth of His saints because His love is shed abroad in their hearts, and they ‘cannot from His praise forbear.’

Jerusalem makes melody

For simple joy of heart,

An organ of full compass she,

One tuned through every part;

While not to day or night belong

Her matins and her evensong,

The one thanksgiving of her song.[19]

Whatever the form of the song, its music is for the ear of God, its melody is that of the heart.

In the Christian Church, as in the Jewish Temple, we may call instrumental music to our aid, and count its offering not unacceptable to God.

Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet:

Praise Him with the psaltery and harp.

Praise Him with the timbrel and dance:

Praise Him with stringed instruments and the pipe.

Praise Him upon the loud cymbals:

Praise Him upon the high-sounding cymbals.

Yet all this pomp and circumstance of worship are but sounding brass and clanging cymbal unless there be the accompaniment of ‘grace in the heart.’

Praise Him every tuneful string;

All the reach of heavenly art,

All the powers of music bring,

The music of the heart.[20]

Praise needs ‘a thousand tongues,’ and even so would find ‘eternity too short’ for its service.

Though St. Paul associates praise—thanksgiving—with singing in both the passages referred to, it is instructive to note how clearly he asserts the teaching function of the songs of the Church: ‘Speaking one to another,’ ‘teaching and admonishing one another.’ Bishop Christopher Wordsworth said, as I think, truly:

Christian poetry ought to be a medium for the conveyance of Christian doctrine.... A Church which forgoes the use of hymns in her office of teaching neglects one of the most efficacious instruments for correcting error, and for disseminating truth, as well as for ministering comfort and edification.[21]

An entirely opposite view is often taken, especially by Dissenting writers. Mr. Horder even regards the definite assertion of the doctrine of the Trinity in Heber’s greatest hymn as ‘its only fault.’[22] Dr. Martineau argued that to eliminate from a hymn its distinctive doctrinal teaching, and to ‘translate’ it into broader theological language, was ‘simply to remove an obstruction,’ and to introduce the author ‘to the veneration of thousands, to whom otherwise he must appear as a repulsive stranger.’[23] The general question of alterations in the text of hymns may be considered later. At the moment I need only point out that the apostolic ideal of a hymn includes both ethical and doctrinal teaching. John Wesley prided himself upon having given in his hymn-book ‘a little body of experimental and practical divinity.’

The same principle may be applied to hymns of invitation, of which there are so many in the Methodist collection, and of which Faber’s ‘Souls of men, why will ye scatter?’ is the best modern example. An off-hand criticism may condemn hymns addressed to our own souls, to ‘souls of men,’ to ‘neighbours and friends,’ to ‘sinners poor and wretched;’ but they have ample warrant both in precept and precedent.

God sent His singers upon earth

With songs of sadness and of mirth,

That they might touch the hearts of men,

And bring them back to heaven again.[24]

The Christian poet is a teacher and an evangelist.

Passing from the form to the character of the hymn, there are certain great principles concerning which there will, I imagine, be little difference of opinion. The first essential in every hymn is surely that it be not unworthy of use in the service of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and is to be worshipped in the beauty of holiness. There must be—

1. Sincerity.—Fitness for divine service depends not upon beauty of form or expression, but upon sincerity of thought.

The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords,

Is when the soul unto the lines accords.[25]

‘The garment of praise’ is the white robe of the pure in heart, and, lacking this, the stately anthem has less of heaven’s music than the discordant voices of the village choir.

So Cowper prays—

Forgive the praise that falls so low

Beneath the gratitude I owe:

It means Thy praise, however poor;

An angel’s song could do no more.

So Keble sings—

Childlike though the voices be,

And untunable the parts,

Thou wilt own the minstrelsy

If it flows from childlike hearts.

Sincerity requires that the thoughts expressed should be real to the singer as well as to the poet. They may not be such as would have occurred to him, and the expression may be altogether beyond his powers of origination, but they must be such as he can think in his best moments or may be helped to enter into at the hour of prayer. Sincerity does not require that all our hymns should be on the lowest level common to a general congregation, but that the sentiment expressed, the emotion presupposed or to be excited, be suited to the heart of man in the presence of his Father in heaven. In the compilation of a hymn-book something must be left to the good sense and judgement of those who are to use it; and there is no part of public worship which calls for more serious and intelligent consideration than the selection of hymns suited to the occasion and to the congregation.

It is perhaps too much to say that sincerity also requires that the writer of a hymn should be not unworthy of a place in the Christian choir. Happily this question rarely arises. The author’s name is often an aid to devotion, and in most hymn-books there is hardly a name—except Dryden’s—that seems wholly unfitted to this sacred service.

2. Reverence.—‘God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few,’ restrained, seemly. The profoundest reverence, the lowliest adoration, shrinks from utterance when it hears and sees unspeakable things. This is sublimely taught in those great lines of Dante:

Here memory mocks the toil of genius. Christ

Beamed on that cross; and pattern fails me now.

But whoso takes his cross, and follows Christ,

Will pardon me for that I leave untold,

When in the fleckered dawning he shall spy

The glitterance of Christ.[26]

Even so profuse a hymn-writer as Watts feels that there are times when it is best to ‘leave untold’ what the heart most desires to tell:

A solemn reverence checks our songs,

And praise sits silent on our tongues.

It is a less sublime, but not less acceptable, form of worship which attempts that which yet it knows to be impossible. Praise must be heard in Zion lest if men hold their peace the very stones should cry out. Nor is it right that awe should silence love. We worship the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, yet even so we praise Him who ‘like as a Father pitieth His children’; and when we sing praise to Christ as God, we remember that He called His disciples not servants, but friends.

Dr. Watts utters the thought of many hearts in one of his finest hymns—

Join all the glorious names

Of wisdom, love, and power,

That ever mortals knew,

That angels ever bore;

All are too mean to speak His worth,

Too mean to set my Saviour forth.

But O what gentle terms,

What condescending ways,

Doth our Redeemer use,

To teach His heavenly grace;

Mine eyes with joy and wonder see

What forms of love He bears for me!

It would be easy to give illustrations of offences against the spirit of reverence, especially in hymns of the eighteenth century and the earlier part of the nineteenth. The Moravian hymns in particular were often disfigured by the most revolting phrases, so had indeed that one does not care to give them even the notoriety of emphatic condemnation.[27] But such gross offences are rare in our time, and are practically unknown to Protestant hymnals. Some of the Romish hymns, and a few in Anglican books, refer to the details of our Lord’s Incarnation and Passion with irreverent and even indecent realism, and those addressed to the Virgin Mary are often as bad as any found in the older Moravian books.

We are, on the other hand, in some danger of carrying our sense of what is reverent too far, and of altering without reason the glowing words of devout Christian affection. John Wesley shrank from including

Jesu, Lover of my soul

in his Collection. The expression is quoted from Wisd. xi. 26: ‘But Thou sparest all; for they are Thine, O Lord, Thou Lover of souls’; and he saw no objection to its general application as in the lines—

Lover of souls, to rescue mine

Reveal the charity divine

That suffered in my stead.

Canon Ellerton hesitated as to the propriety of the inclusion of this great hymn in a Church hymnal, and spoke of it as standing ‘absolutely upon the line’ which separates hymns for public worship from those of private devotion. But the Church in all its borders has decided the question, and our heart tells us that the decision is right. Nor is it, indeed, a hymn solely for the sanctuary and the saint; it is a hymn for the street and for the sinner.[28]

The epithet ‘dear’ is not one to be scattered thoughtlessly through hymns and prayers. Yet there are lines from which it is almost an impiety to remove it. There is a language of reverent affection which has in it nothing of the earth.

Come then, and to my soul reveal

The heights and depths of grace,

The wounds which all my sorrows heal,

That dear disfigured face.

Personally I should not touch even Faber’s

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

Teach our faint desires to rise

above the dullest levels of devotion. There should be in a hymn a restrained fervour, a reverent rapture of poetic inspiration free from all admixture of the sensuous and morbidly emotional. ‘Be not drunken with wine ... but be filled with the Spirit.’

Quench then the altar-fires of your old gods,

Quench not the fire within.[29]

Nay, rather, if we find no ‘minstrel rapture’ for the praise of the Most High, may we not ask with Charles Wesley—

Why breaks not out the fire within,

In flames of joy, and praise, and love?

As might be expected, it is among the Anglican and the rationalistic communities that there is the greatest dread of the emotional in worship. Yet Dr. Martineau is the ablest apologist for fervour in religious poetry.

The editor of a hymn-book will not think it necessary to graduate the fervour, the imaginativeness, the grandeur of the compositions admitted into his volume, by the cold, level, and prosaic condition of mind which may possibly prevail among some who use it. Thus, to damp the fire down to the temperature of the fuel, seems to offer but a small prospect of kindling anything. We must not thus forgo the glorious power which art exercises in worship. Its peculiar function in connexion with religion is to substitute for the poor and low thoughts of ordinary men, the solemn and vivid images of things invisible that have revealed themselves to loftier souls, and to present the objects of faith before the general mind in something of that aspect under which they rise up before the great artists of poetry and of sound. These gifted men are to lift us; we are not to depress them. In sacred music we acknowledge this principle at once; we confess that it is a noble thing, when we think of the origin of things, and call God the Creator, to have within us the mighty transitions of Haydn’s genius instead of our own puny dreams; to have the incidents of sacred story glow and live before us at the touch of a power like that of Handel or of Spohr; to find ourselves, at such bidding, with the ‘Shepherds abiding in the field,’ not far from the holy chant falling on the midnight air; or to hear in a voice, melting as Christ’s, ‘Come unto Me, ye weary’; or, as we pass from bereavement to bereavement of this world, to be haunted, as with a sudden peace, by the echo of that unearthly strain, ‘Blest are the departed.’ Not less elevating is the poetry than the melody of faith, when it is equally left alone with its first fresh power, and not reduced halfway to prose as a condition of its entrance into worship.[30]

We should, perhaps, hesitate to say that a Christian hymn may have the ‘fine, careless rapture’ which is the glory of Browning’s thrush, but we must not deny to it the ‘inward glee’ as well as the ‘serious faith’ of Wordsworth’s stock-dove. The fervour of Christian song is the bright expression of our glorying in the Lord.

Sing we merrily unto God our Strength.[31]

7. Truth of doctrine.—If it be allowed that hymns play an important part in the teaching of the Church, it is hardly necessary to press this point. Indeed, there is often more to be feared from theological pedantry than from doctrinal sensitiveness. The essential unity of the faith of Christendom is nowhere better illustrated than in the number of hymns which belong to the common treasure of the Church. There is already a union of hearts in the language of devotion which is the surest promise of the reunion of Christendom. At the same time, there are not a few hymns which must either be excluded from denominational hymn-books, or be revised into accord with the faith of the congregations that are to use them.

I well remember the distress of a distinguished Independent minister when I quoted to him Wesley’s verse—

Ah! Lord, with trembling I confess,

A gracious soul may fall from grace;

The salt may lose its seasoning power,

And never, never find it more—

and the pained incredulity with which he deprecated my assurance that the hymn was still in use in our congregations. I remember, too, how abruptly an eminent Methodist minister closed his hymn-book and directed the congregation to cease singing when he found them approaching the last verse of one of Toplady’s hymns—

Yes, I to the end shall endure,

As sure as the earnest is given,

More happy but not more secure

The glorified spirits in heaven.

The verses set forth accurately and appropriately the teaching of the Churches to which the hymns respectively belong, but they are impossible in other theological regions. A very wide range should be allowed to religious thought as expressed in hymns, but those which contradict the things most surely believed in a Church are rightly excluded from its hymnal.

8. We should add, I think, if not to the essentials, yet certainly to the virtues of a good hymn, Scriptural language. Our greatest prose writers have found in the English Bible the most effective, forceful, impressive words; and the hymn-writer has the advantage not only of its pure, strong diction, but also of the hallowed associations which the words of Holy Scripture preserve for all Englishmen.

II
Hymns of the Bible and the Early Church

The hymn-book of the modern Church is the direct descendant of the Hebrew Psalter. Had David and Asaph never sung, the hymns of Watts and Wesley, of Keble and Montgomery, could hardly have been written. If the praises of Israel had not rung through the courts of the Temple, the choir of the Christian Church would have been silent. Primitive Christianity struggled hard to free itself from the swathing-bands of Jewish ritual; but it recognized from the first the riches of its inheritance in the Book of Psalms. There, more than in any other Scripture, the first Christians heard ‘the voice of Christ and His Church.’[32] Our Lord Himself joined in singing these ancient hymns, and bade His disciples understand that all things must needs be fulfilled which ‘were written in the ... psalms’ concerning Him. St. Paul and St. James alike commend the singing of psalms, and thus, without controversy, the Psalter was claimed by the Church as her own. The determination to hear the voice of Christ everywhere, led to extravagances of exposition which a more critical age cannot tolerate, but it gave the psalms a firm hold upon the heart of Christendom. The ancient Scriptures would have passed away with the ‘worldly sanctuary’ had it not been for the witness of the priest, the prophet, and the psalmist to Christ.

Religious poetry and song must long have preceded any collection of psalms or hymns. One would like to know who first, in the far-off days, said to his brother, ‘O come, let us sing unto the Lord’; but that unknown poet or musician had been famous and forgotten before history was born. The first Hebrew psalm is the Song of Moses at the Red Sea, the earliest of the triumph songs of the people of God, the hymns which celebrate Jehovah, who ever showeth Himself ‘a God of deliverances.’[33] Sung first to ‘the loud timbrel by Egypt’s dark sea,’ it becomes in the Apocalypse the Song of Moses and of the Lamb, chanted to the harps of God by the glassy sea mingled with fire. At the first the singers are the congregation, not yet a people, whom Moses brought out of Egypt in haste; at the last they are the white-robed army of them that have gotten the victory through the blood of the Lamb.

I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously:

The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.

The Lord is my strength and song,

And He is become my salvation:

This is my God, and I will praise Him;

My father’s God, and I will exalt Him.

Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness,

Fearful in praises, doing wonders?

Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance,

The place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in,

The sanctuary, O Lord, which Thy hands have established.

The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.[34]

Moses, then, is the first singer in the Christian choir; and if to this song of triumph we can add the 90th Psalm, we may well place Moses amongst the sweetest and the sublimest of hymn-writers.

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear

The Godhead’s most benignant grace.[35]

But Moses is not the founder of Hebrew psalmody. The fact that he and others may have written psalms does not detract from the fame of David, ‘the sweet psalmist of Israel.’ It was he who won for the psalm a permanent place in the worship of God. It is not for me to discuss here critical questions in regard to the Davidic authorship of particular psalms; but I venture to deprecate a too ready or complete acceptance of Wellhausen’s phrase that the Psalter was ‘the hymn-book of the second temple,’ as though it settled the question of the existence of previous Psalters used in the days before the Exile. Unless we are prepared to reject history and tradition alike, David must still hold his place amongst the singers of the Church of God.

There David stands, with harp in hand,

As master of the choir.

The builders of the great vanished cities of the olden time, of its palaces and pyramids; the founders of its monarchies, empires, and republics, pass into oblivion or preserve at best the dull memorial of a name in history; but ‘he who sang the Holy Spirit’s song’ has an audience that never wearies, though the individual listeners pass in solemn and ceaseless order to the silent land. For man is one everywhere and in all ages. The accidents of life vary, but its essence abides. ‘The universal Church of Christ hath given its witness that these psalms are not made for one age, but for all ages; not for one place, but for all places; not for one soul, but for all souls.’[36]

The contention that David’s history is not consistent with the high religious tone of the poems ascribed to him need not disturb us. The man who wrote the Lament for Saul and Jonathan was no mere brigand chief, but one who wore ‘the graces that adorn a king,’ and as a poet and a friend deserves to rank with Milton and with Tennyson.

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

Jonathan is slain upon thy high places.

I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan:

Very pleasant hast thou been unto me:

Thy love to me was wonderful,

Passing the love of women.

How are the mighty fallen,

And the weapons of war perished!

2 Sam. i. 25-27.

Is there not the same note in David as in Milton, the same lingering on the loved name, the same reiteration of the words of sorrow?

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:

Who would not sing for Lycidas?

But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone,

Now thou art gone, and never must return!

Jonathan is shrined as richly and as unfadingly as Edward King or Arthur Hallam, and we may well believe that the man whom Jonathan loved as his own soul loved God from his inmost heart—that the author of the Lament was the singer of the 18th Psalm. And if it be allowed that David wrote that song—‘the Psalm of Clovis and John Wesley’[37]—it is difficult, merely on the ground of personal character, to deny him any psalm in the whole book.

I love Thee, O Lord, my strength.

The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer;

My God, my strong rock, in Him will I trust;

My shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower.

I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised:

So shall I be saved from mine enemies.

In my distress I called upon the Lord,

And cried unto my God:

He heard my voice out of His temple,

And my cry before Him came into His ears.

Then the earth shook and trembled,

The foundations also of the mountains moved

And were shaken, because He was wroth.

He bowed the heavens also, and came down;

And thick darkness was under His feet.

And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly:

Yea, He flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind.

He sent from on high, He took me;

He drew me out of many waters.

He delivered me from my strong enemy,

And from them that hated me, for they were too mighty for me.