In the meantime, the Books of Common Prayer, of 1549, 1552 and 1559, had been successively established as law by the acts of uniformity of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth. In these no provision was made for the use of any metrical psalm or hymn on any occasion whatever, except at the consecration of bishops and the ordination of priests, in which offices (first added in 1552) an English version of “Veni Creator” (the longer of the two now in use) was appointed to be “said or sung.” The canticles, “Te Deum,” “Benedicite,” the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, the “Gloria in Excelsis,” and some other parts of the communion and other special offices were also directed to be “said or sung”; and, by general rubrics, the chanting of the whole service was allowed.The silence, however, of the rubrics in these books as to any other singing was not meant to exclude the use of psalms not expressly appointed, when they could be used without interfering with the prescribed order of any service. It was expressly provided by King Edward’s first act of uniformity (by later acts made applicable to the later books) that it should be lawful “for all men, as well in churches, chapels, oratories or other places, to use openly any psalms or prayers taken out of the Bible, at any due time, not letting or omitting thereby the service, or any part thereof, mentioned in the book.” And Queen Elizabeth, by one of the injunctions issued in the first year of her reign, declared her desire that the provision made, “in divers collegiate and also some parish churches, for singing in the church, so as to promote the laudable service of music,” should continue. After allowing the use of “a modest and distinct song in all parts of the common prayers of the church, so that the same may be as plainly understanded as if it were read without singing,” the injunction proceeded thus—“And yet, nevertheless, for the comforting of such that delight in music, it may be permitted that in the beginning or in the end of the Common Prayer, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or such like song to the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence” (i.e.sense) “of hymn may be understanded and perceived.”The “Old Version,” when published (by John Daye, for the Stationers’ Company, “cum gratia et privilegio Regiae Majestatis”), bore upon the face of it that it was “newly set forth, and allowed to be sung of the people in churches, before and after morning and evening prayer, as also before and after the sermon.” The question of its authority has been at different times much debated, chiefly by Peter Heylyn and Thomas Warton on one side (both of whom disliked and disparaged it), and by William Beveridge, bishop of St Asaph, and the Rev. H. J. Todd on the other. Heylyn says, it was “permitted rather than allowed,” which seems to be a distinction without much difference. “Allowance,” which is all that the book claimed for itself, is authorization by way of permission, not of commandment. Its publication in that form could hardly have been licensed, nor could it have passed into use as it did without question, throughout the churches of England, unless it had been “allowed” by some authority then esteemed to be sufficient. Whether that authority was royal or ecclesiastical does not appear, nor (considering the proviso in King Edward’s act of uniformity, and Queen Elizabeth’s injunctions) is it very important. No inference can justly be drawn from the inability of inquirers, in Heylyn’s time or since, to discover any public record bearing upon this subject, many public documents of that period having been lost.
In the meantime, the Books of Common Prayer, of 1549, 1552 and 1559, had been successively established as law by the acts of uniformity of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth. In these no provision was made for the use of any metrical psalm or hymn on any occasion whatever, except at the consecration of bishops and the ordination of priests, in which offices (first added in 1552) an English version of “Veni Creator” (the longer of the two now in use) was appointed to be “said or sung.” The canticles, “Te Deum,” “Benedicite,” the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, the “Gloria in Excelsis,” and some other parts of the communion and other special offices were also directed to be “said or sung”; and, by general rubrics, the chanting of the whole service was allowed.
The silence, however, of the rubrics in these books as to any other singing was not meant to exclude the use of psalms not expressly appointed, when they could be used without interfering with the prescribed order of any service. It was expressly provided by King Edward’s first act of uniformity (by later acts made applicable to the later books) that it should be lawful “for all men, as well in churches, chapels, oratories or other places, to use openly any psalms or prayers taken out of the Bible, at any due time, not letting or omitting thereby the service, or any part thereof, mentioned in the book.” And Queen Elizabeth, by one of the injunctions issued in the first year of her reign, declared her desire that the provision made, “in divers collegiate and also some parish churches, for singing in the church, so as to promote the laudable service of music,” should continue. After allowing the use of “a modest and distinct song in all parts of the common prayers of the church, so that the same may be as plainly understanded as if it were read without singing,” the injunction proceeded thus—“And yet, nevertheless, for the comforting of such that delight in music, it may be permitted that in the beginning or in the end of the Common Prayer, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or such like song to the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence” (i.e.sense) “of hymn may be understanded and perceived.”
The “Old Version,” when published (by John Daye, for the Stationers’ Company, “cum gratia et privilegio Regiae Majestatis”), bore upon the face of it that it was “newly set forth, and allowed to be sung of the people in churches, before and after morning and evening prayer, as also before and after the sermon.” The question of its authority has been at different times much debated, chiefly by Peter Heylyn and Thomas Warton on one side (both of whom disliked and disparaged it), and by William Beveridge, bishop of St Asaph, and the Rev. H. J. Todd on the other. Heylyn says, it was “permitted rather than allowed,” which seems to be a distinction without much difference. “Allowance,” which is all that the book claimed for itself, is authorization by way of permission, not of commandment. Its publication in that form could hardly have been licensed, nor could it have passed into use as it did without question, throughout the churches of England, unless it had been “allowed” by some authority then esteemed to be sufficient. Whether that authority was royal or ecclesiastical does not appear, nor (considering the proviso in King Edward’s act of uniformity, and Queen Elizabeth’s injunctions) is it very important. No inference can justly be drawn from the inability of inquirers, in Heylyn’s time or since, to discover any public record bearing upon this subject, many public documents of that period having been lost.
In this book, as published in 1562, and for many years afterwards, there were (besides the versified Psalms) eleven metrical versions of the “Te Deum,” canticles, Lord’s Prayer (the best of which is that of the “Benedicite”); and also “Da pacem, Domine,” a hymn suitable to the times, rendered into English from Luther; two original hymns of praise, to be sung before morning and evening prayer; two penitential hymns (one of them the “humble lamentation of a sinner”); and a hymn of faith, beginning, “Lord, in Thee is all my trust.” In these respects, and also in the tunes which accompanied the words (stated by Dr Charles Burney, in hisHistory of Music, to be German, and not French), there was a departure from the Genevan platform. Some of these hymns, and some of the psalms also (e.g.those by Robert Wisdom, being alternative versions), were omitted at a later period; and many alterations and supposed amendments were from time to time made by unknown hands in the psalms which remained, so that the text, as now printed, is in many places different from that of 1562.
In Scotland, the General Assembly of the kirk caused to be printed at Edinburgh in 1564, and enjoined the use of, a book entitledScotch Psalms.The Form of Prayers and Ministry of the Sacraments used in the English Church at Geneva, approved and received by the Church of Scotland; whereto, besides that was in the former books, are also added sundry other prayers, with the whole Psalms of David in English metre. This contained, from the “Old Version,” translations of forty Psalms by Sternhold, fifteen by Whittingham, twenty-six by Kethe and thirty-five by Hopkins. Of the remainder two were by John Pulleyn (one of the Genevan refugees, who became archdeacon of Colchester); six by Robert Pont, Knox’s son-in-law, who was a minister of the kirk, and also a lord of session; and fourteen signed with the initials I. C., supposed to be John Craig; one was anonymous, eight were attributed to N., two to M. and one to T. N. respectively.
So matters continued in both churches until the Civil War. During the interval, King James I. conceived the project of himself making a new version of the Psalms, and appears to have translated thirty-one of them—the correction of which, together with the translation of the rest, he entrusted to Sir William Alexander, afterwards earl of Stirling. Sir William having completed his task, King Charles I. had it examined and approved by several archbishops and bishops of England, Scotland and Ireland, and caused it to be printed in 1631 at the Oxford University Press, as the work of King James; and, by an orderunder the royal sign manual, recommended its use in all churches of his dominions. In 1634 he enjoined the Privy Council of Scotland not to suffer any other psalms, “of any edition whatever,” to be printed in or imported into that kingdom. In 1636 it was republished, and was attached to the famous Scottish service-book, with which the troubles began in 1637. It need hardly be added that the king did not succeed in bringing this Psalter into use in either kingdom.
When the Long Parliament undertook, in 1642, the task of altering the liturgy, its attention was at the same time directed to psalmody. It had to judge between two rival translations of the Psalms—one by Francis Rouse, a member of the House of Commons, afterwards one of Cromwell’s councillors and finally provost of Eton; the other by William Barton, a clergyman of Leicester. The House of Lords favoured Barton, the House of Commons Rouse, who had made much use of the labours of Sir William Alexander. Both versions were printed by order of parliament, and were referred for consideration to the Westminster Assembly. They decided in favour of Rouse. His version, as finally amended, was published in 1646, under an order of the House of Commons dated 14th November 1645. In the following year it was recommended by the parliament to the General Assembly at Edinburgh, who appointed a committee, with large powers, to prepare a revised Psalter, recommending to their consideration not only Rouse’s book but that of 1564, and two other versions (by Zachary Boyd and Sir William Mure of Rowallan), then lately executed in Scotland. The result of the labours of this committee was the “Paraphrase” of the Psalms, which, in 1649-1650, by the concurrent authority of the General Assembly and the committee of estates, was ordered to be exclusively used throughout the church of Scotland. Some use was made in the preparation of this book of the versions to which the attention of the revisers had been directed, and also of Barton’s; but its basis was that of Rouse. It was received in Scotland with great favour, which it has ever since retained; and it is fairly entitled to the praise of striking a tolerable medium between the rude homeliness of the “Old,” and the artificial modernism of the “New” English versions—perhaps as great a success as was possible for such an undertaking. Sir Walter Scott is said to have dissuaded any attempt to alter it, and to have pronounced it, “with all its acknowledged occasional harshness, so beautiful, that any alterations must eventually prove only so many blemishes.” No further step towards any authorized hymnody was taken by the kirk of Scotland till the following century.
In England, two changes bearing on church hymnody were made upon the revision of the prayer-book after the Restoration, in 1661-1662. One was the addition, in the offices for consecrating bishops and ordaining priests, of the shorter version of “Veni Creator” (“Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire”), as an alternative form. The other, and more important, was the insertion of the rubric after the third collect, at morning and evening prayer: “In quires and places where they sing, here followeth the anthem.” By this rubric synodical and parliamentary authority was given for the interruption, at that point, of the prescribed order of the service by singing an anthem, the choice of which was left to the discretion of the minister. Those actually used, under this authority, were for some time only unmetrical passages of scripture, set to music by Blow, Purcell and other composers, of the same kind with the anthems still generally sung in cathedral and collegiate churches. But the word “anthem” had no technical signification which could be an obstacle to the use under this rubric of metrical hymns.
The “New Version” of the Psalms, by Dr Nicholas Brady and the poet-laureate Nahum Tate (both Irishmen), appeared in 1696, under the sanction of an order in council of William III., “allowing and permitting” its use “in all suchTate and Brady.churches, chapels and congregations as should think fit to receive it.” Dr Compton, bishop of London, recommended it to his diocese. No hymns were then appended to it; but the authors added a “supplement” in 1703, which received an exactly similar sanction from an order in council of Queen Anne. In that supplement there were several new versions of the canticles, and of the “Veni Creator”; a variation of the old “humble lamentation of a sinner”; six hymns for Christmas, Easter and Holy Communion (all versions or paraphrases of scripture), which are still usually printed at the end of the prayer-books containing the new version; and a hymn “on the divine use of music”—all accompanied by tunes. The authors also reprinted, with very good taste, the excellent version of the “Benedicite” which appeared in the book of 1562. Of the hymns in this “supplement,” one (“While shepherds watched their flocks by night”) greatly exceeded the rest in merit. It has been ascribed to Tate, but it has a character of simplicity unlike the rest of his works.
The relative merits of the “Old” and “New” versions have been very variously estimated. Competent judges have given the old the praise, which certainly cannot be accorded to the new, of fidelity to the Hebrew. InOld and new versions compared.both, it must be admitted, that those parts which have poetical merit are few and far between; but a reverent taste is likely to be more offended by the frequent sacrifice, in the new, of depth of tone and accuracy of sense to a fluent commonplace correctness of versification and diction, than by any excessive homeliness in the old. In both, however, some psalms, or portions of psalms, are well enough rendered to entitle them to a permanent place in the hymn-books—especially the 8th, and parts of the 18th Psalm, by Sternhold; the 57th, 84th and 100th, by Hopkins; the 23rd, 34th and 36th, and part of the 148th, by Tate and Brady.
The judgment which a fastidious critic might be disposed to pass upon both these books may perhaps be considerably mitigated by comparing them with the works of other labourers in the same field, of whom Holland, in his interesting volumes entitledPsalmists of Great Britain, enumerates above 150. Some of them have been real poets—the celebrated earl of Surrey, Sir Philip Sidney and his sister the countess of Pembroke, George Sandys, George Wither, John Milton and John Keble. In their versions, as might be expected, there are occasional gleams of power and beauty, exceeding anything to be found in Sternhold and Hopkins, or Tate and Brady; but even in the best these are rare, and chiefly occur where the strict idea of translation has been most widely departed from. In all of them, as a rule, the life and spirit, which in prose versions of the psalms are so wonderfully preserved, have disappeared. The conclusion practically suggested by so many failures is that the difficulties of metrical translation, always great, are in this case insuperable; and that, while the psalms like other parts of scripture are abundantly suggestive of motive and material for hymnographers, it is by assimilation and adaptation, and not by any attempt to transform their exact sense into modern poetry, that they may be best used for this purpose.
The order in council of 1703 is the latest act of any public authority by which an express sanction has been given to the use of psalms or hymns in the Church of England. At the end, indeed, of many Prayer-books, till about the middle of the 19th century, there were commonly found, besides some of the hymns sanctioned by that order in council, or of those contained in the book of 1562, a sacramental and a Christmas hymn by Doddridge; a Christmas hymn (varied by Martin Madan) from Charles Wesley; an Easter hymn of the 18th century, beginning “Jesus Christ has risen to-day”; and abridgments Bishop Ken’s Morning and Evening Hymns. These additions first began to be made in or about 1791, in London editions of the Prayer-book and Psalter, at the mere will and pleasure (so far as appears) of the printers. They had no sort of authority.
The order in council of 1703 is the latest act of any public authority by which an express sanction has been given to the use of psalms or hymns in the Church of England. At the end, indeed, of many Prayer-books, till about the middle of the 19th century, there were commonly found, besides some of the hymns sanctioned by that order in council, or of those contained in the book of 1562, a sacramental and a Christmas hymn by Doddridge; a Christmas hymn (varied by Martin Madan) from Charles Wesley; an Easter hymn of the 18th century, beginning “Jesus Christ has risen to-day”; and abridgments Bishop Ken’s Morning and Evening Hymns. These additions first began to be made in or about 1791, in London editions of the Prayer-book and Psalter, at the mere will and pleasure (so far as appears) of the printers. They had no sort of authority.
In the state of authority, opinion and practice disclosed by the preceding narrative may be found the true explanation of the fact that, in the country of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, and notwithstanding theEnglish congregational hymnody.example of Germany, no native congregational hymnody worthy of the name arose till after the commencement of the 18th century. Yet there was no want ofappreciation of the power and value of congregational church music. Milton could write, before 1645:—
“There let the pealing organ blowTo the full-voiced quire belowIn service high, and anthems clear,As may with sweetness through mine earDissolve me into ecstasies,And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.”
“There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced quire below
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.”
Thomas Mace, in hisMusic’s Monument(1676), thus described the effect of psalm-singing before sermons by the congregation in York Minster on Sundays, during the siege of 1644: “When that vast concording unity of the whole congregational chorus came thundering in, even so as it made the very ground shake under us, oh, the unutterable ravishing soul’s delight! in the which I was so transported and wrapt up in high contemplations that there was no room left in my whole man, body, soul and spirit, for anything below divine and heavenly raptures; nor could there possibly be anything to which that very singing might be truly compared, except the right apprehension or conceiving of that glorious and miraculous quire, recorded in the scriptures at the dedication of the temple.” Nor was there any want of men well qualified, and by the turn of their minds predisposed, to shine in this branch of literature. Some (like Sandys, Boyd and Barton) devoted themselves altogether to paraphrases of other scriptures as well as the psalms. Others (like George Herbert, and Francis and John Quarles) moralized, meditated, soliloquized and allegorized in verse. Without reckoning these, there were a few, even before the Restoration, who came very near to the ideal of hymnody.
First in time is the Scottish poet John Wedderburn, who translated several of Luther’s hymns, and in hisCompendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songsadded others of his own (or his brothers’) composition. Some of theseWedderburn.poems, published before 1560, are of uncommon excellence, uniting ease and melody of rhythm, and structural skill, with grace of expression, and simplicity, warmth and reality of religious feeling. Those entitled “Give me thy heart,” “Go, heart,” and “Leave me not,” which will be found in a collection of 1860 calledSacred Songs of Scotland, require little, beyond the change of some archaisms of language, to adapt them for church or domestic use at the present day.
Next come the two hymns of “The new Jerusalem,” by an English Roman Catholic priest signing himself F. B. P. (supposed to be “Francis Baker, Presbyter”), and by another Scottish poet, David Dickson, of which the historyDickson.is given by Dr Bonar in his edition of Dickson’s work. This (Dickson’s), which begins “O mother dear, Jerusalem,” and has long been popular in Scotland, is a variation and amplification by the addition of a large number of new stanzas of the English original, beginning “Jerusalem, my happy home,” written in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and printed (as appears by a copy in the British Museum) about 1616, when Dickson was still young. Both have an easy natural flow, and a simple happy rendering of the beautiful scriptural imagery upon the subject, with a spirit of primitive devotion uncorrupted by medieval peculiarities. The English hymn of which some stanzas are now often sung in churches is the true parent of the several shorter forms,—all of more than common merit,—which, in modern hymn-books, begin with the same first line, but afterwards deviate from the original. Kindred to these is the very fine and faithful translation, by Dickson’s contemporary Drummond of Hawthornden of the ancient “Urbs beata Hierusalem” (“Jerusalem, that place divine”). Other ancient hymns (two of Thomas Aquinas, and the “Dies Irae”) were also well translated, in 1646, by Richard Crashaw, after he had become a Roman Catholic and had been deprived by the parliament of his fellowship at Cambridge.
Conspicuous among the sacred poets of the first two Stuart reigns in England was George Wither. HisHymnes and Songs of the Churchappeared in 1622-1623, under a patent of King James I., by which they were declared “worthyWither.and profitable to be inserted, in convenient manner and due place, into every English Psalm-book to metre.” HisHallelujah(in which some of the formerHymnes and Songswere repeated) followed in 1641. Some of theHymnes and Songswere set to music by Orlando Gibbons, and those in both books were written to be sung, though there is no evidence that the author contemplated the use of any of them in churches. They included hymns for every day in the week (founded, as those contributed nearly a century afterwards by Charles Coffin to the Parisian Breviary also were, upon the successive works of the days of creation); hymns for all the church seasons and festivals, including saints’ days; hymns for various public occasions; and hymns of prayer, meditation and instruction, for all sorts and conditions of men, under a great variety of circumstances—being at once a “Christian Year” and a manual of practical piety. Many of them rise to a very high point of excellence,—particularly the “general invitation to praise God” (“Come, O come, in pious lays”), with whichHallelujahopens; the thanksgivings for peace and for victory, the Coronation Hymn, a Christmas, an Epiphany, and an Easter Hymn, and one for St Bartholomew’s day (Hymns 1, 74, 75, and 84 in part i., and 26, 29, 36 and 54 in part ii. ofHallelujah).
John Cosin, afterwards bishop of Durham, published in 1627 a volume of “Private Devotions,” for the canonical hours andCosin.other occasions. In this there are seven or eight hymns of considerable merit,—among them a very good version of the Ambrosian “Jam lucis orto sidere,” and the shorter version of the “Veni Creator,” which was introduced after the Restoration into the consecration and ordination services of the Church of England.
The hymns of Milton (on the Nativity, Passion, CircumcisionMilton.and “at a Solemn Music”), written about 1629, in his early manhood, were probably not intended for singing; but they are odes full of characteristic beauty and power.
During the Commonwealth, in 1654, Jeremy Taylor published at the end of hisGolden Grove, twenty-one hymns, described by himself as “celebrating the mysteries and chiefJeremy Taylor.festivals of the year, according to the manner of the ancient church, fitted to the fancy and devotion of the younger and pious persons, apt for memory, and to be joined, to their other prayers.” Of these, his accomplished editor, Bishop Heber, justly says:—
“They are in themselves, and on their own account, very interesting compositions. Their metre, indeed, which is that species of spurious Pindaric which was fashionable with his contemporaries, is an obstacle, and must always have been one, to their introduction into public or private psalmody; and the mixture of that alloy of conceits and quibbles which was an equally frequent and still greater defilement of some of the finest poetry of the 17th century will materially diminish their effect as devotional or descriptive odes. Yet, with all these faults, they are powerful, affecting, and often harmonious; there are many passages of which Cowley need not have been ashamed, and some which remind us, not disadvantageously, of the corresponding productions of Milton.”
“They are in themselves, and on their own account, very interesting compositions. Their metre, indeed, which is that species of spurious Pindaric which was fashionable with his contemporaries, is an obstacle, and must always have been one, to their introduction into public or private psalmody; and the mixture of that alloy of conceits and quibbles which was an equally frequent and still greater defilement of some of the finest poetry of the 17th century will materially diminish their effect as devotional or descriptive odes. Yet, with all these faults, they are powerful, affecting, and often harmonious; there are many passages of which Cowley need not have been ashamed, and some which remind us, not disadvantageously, of the corresponding productions of Milton.”
He mentions particularly the advent hymn (“Lord, come away”), part of the hymn “On heaven,” and (as “more regular in metre, and in words more applicable to public devotion”) the “Prayer for Charity” (“Full of mercy, full of love”).
The epoch of the Restoration produced in 1664 Samuel Crossman’sYoung Man’s Calling, with a few “Divine Meditations” in verse attached to it; in 1668 John Austin’sRestoration period.Devotions in the ancient way of offices, with psalms, hymns and prayers for every day in the week and every holyday in the year; and in 1681 Richard Baxter’sPoetical Fragments. In these books there are altogether seven or eight hymns, the whole or parts of which are extremely good: Crossman’s “New Jerusalem” (“Sweet place, sweet place alone”), one of the best of that class, and “My life’s a shade, my days”; Austin’s “Hark, my soul, how everything,” “Fain would my thoughts fly up to Thee,” “Lord, now the time returns,” “Wake all my hopes, lift up your eyes”; and Baxter’s “My whole, though broken heart, O Lord,” and “Ye holy angels bright.” Austin’sOffices(he was a Roman Catholic) seem to have attracted much attention. Theophilus Dorrington, in 1686, published variations of them under the title ofReformedDevotions; George Hickes, the non-juror, wrote one of his numerous recommendatory prefaces to S. Hopton’s edition; and the Wesleys, in their earliest hymn-book, adopted hymns from them, with little alteration. These writers were followed by John Mason in 1683, and Thomas Shepherd in 1692,—the former, a country clergyman, much esteemed by Baxter and other Nonconformists; the latter himself a Nonconformist, who finally emigrated to America. Between these two men there was a close alliance, Shepherd’sPenitential Criesbeing published as an addition to theSpiritual Songsof Mason. Their hymns came into early use in several Nonconformist congregations; but, with the exception of one by Mason (“There is a stream which issues forth”), they are not suitable for public singing. In those of Mason there is often a very fine vein of poetry; and later authors have, by extracts or centoes from different parts of his works (where they were not disfigured by his general quaintness), constructed several hymns of more than average excellence.
Three other eminent names of the 17th century remain to be mentioned, John Dryden, Bishop Ken and Bishop Simon Patrick; with which may be associated that of Addison, though he wrote in the 18th century.
Dryden’s translation of “Veni Creator” a cold and laboured performance, is to be met with in many hymn-books. Abridgments of Ken’s morning and evening hymns are in all. These, with the midnight hymn, which is not inferior to them, first appeared In 1697, appended to the thirdDryden, Ken.edition of the author’sManual of Prayers for Winchester Scholars. Between these and a large number of other hymns (on the attributes of God, and for the festivals of the church) published by Bishop Ken after 1703 the contrast is remarkable. The universal acceptance of the morning and evening hymns is due to their transparent simplicity, warm but not overstrained devotion, and extremely popular style. Those afterwards published have no such qualities. They are mystical, florid, stiff,PatrickAddison.didactic and seldom poetical, and deserve the neglect into which they have fallen. Bishop Patrick’s hymns were chiefly translations from the Latin, most of them from Prudentius. The best is a version of “Alleluia dulce carmen.” Of the five attributed to Addison, not more than three are adapted to public singing; one (“The spacious firmament on high”) is a very perfect and finished composition, taking rank among the best hymns in the English language.3
From the preface to Simon Browne’s hymns, published in 1720, we learn that down to the time of Dr Watts the only hymns known to be “in common use, either in private families or in Christian assemblies,” were those of Barton, Mason and Shepherd, together with “an attempt to turn some of George Herbert’s poems into common metre,” and a few sacramental hymns by authors now forgotten, named Joseph Boyse (1660-1728) and Joseph Stennett. Of the 1410 authors of original British hymns enumerated in Daniel Sedgwick’s catalogue, published in 1863, 1213 are of later date than 1707; and, if any correct enumeration could be made of the total number of hymns of all kinds published in Great Britain before and after that date, the proportion subsequent to 1707 would be very much larger.
The English Independents, as represented by Dr Isaac Watts, have a just claim to be considered the real founders of modern English hymnody. Watts was the first to understand the nature of the want, and, by the publication of hisHymnsin 1707-1709, andPsalms(not translations, but hymns founded on psalms) in 1709, he led the way in providing for it. His immediate followers were Simon Browne and Philip Doddridge. Later in the 18th century, Joseph Hart, Thomas Gibbons, Miss Anne Steele, Samuel Medley, Samuel Stennett, John Ryland, Benjamin Beddome and Joseph Swain succeeded to them.
Among these writers, most of whom produced some hymns of merit, and several are extremely voluminous, Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge are pre-eminent. It has been the fashion with some to disparage Watts, as if he hadWatts.never risen above the level of hisHymns for Little Children. No doubt his taste is often faulty, and his style very unequal, but, looking to the good, and disregarding the large quantity of inferior matter, it is probable that more hymns which approach to a very high standard of excellence, and are at the same time suitable for congregational use, may be found in his works than in those of any other English writer. Such are “When I survey the wondrous cross,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” (and also another adaptation of the same 72nd Psalm), “Before Jehovah’s awful throne” (first line of which, however, is not his, but Wesley’s), “Joy to the world, the Lord is come,” “My soul, repeat His praise,” “Why do we mourn departing friends,” “There is a land of pure delight,” “Our God, our help in ages past,” “Up to the hills I lift mine eyes,” and many more. It is true that in some of these cases dross is found in the original poems mixed with gold; but the process of separation, by selection without change, is not difficult. As long as pure nervous English, unaffected fervour, strong simplicity and liquid yet manly sweetness are admitted to be characteristics of a good hymn, works such as these must command admiration.
Doddridge is, generally, much more laboured and artificial; but his place also as a hymn-writer ought to be determined, not by his failures, but by his successes, of which the number is not inconsiderable. In his better worksDoddridge.he is distinguished by a graceful and pointed, sometimes even a noble style. His “Hark, the glad sound, the Saviour comes” (which is, indeed, his masterpiece), is as sweet, vigorous and perfect a composition as can anywhere be found. Two other hymns, “How gentle God’s commands,” and that which, in a form slightly varied, became the “O God of Bethel, by whose hand,” of the Scottish “Paraphrases,” well represent his softer manner.
Of the other followers in the school of Watts, Miss Anne Steele (1717-1778) is the most popular and perhaps the best. Her hymn beginning “Far from these narrow scenes of night” deserves high praise, even by the side of other good performances on the same subject.
The influence of Watts was felt in Scotland, and among the first whom it reached there was Ralph Erskine. This seems to have been after the publication of Erskine’sGospel Sonnets, which appeared in 1732, five years before he joined his brother Ebenezer in the Secession Church. TheGospel Sonnetsbecame, as some have said, a “people’s classic”; but there is in them very little which belongs to the category of hymnody. More than nineteen-twentieths of this very curious book are occupied with what are, in fact, theological treatises and catechisms, mystical meditations on Christ as a bridegroom or husband, and spiritual enigmas, paradoxes, and antithetical conceits, versified, it is true, but of a quality of which such lines as—
“Faith’s certain by fiducial arts,Sense by its evidential facts,”
“Faith’s certain by fiducial arts,
Sense by its evidential facts,”
may be taken as a sample. The grains of poetry scattered through this large mass of Calvinistic divinity are very few; yet in one short passage of seven stanzas (“O send me down a draught of love”), the fire burns with a brightness so remarkable as to justify a strong feeling of regret that the gift which this writer evidently had in him was not more often cultivated. Another passage, not so well sustained, but of considerablebeauty (part of the last piece under the title “The believer’s soliloquy”), became afterwards, in the hands of John Berridge, the foundation of a very striking hymn (“O happy saints, who walk in light”).
After his secession, Ralph Erskine published two paraphrases of the “Song of Solomon,” and a number of other “Scripture songs,” paraphrased, in like manner, from the Old and New Testaments. In these the influence of Watts became very apparent, not only by a change in the writer’s general style, but by the direct appropriation of no small quantity of matter from Dr Watts’s hymns, with variations which were not always improvements. His paraphrases of I Cor. i. 24; Gal. vi. 14; Heb. vi. 17-19; Rev. v. 11, 12, vii. 10-17, and xii. 7-12 are little else than Watts transformed. One of these (Rev. vii. 10-17) is interesting as a variation and improvement, intermediate between the original and the form which it ultimately assumed as the 66th “Paraphrase” of the Church of Scotland, of Watts’s “What happy men or angels these,” and “These glorious minds, how bright they shine.” No one can compare it with its ultimate product, “How bright these glorious spirits shine,” without perceiving that William Cameron followed Erskine, and only added finish and grace to his work,—both excelling Watts, in this instance, in simplicity as well as in conciseness.
Of the contributions to the authorized “Paraphrases” (with the settlement of which committees of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland were occupied from 1745, or earlier, till 1781), the most noteworthy, besides theScottish paraphrases.two already mentioned, were those of John Morrison and those claimed for Michael Bruce. The obligations of these “Paraphrases” to English hymnody, already traced in some instances (to which may be added the adoption from Addison of three out of the five “hymns” appended to them), are perceptible in the vividness and force with which these writers, while adhering with a severe simplicity to the sense of the passages of Scripture which they undertook to render, fulfilled the conception of a good original hymn. Morrison’s “The race that long in darkness pined” and “Come, let us to the Lord our God,” and Bruce’s “Where high the heavenly temple stands” (if this was really his), are well entitled to that praise. The advocates of Bruce in the controversy, not yet closed, as to the poems said to have been entrusted by him to John Logan, and published by Logan in his own name, also claim for him the credit of having varied the paraphrase “Behold, the mountain of the Lord,” from its original form, as printed by the committee of the General Assembly in 1745, by some excellent touches.
Attention must now be directed to the hymns produced by the “Methodist” movement, which began about 1738, and which afterwards became divided, between those esteemed Arminian, under John Wesley, those whoMethodist hymns.adhered to the Moravians, when the original alliance between that body and the founders of Methodism was dissolved, and the Calvinists, of whom Whitfield was the leader, and Selina, countess of Huntingdon, the patroness. Each of these sections had its own hymn-writers, some of whom did, and others did not, secede from the Church of England. The Wesleyans had Charles Wesley, Robert Seagrave and Thomas Olivers; the Moravians, John Cennick, with whom, perhaps, may be classed John Byrom, who imbibed the mystical ideas of some of the German schools; the Calvinists, Augustus Montague Toplady, John Berridge, William Williams, Martin Madan, Thomas Haweis, Rowland Hill, John Newton and William Cowper.
Among all these writers, the palm undoubtedly belongs to Charles Wesley. In the first volume of hymns published by the two brothers are several good translations from the German, believed to be by John Wesley, who, althoughCharles Wesley.he translated and adapted, is not supposed to have written any original hymns; and the influence of German hymnody, particularly of the works of Paul Gerhardt, Scheffler, Tersteegen and Zinzendorf, may be traced in a large proportion of Charles Wesley’s works. He is more subjective and meditative than Watts and his school; there is a didactic turn, even in his most objective pieces, as, for example, in his Christmas and Easter hymns; most of his works are supplicatory, and his faults are connected with the same habit of mind. He is apt to repeat the same thoughts, and to lose force by redundancy—he runs sometimes even to a tedious length; his hymns are not always symmetrically constructed, or well balanced and finished off. But he has great truth, depth and variety of feeling; his diction is manly and always to the point; never florid, though sometimes passionate and not free from exaggeration; often vivid and picturesque. Of his spirited style there are few better examples than “O for a thousand tongues to sing,” “Blow ye the trumpet, blow,” “Rejoice, the Lord is King” and “Come, let us join our friends above”; of his more tender vein, “Happy soul, thy days are ended”; and of his fervid contemplative style (without going beyond hymns fit for general use), “O Thou who earnest from above,” “Forth in Thy name, O Lord, I go” and “Eternal beam of light divine.” With those whose taste is for hymns in which warm religious feelings are warmly and demonstratively expressed, “Jesus, lover of my soul,” is as popular as any of these.
Of the other Wesleyan hymn-writers, Olivers, originally aOlivers.Welsh shoemaker and afterwards a preacher, is the most remarkable. He is the author of only two works, both odes, in a stately metre, and from their length unfit for congregational singing, but one of them, “The God of Abraham praise,” an ode of singular power and beauty.
The Moravian Methodists produced few hymns now available for general use. The best are Cennick’s “Children of the heavenly King” and Hammond’s “Awake and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb,” the former of which (abridged),Cennick, Hammond, Byrom.and the latter as varied by Madan, are found in many hymn-books, and are deservedly esteemed. John Byrom, whose name we have thought it convenient to connect with these, though he did not belong to the Moravian community, was the author of a Christmas hymn (“Christians awake, salute the happy morn”) which enjoys great popularity; and also of a short subjective hymn, very fine both in feeling and in expression, “My spirit longeth for Thee within my troubled breast.”
The contributions of the Calvinistic Methodists to English hymnody are of greater extent and value. Few writers of hymns had higher gifts than Toplady, author of “Rock of ages,” by some esteemed the finest in the EnglishToplady.language. He was a man of ardent temperament, enthusiastic zeal, strong convictions and great energy of character. “He had,” says one of his biographers, “the courage of a lion, but his frame was brittle as glass.” Between him and John Wesley there was a violent opposition of opinion, and much acrimonious controversy; but the same fervour and zeal which made him an intemperate theologian gave warmth, richness and spirituality to his hymns. In some of them, particularly those which, like “Deathless principle, arise,” are meditations after the German manner, and not without direct obligation to German originals, the setting is somewhat too artificial; but his art is never inconsistent with a genuine flow of real feeling. Others (e.g.“When languor and disease invade” and “Your harps, ye trembling saints”) fail to sustain to the end the beauty with which they began, and would have been better for abridgment. But in all these, and in most of his other works, there is great force and sweetness, both of thought and language, and an easy and harmonious versification.
Berridge, William Williams (1717-1791) and Rowland Hill, all men remarkable for eccentricity, activity and the devotion of their lives to the special work of missionary preaching, though not the authors of many good hymns, composed,Berridge, Williams and R. Hill.or adapted from earlier compositions, some of great merit. One of Berridge, adapted from Erskine, has been already mentioned; another, adapted from Watts, is “Jesus, cast a look on me.” Williams, a Welshman, who wrote “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,” was especially an apostle of Calvinistic Methodism in his own country, and his hymns are still much used in the principality. Rowland Hill wrote the popular hymn beginning “Exalted high at God’s right hand.”
If, however, the number as well as the quality of good hymns available for general use is to be regarded, the authors of theOlney Hymnsare entitled to be placed at the head of all the writers of this Calvinistic school. The greaterCowper and Newton.number of theOlney Hymnsare, no doubt, homely and didactic; but to the best of them, and they are no inconsiderable proportion, the tenderness of Cowper and the manliness of John Newton (1725-1807) give the interest of contrast, as well as that of sustained reality. If Newton carried to some excess the sound principle laid down by him, that “perspicuity, simplicity and ease should be chiefly attended to, and the imagery and colouring of poetry, if admitted at all, should be indulged very sparingly and with great judgment,” if he is often dry and colloquial, he rises at other times into “soul-animating strains,” such as “Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God”; and sometimes (as in “Approach, my soul, the mercy seat”) rivals Cowper himself in depth of feeling. Cowper’s hymns in this book are, almost without exception, worthy of his name. Among them are “Hark, my soul, it is the Lord,” “There is a fountain filled with blood,” “Far from the world, O Lord, I flee,” “God moves in a mysterious way” and “Sometimes a light surprises.” Some, perhaps, even of these, and others of equal excellence (such as “O for a closer walk with God”), speak the language of a special experience, which, in Cowper’s case, was only too real, but which could not, without a degree of unreality not desirable in exercises of public worship, be applied to themselves by all ordinary Christians.
During the first quarter of the 19th century there were not many indications of the tendency, which afterwards became manifest, to enlarge the boundaries of British hymnody.The Remains of Henry Kirke White, published by19th-century hymns.R. Grant.Bowdler.Southey in 1807, contained a series of hymns, some of which are still in use; and a few of Bishop Heber’s hymns and those of Sir Robert Grant, which, though offending rather too much against John Newton’s canon, are well known and popular, appeared between 1811 and 1816, in theChristian Observer. In John Bowdler’s Remains, published soon after his death in 1815, there are a few more of the same, perhaps too scholarlike, character. But the chief hymn-writers of that period were two clergymen of the Established Church—one in Ireland, Thomas Kelly, and the other in England, William Hurn—who both became Nonconformists, and the Moravian poet, James Montgomery (1771-1854), a native of Scotland.
Kelly was the son of an Irish judge, and in 1804 published a small volume of ninety-six hymns, which grew in successive editions till, in the last before his death in 1854, they amounted to 765. There is, as might be expected,Kelly.in this great number a large preponderance of the didactic and commonplace. But not a few very excellent hymns may be gathered from them. Simple and natural, without the vivacity and terseness of Watts or the severity of Newton, Kelly has some points in common with both those writers, and he is less subjective than most of the “Methodist” school. His hymns beginning “Lo! He comes, let all adore Him,” and “Through the day Thy love hath spared us,” have a rich, melodious movement; and another, “We sing the praise of Him who died,” is distinguished by a calm, subdued power, rising gradually from a rather low to a very high key.
Hurn published in 1813 a volume of 370 hymns, which wereHurn.afterwards increased to 420. There is little in them which deserves to be saved from oblivion; but one at least, “There is a river deep and broad,” may bear comparison with the best of those which have been produced upon the same, and it is rather a favourite, theme.
ThePsalms and Hymnsof James Montgomery were published in 1822 and 1825, though written earlier. More cultivatedMontgomery.and artistic than Kelly, he is less simple and natural. His “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,” “Songs of praise the angels sang” and “Mercy alone can meet my case” are among his most successful efforts.
During this period, the collections of miscellaneous hymns for congregational use, of which the example was set by the Wesleys, Whitfield, Toplady and Lady Huntingdon, had greatly multiplied; and with them the practiceCollections of hymns.(for which, indeed, too many precedents existed in the history of Latin and German hymnody) of every collector altering the compositions of other men without scruple, to suit his own doctrine or taste; with the effect, too generally, of patching and disfiguring, spoiling and emasculating the works so altered, substituting neutral tints for natural colouring, and a dead for a living sense. In the Church of England the use of these collections had become frequent in churches and chapels, principally in cities and towns, where the sentiments of the clergy approximated to those of the Nonconformists. In rural parishes, when the clergy were not of the “Evangelical” school, they were generally held in disfavour; for which, even if doctrinal prepossessions had not entered into the question, the great want of taste and judgment often manifested in their compilation, and perhaps also the prevailing mediocrity of the bulk of the original compositions from which most of them were derived, would be enough to account. In addition to this, the idea that no hymns ought to be used in any services of the Church of England, except prose anthems after the third collect, without express royal or ecclesiastical authority, continued down to that time largely to prevail among high churchmen.
Two publications, which appeared almost simultaneously in 1827—Bishop Heber’sHymns, with a few added by Dean Milman, and John Keble’sChristian Year(not a hymn-book,Heber, Milman, Keble.but one from which several admirable hymns have been taken, and the well-spring of many streams of thought and feeling by which good hymns have since been produced)—introduced a new epoch, breaking down the barrier as to hymnody which had till then existed between the different theological schools of the Church of England.Mant.In this movement Richard Mant, bishop of Down, was also one of the first to co-operate. It soon received a great additional impulse from the increased attention which, about the same time, began to be paid to ancient hymnody, and from the publication in 1833 of Bunsen’sGesangbuch. Among its earliest fruits was theLyra apostolica, containing hymns, sonnets and other devotional poems, most of them originally contributed by some of the leading authors of theTracts for the Timesto theBritish Magazine; the finest of which is the pathetic “Lead, kindly Light, amid th’ encircling gloom,” by Cardinal Newman—well known, and universallyNewman.admired. From that time hymns and hymn-writers rapidly multiplied in the Church of England, and in Scotland also. Nearly 600 authors whose publications were later than 1827 are enumerated in Sedgwick’s catalogue of 1863, and about half a million hymns are now in existence. Works, critical and historical, upon the subject of hymns, have also multiplied; and collections for church use have become innumerable—several of the various religious denominations, and many of the leading ecclesiastical and religious societies, having issued hymn-books of their own, in addition to those compiled for particular dioceses, churches and chapels, and to books (likeHymns Ancient and Modern, published 1861, supplemented 1889, revised edition, 1905) which have become popular without any sanction from authority. To mention all the authors of good hymns since the commencement of this new epoch would be impossible; but probably no names could be chosen more fairly representative of its characteristic merits, and perhaps also of some of its defects, than those of Josiah Conder and James Edmeston among English Nonconformists; Henry Francis Lyte and Charlotte Elliott among evangelicals in the Church of England; John Mason Neale and Christopher Wordsworth, bishop of Lincoln, among English churchmen of the higher school; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Edward H. Plumptre, Frances Ridley Havergal; and in Scotland, Dr Horatius Bonar, Dr Norman Macleod and Dr George Matheson. American hymn-writers belong to the same schools, and have been affected by the same influences. Some of them haveenjoyed a just reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. Among those best known are John Greenleaf Whittier, Bishop Doane, Dr W. A. Muhlenberg and Thomas Hastings; and it is difficult to praise too highly such works as the Christmas hymn, “It came upon the midnight clear,” by Edmund H. Sears; the Ascension hymn, “Thou, who didst stoop below,” by Mrs S. E. Miles; two by Dr Ray Palmer, “My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary,” and “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts,” the latter of which is the best among several good English versions of “Jesu, dulcedo, cordium”; and “Lord of all being, throned afar,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The more modern “Moody and Sankey” hymns (see Moody, D. L.) popularized a new Evangelical type, and the Salvation Army has carried this still farther.
7.Conclusion.—The object aimed at in this article has been to trace the general history of the principal schools of ancient and modern hymnody, and especially the history of its use in the Christian church. For this purpose it has not been thought necessary to give any account of the hymns of Racine, Madame Guyon and others, who can hardly be classed with any school, nor of the works of Caesar Malan of Geneva (1787-1864) and other quite modern hymn-writers of the Reformed churches in Switzerland and France.
On a general view of the whole subject, hymnody is seen to have been a not inconsiderable factor in religious worship. It has been sometimes employed to disseminate and popularize particular views, but its spirit and influence has been, on the whole, catholic. It has embodied the faith, trust and hope, and no small part of the inward experience, of generation after generation of men, in many different countries and climates, of many different nations, and in many varieties of circumstances and condition. Coloured, indeed, by these differences, and also by the various modes in which the same truths have been apprehended by different minds and sometimes reflecting partial and imperfect conceptions of them, and errors with which they have been associated in particular churches, times and places, its testimony is, nevertheless, generally the same. It has upon it a stamp of genuineness which cannot be mistaken. It bears witness to the force of a central attraction more powerful than all causes of difference, which binds together times ancient and modern, nations of various race and language, churchmen and nonconformists, churches reformed and unreformed; to a true fundamental unity among good Christians; and to a substantial identity in their moral and spiritual experience.