[3]Henry Ward Beecher placed a high value on the song service of the church: “I have never loved men under any circumstances as I have loved them while singing with them; never at any other time have I been so near heaven with you, as in those hours when our songs were wafted thitherward.”
[4]“In all great religious movements the people have been inspired with a passion for singing. They have sung their creed: it seems the freest and most natural way of declaring their triumphant belief in great Christian truths, forgotten or denied in previous times of spiritual depression and now restored to their rightful place in the thought and life of the Church. Song has expressed and intensified their enthusiasm, their new faith, their new joy, their new determination to do the will of God.” (Dr. W. R. Dale.)
[5]Pratt,Musical Ministries.
[6]Ephesians 5: 18-20.
[7]Colossians 3: 16.
[8]I Corinthians 14: 15.
[9]Over three-quarters of a century ago, this lament was made by a prominent New England minister: “Many a man, who carefully interrogates his own experience, will confess that, while the voice of public prayer readily engages his attention and carries with it his devout desires, it is not so with the act of praise; that he very seldom finds his affections rising upon its notes to heaven—very seldom can he say at its close that he has worshiped God. The song has been wafted near him as a vehicle for conveying upward the sweet odor of a spiritual service, but the offering has been withheld, and the song ascends as empty of divine honors as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” (Rev. Daniel L. Furber, inHymns and Choirs.)
[1]“To get behind the hymnbook to the men and women who wrote its contents, and to the events, whether personal or public, out of which it sprang and which it so graciously mirrors, is to enter a world palpitating with human interest. For a hymnbook is a transcript of real life, a poetical accompaniment to real events and real experiences. Like all literature that counts, it rises directly out of life.” (Frederick J. Gillman, inThe Evolution of the English Hymn. [New York: The Macmillan Co., 1927.] Used by permission.)
[2]J. Balcom Reeves,The Hymn in History and Literature. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1924). Used by permission.
[3]“There is an inclination to fence in what are called ‘literary lyrics,’ as if to fence out singing lyrics! Now there is, of course, a distinction between poems meant to be sung and poems written in the pattern of lyrical poetry, but never meant to be sung; but the terminology which classes one kind as literary, thereby implying that the other kind is not of the realm of literature, is inaccurate and unhappy.”Ibid.
[4]“In his volume,The English Lyric, Professor Felix E. Schelling virtually disposes of the hymn with the remark that ‘we may or may not “accept” certain hymns, but we do not have to read them.’ That is readily granted—unless, of course, one wishes to know them or to write just criticism about them.”Ibid.
[5]“Frequently a hymn is a prayer; and it is a rule for the structure of prayers that they exclude all those recondite figures, dazzling comparisons, flashing metaphors, which, while grateful to certain minds of poetic excitability, are offensive to more sober and staid natures, and are not congenial with the lowly spirit of a suppliant at the throne of grace. A simile may be shining, but it may not be exactly chaste; and a hymn prefers pure beauty to bedizening ornament.” (Dr. Edwards A. Park, inHymns and Choirs.)
[6]These numbers, of course, refer to the number of syllables in a line.
[1]The vagaries of credit for writing given hymns is illustrated in the appearance of the intensely Calvinistic Toplady’s name as the writer of Charles Wesley’s intensely Arminian “Blow ye the trumpet, blow.”
[2]Those who care to make a fuller study of the revision of hymns than the following discussion affords are referred to the full treatment of the subject, and to the abundant cases cited, by Professor Edwards A. Park, D.D., of Andover Theological Seminary, inHymns and Choirs, issued in 1860 by Drs. Austin Phelps, Edwards A. Park, and Daniel L. Furber. The lapse of years has in no way diminished the value of this volume. It is unfortunately out of print and inaccessible to the average pastor, outside of public libraries.
[1]“But the emotional life, strongest, no doubt, in youth, remains a lifelong element of personality and especially of the religious personality. Feeling is not merely an integral part of religious experience, it is central, vital, its inmost core. William James speaks of it as the deeper source of religion, and says that ‘philosophical and theological formulas come below it in importance. It is the dynamic factor in the religious life. When it is absent, religion degenerates into mere formalism or barren intellectualism.’” (Gillman, inThe Evolution of the English Hymn.)
[2]Rev. Louis F. Benson, D.D., inThe Hymnody of the Christian Church. (New York: Harper and Bros., 1927.) Used by permission.
[1]Dr. Harris says of his discovery, “The manuscript had been lying with a heap of other stray leaves of manuscript on the shelves of my library without awakening any suspicion that it contained a lost hymnbook of the early Church of the apostolic times, or at the very latest of the sub-apostolic times.”
[1]There is frequent lament that in the translations of Greek, Latin, and German hymns into English much of the original beauty is lost. But the converse is also true: that such translators as Neale, Brownlie, and Palmer have taken the uncut diamonds of the Greek and Latin Fathers and so transformed them by their lapidarian skill that the world-wide Christian Church is rejoicing in their beauty.
[2]TheTe Deumhas only slight claims to Greek origin and is postponed to a later chapter.
[3]In like manner the rationalists of the age of Frederick the Great of Prussia sought to prevent the use of the Lutheran hymns; the Arians in the pre-Wesleyan times contended for the psalm versions without doxologies recognizing the Trinity; in our own day, extreme Modernists belittle Christian hymns as dogmatic and unpoetical and urge the use of sociological hymns.
[4]This transfer of the song to clerical singers soon had its inevitable result. Jerome begins to be apprehensive that the form of singing would come to have too exclusive consideration. He complained that those who led the song, like comedians, “smoothed their throats with soft drinks in order to render their melodies more impressive, and that the heart alone can properly make melody to God.“
[1]“The Greek language lived long and died slowly, and the Christian hymn writers wrote in its decadence.” (Rev. John Brownlie, in his preface toHymns of the Greek Church.)
[2]The canon is an elaborate service consisting of nine odes or hymns of different forms.
[1]“Jesus, the very thought of Thee” (Caswall) or “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts” (Palmer).
[2]“O sacred Head, now wounded,” translated by James W. Alexander from Paul Gerhardt’s “O Haupt voll Blut and Wunden,” a German version of the Latin hymn above.
[3]Imagine a poem of such length in the difficult “Leonine hexameter” of which the following translated lines will give an inkling:
“These are the latter times, these are not better times, let us stand waiting!Lo, how with awfulness, He, first in lawfulness, comes arbitrating.”
“These are the latter times, these are not better times, let us stand waiting!
Lo, how with awfulness, He, first in lawfulness, comes arbitrating.”
Dr. Neale wisely reduced his centos to a plain meter, giving them practical usefulness.
[4]Matthew Arnold described it as “the utterance of all that is exquisite in the spirit of its century.” (Quoted by Gillman, in hisEvolution of the English Hymn.)
[1]As an indication of how prevalent this singing of religious hymns was, we note the fact that in 1512, twelve years before Luther’s first hymnbook appeared, a collection of Roman Catholic hymns, set to profane tunes, was issued in Venice, Italy.
[2]“To Luther belongs the extraordinary merit of having given to the German people in their own tongue the Bible, the Catechism, and the Hymnbook, so that God might speak directly to them in his Word, and that they might directly answer him in their songs.” Dr. Philip Schaff adds elsewhere that Luther “is the father of the modern High German language and literature,” and that these are the common possession of the Germanic tribes with their diversified dialects from the Adriatic to the Baltic Sea. Erasmus Alber, a contemporary who wrote twenty excellent hymns, calls Luther “the German Cicero, who not only reformed religion, but also the German language.” Hans Sachs, the poet cobbler of Nuremberg, who, besides a great deal of general poetry, also wrote a number of hymns, styled Luther “the nightingale of Wittenberg.”
[1]Dr. Schaff.
[1]Dr. Louis F. Benson has well characterized this Psalter in its influence on French character: “The metrical Psalter made the Huguenot character. No doubt a character nourished on Old Testament ideals will lack the full symmetry of the Gospel. But the Huguenot was a warrior, first called to fight and suffer for his faith. And in singing psalms he found his confidence and strength.... In the wars of religion, the Psalms in meter were the songs of camp and march, the war cry on the field, the swan song at the martyr’s stake.”
[2]“Of course, psalms in the ballad form were easily learned and kept in memory. And in the days when the ability to read was less general than now, these rhymes, scattered so freely broadcast, took root in many a mind and contributed powerfully to the righteousness and stability of the nation.” (J. Balcom Reeves, inThe Hymn in History and Literature.)
[1]Comparing the English church with the German, Horder exclaims: “The Puritans, indeed, had in their midst a finer poet than Luther, but they never introduced even Milton’s superb renderings of certain of the Psalms into their worship. What a use Luther would have put Milton to, if he had been a member of his church! What songs he would have written! Aye, what music, too!”
[2]“Thus the psalms have been at once an inspiration and a bondage:an inspirationin that they have kindled the fire which has produced the hymnody of the entire church;a bondage, because, by stereotyping religious expression, they robbed the heart of the right to express in its own words the fears, the joys, the hopes that the Divine Spirit had kindled in their souls.” (W. Garrett Horder, inThe Hymn Lover.)
[3]Thomas Wright in his recentLife of Isaac Wattsremarks: “Earlier in this work I referred to Watts’ enthusiasm for, and his indebtedness to, John Mason, who deserves rather than any other writer the name of the Father of the Modern Hymn. If there had not been a Mason there would never have been a Watts.”
[1]It is perhaps needless to say that the word “vulgar” did not have the opprobrious connotation that it inevitably brings today. It simply meant “ordinary.”
[2]George W. Garrett Horder, inThe Hymn Lover.
[1]“It was their love of social psalmody that made Methodist hymnody what it was, and it was the desire to better parochial psalmody that furnished John Wesley with the original motive of his work in hymnody.” (Dr. Louis F. Benson, inThe English Hymn. [New York: Harper and Bros.] Used by permission.)
[2]“John Wesley was a good writer and preacher, and possessed extensive learning. He was a man of unfailing perseverance, great self-denial, large liberality, singular devotedness to his Master’s service, and eminent piety. But perhaps his most remarkable gift was the power he possessed of making men willing to fall in with his purposes and of organizing systematic action for the benefit of his followers.” (Josiah Miller, inSingers and Songs of the Church.)
[3]“Wesley, like Watts, wrote very freely and spontaneously, as the thousands of lyrics he wrote bear witness. Not all of them were good; much of the verse reminds one of a painter’s tentative sketches. But had he not freely written so many, he might not have written the smaller number so consummately well.” (J. Balcom Reeves, inThe Hymn in History and Literature.)
[4]“The Wesley hymnbooks constitute an extraordinary interesting human document, palpitating with real life. Every event of those wonderful years, every experience, public or private, through which the singers passed, is mirrored in some sweet song. But there is more in them than that. They arePilgrim’s Progressin verse. They trace the religious life of every man as he travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. They unfold the spiritual drama of man, his hopes and fears, his aspirations and affections, his failures and victories; each chequered experience trembles into songs, and scarcely a note is missing. Springing from the heart of the eighteenth century, their music seems to drown its licentiousness and frivolity in paeans of praise.” (Frederick J. Gillman, inThe Evolution of the English Hymn.)
[5]Charles Wesley’s best hymns—and who would dare estimate his genius on any other basis?—meet John Drinkwater’s two tests of vital poetry:
(1) It must spring from vital and intense personal experience.
(2) It must transfer to the reader by “pregnant and living words” the ecstasy that swelled the heart of the poet.
[6]“The style of Watts is austere, objective, formal; the style of Wesley is warm, subjective, intimate.” (J. Balcom Reeves, inThe Hymn in History and Literature.)
[7]Dr. Benson in his exhaustive treatise onThe English Hymnremarks: “The Wesleys inaugurated a great spiritual revival; and their hymns did as much as any human agency to kindle and replenish its fervor.... John Wesley led an ecclesiastical revolt and, failing to conquer his own church, established a new one of phenomenal proportions: the hymns prefigured the constitution of the new church and formed the manual of its spiritual discipline.”
[8]He frankly expressed his inhospitable attitude: “Were we to encourage little poets, we should soon be overrun.”
[1]The Oxford or Tractarian Movement on the one hand sought a deeper spiritual life than was then prevalent, and on the other emphasized the solidarity of the Church of Christ before and after the Reformation. It recognized the authority of the pre-Reformation theology and of the associated ceremonial liturgy. Many of its leaders entered the Roman Catholic Church, accepting even its worship of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and of the saints.
[1]The condition of congregational singing at this time is reported by Rev. Thomas Walter as follows: “Our tunes are left to the mercy of every unskilful throat to chop and alter, to twist and change, according to their infinitely diverse and no less odd humors and fancies. I have myself paused twice in one note to take breath. No two men in the congregation quaver alike or together; it sounds in the ears of a good judge like five hundred tunes roared out at the same time with perpetual interferings with one another.”
[2]It is related of a New England minister, Rev. T. Bellamy, that after the choir had outdone all its past discord and blundering in rendering the Psalm, he announced another and admonished his choir, “You must try again, for it is impossible to preach after such singing.”
[1]Dr. S. Weir Mitchell.
[2]Dr. Louis F. Benson says of Charles Wesley’s “Jesus, lover of my soul”: “The suspicion remains that the secret of its appeal lies in a poetic beauty that the average man feels without analyzing it, and in a perfection of craftsmanship that makes him want to sing it simply because it awakens the spirit of song in him, rather than a mood of reflection.”
[3]The Wesleyan doctrine of the Second Work, or Holiness, now known as “The Victorious Life.”
[4]It will be a good introduction to this minute study to work out the Biblical authority for the dozen or more allusions.
[5]Hebrews 12:1.
[6]Fleming H. Revell Co. New York.
[7]A full discussion of hymn tunes will be found in Chapters X to XII ofMusic in Work and Worshipor in Chapters V to X inPractical Church Music, of which books the present writer is the author. Both published by Fleming H. Revell Co. New York.
[1]A fuller discussion of this topic will be found in Chapter XXIX ofMusic in Work and Worship, by the present writer.
[2]When Moody was superintendent of a Sunday school in Chicago, he had a vicious boy in one of the classes whom he had reprimanded again and again for disturbing the meeting. Finally one Sunday the boy was unusually fractious and Moody turned to his chorister and said, “When I get up and walk up the aisle, you start ‘Hold the Fort’ as vigorously as you can.” While the song was being sung with much enthusiasm, Moody dragged the boy out of the class by the collar, took him to an adjacent room, and punished him drastically while the school sang and submerged the boy’s cries. The boy grew up, became a minister, and often told with glee the story of how Moody started the work of grace in his heart.
[1]In regular services, single verse tunes may be played through, but only the last half of double verse tunes should be allowed, lest the momentum gained by the introductory comment be lost.
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