The Hymn-Book of the Modern Church: Brief studies of hymns and hymn-writers

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 th...

Other poems in this series are well worth preserving, though perhaps few would find favour with the average congregation. For the most part they run smoothly; the language is th...

These verses might be headed ‘A Prayer before Controversy,’ but it is a shock to the reader on turning the page to find that the next verse shows how soon he descended from this...

I know not how it is. I think my sentiments and experience are as orthodox and Calvinistical as need be; and yet I am a sort of speckled bird among my Calvinist brethren. I am a...

The _Methodist Hymn-book_ contains contributions from several Methodist writers new to our authorized hymnal. Of those still living I will say nothing, but I cannot pass over th...

This was the view of death taken by the Evangelicals in the eighteenth century. The gospel of the great Revival brought life and immortality to light, robbed death of all its te...

Watts’s hymns were greatly helped in public favour by the publication of his _Psalms_ in 1719. The Dissenting Churches, for the most part, soon agreed with his own judgement tha...

It is at once necessary and almost superfluous to say that I know how much has been left unsaid, how many names there are deserving mention, how many hymns that might be referre...

All who love Him view His glory, Shining in His bruisèd Face: His dear Person on the rainbow, Now His people’s heads shall raise: Happy mourners! Now on clouds He comes! He comes!

Again, John Wesley’s hymns gave a great impulse, and added a great sanction, to the expression of personal experience in hymns. They were unfettered by what has been well descri...

The brothers taught that sanctification was progressive, yet might be ‘cut short in righteousness,’ a phrase which they often quoted. In one of the hymns for those that wait for...

These quotations must suffice for the psalms of the period between the Old and New Versions. Those who are interested in this not very attractive literature will find specimens...

They set the tone of the Church of England, and they revealed with no inefficient or temporary effect to the uncultured and the unlearned the true refinement of worship. They un...

but by the dull canals of Babylon, where the exiled people wept when they remembered Zion. Even the most extreme of modern English critics tells us that, ‘As mere academical exe...

From the beginning, day of days, Set apart for holy praise, When He bade the willing earth All its hidden stores bring forth, When He made the shining heaven, Then to man this d...

Benjamin Beddome (1717-95) was for more than half a century a Baptist minister at Bourton-on-the-Water, refusing for the sake of his rustic flock the attractions of a call to mo...

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 i...

W We give Thee but Thine own _Walsham How_ We plough the fields and scatter _Matthias Claudius_ We saw Thee not when Thou didst come _Gurney_ Weary of earth and laden with my si...

The earlier stages of our study may yield little actual fruit in the shape of hymns which a modern editor would delight to add to his hymn-book. But it yields much in the way of...

[194]He made a most unpoetic recast of Wesley’s ‘All ye that pass by’; but in the Index he is too honest to give Wesley’s name, and (I presume) had too much self-respect to give...

S Saved from the fear of hell and death 159 Saviour, for Thy love we praise Thee 305 See how great a flame aspires 197, 259 Sent by my Lord, on you I call 190 She, too, who touc...