PART II

HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF HYMNS

_Chapter VII_ APOSTOLIC ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

In considering the origin of the Christian hymn, one must remember that it is an outgrowth of man’s innate impulse to express his feelings in hymns and songs. That impulse is constitutional; man sings because he was so made that he cannot help singing.

Furthermore, the Christian hymn is the natural development of the Hebrew psalm, just as Christianity is the consummation of the Jewish religion. The two systems of religion are related as closely as the foundation and the superstructure of a great temple. We shall find the Hebrew voice of worship not only leading the songs of the Apostolic Church, but through all the succeeding ages sounding the controlling note of all Christian praise. David and the sons of Asaph led the choirs and congregations in chapel and church and cathedral as truly as they did those in the temple and synagogues. Christianity gave the Psalms a larger, more inspiring message and a more literary and more musical setting; but the thrumming of David’s harp has been heard through all the long centuries and is still heard around the world.

The Greek atmosphere in which the Early Church developed might be supposed to have influenced the character of the Apostolic hymnody; but the Greek Christians were not literary in culture, and the Greek religion had no congregational singing. It took several generations before it began to affect the form and music of the Christian hymnody, but eventually it was to become a formative force.

I. SACRED SONG IN THE NEW CHRISTIAN CHURCH

_The Rise of Sacred Song in Apostolic Times._

But when the baptism of the Holy Spirit vitalized and organized the Christian Church, the tide of sacred song began to swell. It had a great heritage from the dying Jewish church: its fundamental ideas, its laws, its prophets, its hope of the Messiah now transformed into a reality; but not the least of its inheritances were the habit of praise and worship, and the lyrics that gave them form.

We read that the Church was filled with joy and praised God. Incidentally, we learn that, despite sufferings from cruel scourging, Paul and Silas sang hymns in the Philippian prison, showing that with the new wine of Christian joy there were created new bottles to contain it. We may be sure this was not an isolated instance, but the occurrence of an established practice.

_Apostolic Emphasis of Sacred Song._

James says, “Is any merry, let him sing psalms.” Whether he meant David’s or “private” psalms is left open to conjecture. The American Revised Version translates it “praise.” Paul is most definite in recognizing “hymns and spiritual songs” as distinguished from “psalms.” Some commentators have interpreted the latter as David’s psalms, the “hymns” as the already accepted canticles, and the “spiritual songs” as the new songs, more or less improvised, that were sung by individuals, “teaching and admonishing one another,” “singing with grace in the heart.”

Paul’s conception of the hymn, therefore, was not a collective hymn, sung by all, but a hymn of edification sung by individual singers. The practice of solo singing assumed in Paul’s exhortations in Ephesians and Colossians, due to the perennial danger of governmental raids and persecutions, still continued in the time of Tertullian (circa 198). He writes that after their common meal “each man, according as he is able, is called on, out of the Holy Scriptures, or of his own mind, to sing publicly to God. Hence it is proved in what degree he hath drunken”—a refutation of the common charge of gluttony and drunkenness.

_Traces of Hymns in the Epistles._

In the eagerness to unearth traces of the supposed hymnody of the Apostolic church, the wish has been father to the thought, and passages have been pointed out as probable quotations from hymns current in the churches. Some of them are quite plausible, but others are examples of the periodic structure so manifest in the style of both Christ and Paul and in the Oriental proverbial form, but lacking the parallelism of the Psalms.

In Ephesians 5:14, Paul has the formula of quotation from the Old Testament, but no such passage, or anything approaching it, can be found in either the canonical or uncanonical books of the Old Testament. If we should substitute “it” for “he,” the second word of the passage “it” might refer to a hymn in common use. Westcott and Hort put it in metrical form, but the Revised Versions do not. It is very plausible, however; even in the English translation the structure is distinctly metrical:

“Awake, thou that sleepest, And arise from the dead, And Christ shall give thee light.”

Equally plausible is the passage in 1 Timothy 3:16, although not formally quoted:

“God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the spirit, Seen of angels, Preached unto the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up into glory.”

This is particularly true of such passages as have rhetorical warmth rather than inherent lyric quality. The extraordinary flight of the Spirit that has been called the “Hymn of Love” (1 Cor. 13) can be called a hymn only by stretching the limits of the definition beyond all reasonable bounds. Noble as it is, no composer has ever succeeded in setting it to worthy music. As well call Lincoln’s Gettysburg address a Memorial Day Hymn. The same may be said of the ecstatic passage which opens Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (1:2-12).

_The Hymns of the Apocalypse._

It has been suggested that the choral passages of the Book of Revelation are quotations from current hymns. If that were true, how could the little gatherings of Christians have risen to the majesty of these marvelous hymns of adoration, either vocally or spiritually? They are so intimately a part of the stupendous scenes in which they appear as to make their being merely quotations seem impossible. Only the itch of a German-type scholarship to press out the last drop of possibility from any given historical material, and the calm assurance that the results must be true, since it has recognized them, can explain this hypothesis.

These hymns are too integral a part of the scenes, too consonant with their elevated spirit, and logically too inevitable, that they should have been mechanically introduced or even adapted from current hymns—they are too choral in the grand manner.

In general, we may accept the same judgment of Dr. Lyman Coleman, in his work _The Primitive Church_. “The argument is not conclusive, and all the learned criticism, the talent and the taste, that have been employed on this point, leave us little else than uncertain conjecture on which to build a hypothesis.”

“_The Odes of Solomon._”

“The Odes of Solomon” is a Syriac collection of hymns which good authorities claim to be of the Apostolic Age; one authority, Mrs. Gibson, insists that it precedes Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, while the most conservative concede that it belongs to the first century, or the first half of the second.

Its discoverer, Dr. Rendell Harris, Director of studies at Woodbrooke, the Quaker center at Selly Oak, England, says of the “Odes”: “They are utterly radiant with faith and love, shot through and through with what the New Testament calls ‘the joy of the Lord.’” He quotes one of them: “A great day has shined upon us; marvelous is He who has given us of His glory. Let us, therefore, all of us unite together in the name of the Lord, and let us honor Him in His goodness, and let us meditate in His love by night and by day.”[1]

The first stanza of Ode XXVI is translated as follows:

I poured out praise to the Lord, For I am his: And I will speak his holy song, For my heart is with him, For his harp is in my hands, And the odes of his rest shall not be silent. I will cry unto him from my whole heart; I will praise and exalt him with all my members. For from the East and even to the West Is his praise; And from the South and even to the North Is his confession: And from the top of the hills to their utmost bound Is his perfection.

_The Failure of Apostolic Spiritual Songs to Survive._

It is likely that the reason why no definitely recognized collection of hymns has survived from Apostolic times, and immediately thereafter, is that the singing, outside of the Psalms and Gospel canticles, was largely extemporaneous. The later hymnic form and structure had not yet developed. Dr. Neale, who deserves to be recognized as a high authority, referring to the apostolic “hymns” and “spiritual songs,” says: “From the brief allusions we find to the subject in the New Testament we should gather that the hymns and spiritual songs of the Apostles were written in metrical prose.” Rhyming did not come into use until very much later. The singing was in recitative with rather formless melodies. Such extemporizations as appealed to the body of believers were passed on from place to place, the very best from generation to generation, from memory and by word of mouth, for illiteracy was the common lot of the mass of early believers. These people’s spiritual songs were presently lost, much as were most of our early American “spirituals” that served so excellent a purpose.

Indeed, it would be entirely correct to conceive of the stream of devout song flowing steadily on from the “hymns and spiritual songs” of the Apostolic times down through the centuries until our own time, sometimes finding temporary subterranean channels, as with the Albigenses, the Hussites, and the Lollards, but always inspiring, refreshing, and comforting the generations as it passes. It was the _Laus Perennis_, the unfailing sacrifice of praise, that day and night rose without break or intermission to the ears of the Almighty. In every generation, hymns that had nobly served preceding generations were replaced by new ones fresh from throbbing hearts that had re-experienced the vital truths of Christianity.

It is no condemnation of a hymn that the Church lays it aside. That it served only for a season may have been due to its peculiar adaptation to the individuality of the age, to the temporary conditions and needs among God’s saints of that particular time.

_Chapter VIII_ THE POST-APOSTOLIC HYMN

_The Post-Apostolic Church a Singing Church._

Whatever conclusion we reach regarding the song service during the Apostolic age, because of the meager facts we have regarding it, we have sufficient information regarding the second, third, and fourth centuries to be sure that the hymn had become a more and more important feature of the religious life. The tide of song swells louder and higher as the generations pass. Clement of Alexandria, the reputed writer of the earliest surviving Christian hymn, “Shepherd of tender youth,” writes, “We cultivate our fields, praising; we sail the sea, hymning.” Jerome writes to Marcellus, “You could not go into the field, but you might hear the plowman at his hallelujahs, the mower at his hymns, and the vinedresser singing David’s psalms.” Tertullian, a little earlier, when the antiphonal singing was still in vogue, objects to the marriage of a Christian with an unbeliever, because they cannot sing together, whereas the Christian mates each would challenge the other “which shall better chant to the Lord.” The early church was, therefore, a singing church.

Tertullian was not a writer of hymns, for he declared “We have a plenty of verses, sentences, songs, proverbs.” We do not have their hymns, but we have the names of prominent hymn writers who sealed their faith with their blood: Ignatius, Athenogenes, Hippolytus, and many others who did not win a martyr’s crown.

All these hymns blossomed out of the consuming love for the Lord Jesus Christ, for which the Jewish psalms could give no expression. That they were used for public worship we have the testimony of Pliny (A.D. 110). His report from Bithynia to the Emperor Trajan was that “the new sect have a custom of meeting before dawn on a stated day and singing by turn a hymn to Christ as God.”

_The Earliest Surviving Hymns._

Unless we accept the Syriac “Odes of Solomon” as an apostolic hymnbook, none of the “spiritual songs” of that age survive. The hymn written (or quoted?) by Clement in 170 is accepted as the earliest hymn handed down to us, with the “Candlelight Hymn” as possibly contemporaneous.

Clement’s hymn “Shepherd of tender youth” is found in most of our hymnals and is in actual use.[1] Dr. Henry M. Dexter’s version, as generally used, is an attenuation suited to the taste of our day rather than a faithful reproduction of the original, which begins with a rather violent figure, “Curb for stubborn steed” (E. H. Plumptre).

The date of the “Candlelight Hymn” is very uncertain. It was so old in 370 that another St. Basil could throw no light on its origin: “It seemed fitting to our fathers not to receive the gift of light at eventide in silence, but on its appearing immediately to give thanks.” The version by John Keble is still in use:

“Hail, glad’ning Light, of His pure glory poured Who is the immortal Father heavenly, blest, Holiest of holies, Jesus Christ, our Lord! Now we are come to the sun’s hour of rest; The lights of evening round us shine; We hymn the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit divine.”

_The Relation of Hymns to Psalms and Canticles._

In the very nature of the case, these individual songs and hymns and psalms had no authority back of them. They were the “spirituals,” the Gospel songs of their day and generation. Most of them were improvisations for a single service—flying sparks from the anvil of the Spirit. Undoubtedly others had a longer life, were written out and passed from hand to hand and even from generation to generation.

These hymns were mostly in Greek, though some were in Syriac, and as far as they were given a standard form they used Greek classical meters. Some were modeled on the Septuagint psalms and were known as “private psalms.” Many were odes, like the “Odes of Solomon.”

But it is quite evident that this body of song was never regarded as on an equality with the Psalms of the Jewish church, or with the Canticles of the New Testament. These had the sanctions of the rapidly crystallizing canon of the New Testament, and the established canon of the Old, which gave an authority that was lacking in the current hymnody. The relation was even more pronounced than that in our own day between the body of hymns surviving through the generations recognized as “standard” and the current religious songs of the hour.

In addition to the Psalms taken over from the Jewish psalter (not over one-half of which were ever sung) and the Canticles of Luke’s Gospel, there gradually rose a subsidiary body of canticles which by the fourth century had been for the most part fully formulated. They were developments of passages from both the Old and New Testament. In addition to the ejaculatory responses, “Alleluia” and “Hosanna,” the following were hymns authorized to be used in Christian services:

1. The _Gloria in Excelsis_, developed from the song of the angels as found in Luke, known as the Greater Doxology.

2. The _Ter Sanctus_, based on Isaiah 6:3, possibly later associated with Revelation 4:8, and called the Cherubical Hymn.

3. The _Benedicite_, the song of the three Hebrew children in the furnace, a paraphrase of the forty-eighth Psalm, likely taken from the Apocrypha.

4. The _Gloria Patri_ or Lesser Doxology, apparently handed down from the Apostolic time, developed from the baptismal formula. It was expanded during the Arian controversy, adding “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.”[2]

_The Hymn as Propaganda._

The inferiority of the popular hymnody became ever more pronounced as the hymn was employed by heretical sects as a means of propagating their pernicious doctrines. Bardesanes and his son Harmonius in Edessa, Asia, a little later composed an entire psalter of one hundred and fifty psalms, “deserting David’s truth and preserving David’s numbers,” as Ephrem Syrus expressed it.

The Gnostic hymns during the third century were slowly undermining the faith of the people, but it was not until Arius appeared with his denial of the deity of Jesus Christ and spread broadcast his “Thalia,” a collection of practical hymns emphasizing practical duties and the value of the daily life of the people, as well as magnifying the humanity of Jesus, that the full extent of the revolution in the religious sentiment of the people became evident. He fitted his measures to well-known popular tunes, sung only by those “who sing songs over their wine with noise and revel.”

Arius, an ungainly giant of tremendous force of personality and unbounded energy, thus began a movement that was to convulse with its controversy the whole Roman Empire through many generations, even down to our own times, and was to prepare Asia and Northern Africa for the superimposition of the Mohammedan personality and cult upon an emasculated Christianity.

In 269, Paul of Samosata, an Arian Bishop, banished from his churches the hymns that had come down from the second century because they were addressed to Christ as God and “as being innovations, the work of men of later times.” He began the Arian fashion of propaganda by means of hymns. As an answer to this came the great hymnic outburst of the fourth century, headed by Gregory of Nazianzus and participated in by St. Chrysostom.[3]

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Synod that met in Laodicea in 363 ordered that “psalms composed by private men must not be read in the church, nor uncanonical books, but only the canonical of the New and Old Testament.”

Nor need we wonder that with the Arian fanatics interrupting orthodox services by starting their heterodox hymns, the same Synod decided that “beside the psalm singers appointed thereto who mount the ambo and sing out of the book, no others shall sing in church.”

This robbing the lips and the hearts of the congregation of its share of the public praise, in order to prevent Gnostic and Arian heretics from profaning public services with their strife and contention, hardened into a perpetual prohibition, and in the Greek church the people are mute to this day.[4]

It should be remembered that these prohibitions applied only to public services and their liturgies. Outside the walls of the larger churches the people were still singing. Indeed, the popular song was used by the orthodox to displace the heretical songs of the Arians, as was done by Chrysostom in Constantinople, in order to stem the tide of attack on the doctrine of the deity of Christ.

_Chapter IX_ THE GREEK HYMNODY

I. EARLY GREEK HYMNS

The reaction of the Greek Church to the hymnic attack of Arians interests us because of its influence on the general development of the Christian hymn.

Of the earliest hymn writers we know little, and their work has not come down to us. We have a hymn of Methodius (311) based on the parable of the ten virgins, of considerable vigor and merit.

The most prominent figure that greets us is that of Gregory of Nazianzus (327-389). He was called to Constantinople by the Emperor Theodosius to lead the orthodox forces against the Arian enemy. He was appointed court preacher, Patriarch of the Eastern Church, and president of the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople; but the pious, gentle monk, while a great preacher and a fertile hymn writer (it is said that he wrote thirty thousand hymns), was not fitted for the strife and intrigue rampant in the Capital; within a few years he returned to his cell at Nazianzus in Cappadocia. His hymns are ranked very high. Dr. Brownlee has given an excellent version of his “Evening Hymn”:

“O word of truth! In devious paths My wayward feet have trod; I have not kept the day serene I gave at morn to God.

And now ’tis night, and night within, O God, the light hath fled! I have not kept the vow I made When morn its glories shed.

For clouds of gloom from nether world Obscured my upward way; O Christ, the Light, thy light bestow, And turn my night to day!”

Synesius (375-430), Bishop of Cyrene, was a brilliant man, a friend of Hypatia, whom most general readers know as the heroine of Charles Kingsley’s great historical romance. He wrote some very tender hymns and poems that have been widely appreciated. He is best known by his hymn, “Lord Jesus, think on me,” a free paraphrase of which (by Allen W. Chatfield) is found in some of our hymnals.

Anatolius (d. 458) is known to us, not as the able and noble Byzantine pontiff, but as the original writer of two quite different hymns, translated by Dr. Mason Neale: the evening hymn, “The day is past and over,” and the descriptive hymn, “Fierce was the wild billow.” He was one of the first to forsake the classical forms and to put his thoughts into harmonious prose. He wrote few hymns, but all of great excellence.

II. THE LATER GREEK HYMNS

The earlier Greek hymn writers wrote in the classical measures and evinced an admirable sense of form; but the later hymnists, following the example of Anatolius, wrote in rhythmical prose and not by any means as felicitously. Moreover, the later Greek language greatly degenerated, losing its lucidity and subtlety of expression.[1]

The later Greek hymns had many ecclesiastical and theological phrases difficult to render. They were filled with grotesque figures; the worship of Mary, and even of the saints, is offensive. Being mostly in rhythmical prose, they were not intended to be sung—at most only to be chanted. Really they were not hymns in the ordinary sense of the word; rather they were the raw materials of hymns. As Dr. Brownlie says, “The writers are not poets, in the true sense, and their language is not Greek as we have known it.”

The more conspicuous of these later Greek devotional writers do not appear until the eighth century.

Andrew of Crete (660-732), an archbishop, was a very voluminous devotional writer. Among his more important works are the “Great Canon,”[2] the “Triodion,” and the “Pentecostarion.” The “Great Canon” has more than three hundred stanzas, illustrating by Scripture examples the feelings of a penitent confessing his sins. He is represented in some of our hymnals by the hymn, “Christian, dost thou see them?” translated by Dr. John Mason Neale and said to be taken from the “Great Canon.”

The other hymnists of this century are John of Damascus (d.780), his foster-brother Cosmas, the Melodist (d.760), and Stephen the Sabaite, his nephew (725-794).

John of Damascus wrote the best Greek of his generation and was most poetical in spirit and style. Gibbon calls him the “last of the Greek Fathers.” His verse is characterized by being written in iambics (the most common measure in modern hymns). His best-known hymn is “’Tis the day of resurrection,” taken from his great Easter canon, styled the “Queen of Canons” and the “Golden Canon” by the Greek Church.

John’s foster-brother, Cosmas, survives in the Christmas hymn, “Christ is born! exalt his name.” Although his canons are very thoughtful, his style is often turgid and difficult to follow.

Stephen the Sabaite, the nephew of John of Damascus, the third of this “nest of singing birds” (to use Dr. Gillman’s phrase), came to Mar Saba as a boy and remained there all his life. Dr. Neale found the inspiration of his hymn “Art thou weary, art thou languid?” in some lines of Stephen.

These three Greek hymn writers were monks in the monastery of San Saba, to be seen to the north from the highway between Jerusalem and Jericho, on the rugged heights overlooking the Jordan valley.

Another group of Greek hymn writers appears a little later, headed by Theodore (759-826), abbot of the Studium, a great monastery at Constantinople. The group was quite controversial, the occasion being not the Deity of Christ, but the enforced destruction of ikons, or images. The hymns of this group were not all controversial. Theoctistus (c.890), an obscure and later member of it, when the heat of strife had presumably subsided, could write this devout hymn of praise to Christ:

“Jesu, name all names above, Jesu, best and dearest. Jesu, fount of perfect love, Holiest, tend’rest, nearest.

Jesu, source of grace completest, Jesu purest, Jesu sweetest. Jesu, well of power divine, Make me, keep me, seal me thine.”

Joseph of the Studium (c.840), because of his many hymns, was called the Hymnographer. He wrote too much to write well. His work is characterized as tautological, tawdry, tedious. Three of his hymns, however, had enough suggestiveness to inspire Dr. Neale to write “Let our choir new anthems raise,” “O happy band of pilgrims,” and “Safe home, safe home in port.” Dr. Neale’s pump seems to have needed but slight priming to bring up stirring lyrics from the deepest spiritual experiences and emotions!

The most striking characteristic of the Greek hymnody is its sheer objectivity. It is self-forgetful in its rapt, ecstatic contemplation of the doctrines and facts of the Christian faith. It is never experiential or self-analytical except when it confesses sin and unworthiness. The sustained dignity and elevation of its praise and adoration are other admirable traits. Its consciousness of God, its unflawed acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, its assurance of the indwelling Spirit, give it a liturgical value beyond that of any other ancient hymnody.

_Chapter X_ THE LATIN HYMNODY

I. THE BEGINNINGS OF LATIN HYMNODY

The early disciples in the West were accustomed to use the Greek language, as may be gathered from Paul’s writing his Epistle to the Romans in Greek. It is probable that their religious services were largely in that language until there were Romans enough added to the churches to make the use of Latin necessary.

That great ode, the “Te Deum,” comes to us only in a Latin form. The tradition is that it was an antiphon improvised by Ambrose and Augustine on the occasion of the latter’s baptism, but that is doubtless a hero-worshiping fancy of the ninth century. That a good deal of it came from the Greek was to be expected and is quite certain, whether the Dacian Bishop, Nicetius of Remisiana, gathered up the Greek material or not (circa 400).

On the other hand, there is no Greek version extant, except a much later one which is evidently a translation from the Latin.

It may have been written (or compiled) during the Arian controversy as a creedal song to be sung by clerical or monastic choirs. It may have grown by gradual accretion, from generation to generation, like the Easter hymn “Jesus Christ is risen today,” which, begun in the fourteenth century, was not given final form until 1816.

This magnificent ode, for it is a hymn only by a considerable extension of the definition, appears in our modern hymnals only as a chant, and is practically never sung in our non-liturgical congregations. It has been used as a choral text throughout all its history, never as a congregational hymn. It has had unnumbered settings by the greatest composers of Christendom.

It is the high festival ode of the ages, used in celebrating victories or other stately occasions of great public interest. Its comprehensiveness, nobility of thought, and elevated style befit the coronation of kings or the investiture of popes. For the mass of our churches, great as it is, it has only a historical interest. It might find impressive use as a responsive reading.

II. EARLY LATIN HYMN WRITERS

Bishop Hilary of Poitiers (circa 300-367), “the hammer of the Arians,” was exiled into Phrygia by Constantius because he called the Arian emperor “The Antichrist.” In his exile he came in touch with the fierce propaganda waged on both sides by means of hymns. His controversial zeal recognized the opportunity, and he wrote a great many anti-Arian hymns, which he gathered on his return to France into his _Liber Mysteriorum_. That his book was lost was no great calamity, for his fiery, combative spirit, valuable enough at the time, had no message for future generations. He woke a new interest in singing and furnished a more practicable model. He undoubtedly suggested the antiphonal singing he found in the “Hinterland” of Asia Minor and thus prepared the way for his fellow-countryman, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. If the latter is recognized as the father of Latin hymnody, and even of all the Western hymnody, Catholic and Protestant, Hilary is its grandfather.

Ambrose (340-397) had been a lawyer, not a product of the ecclesiastical system, and he brought to his office a freshness of insight and of resources that might have been atrophied in the mechanical clerical education of his day. The value of song in supporting the spirits of his followers when besieged for days in his cathedral suggested to his practical mind, stimulated by his musical nature, its wider use when the battle was won.

Ambrose broke new ground for Latin hymnody in several essential particulars. He transformed the merely reading hymn, confined to the clergy, to a singing hymn for the congregation, writing hymns for the express purpose of promoting congregational song. He passed by the artificial classical meters for the simplest of lyrical meters, four lines of four iambic measures each, which has come down to us through the centuries as Long Meter. He also introduced the free use of rhymes.

Ambrose was not only a learned man of great ability, but—what is more to our present purpose—a man of great piety and devotion. He sought to vitalize and actualize the devotions, personal and collective, of the Christian Church, to make them genuine and heartfelt as against the formalists to whom the mere letter is all-important. His hymns are evidences of his spirituality. There is room for stanzas from only a few of them:

“O splendor of the Father’s face, Affording light from light, Thou Light of light, thou fount of grace, Thou day of day most bright.

Thee, in the morn with songs of praise, Thee, in the evening time, we seek; Thee, through all ages, we adore, And suppliant of thy love we speak.”

In spite of the opposition of the Roman See, and the later effort of Charlemagne, in his zeal for the Gregorian system, to destroy all copies of the Ambrosian hymns and tunes, the “Ambrosiani” still keep a small place in the Roman Breviary.

Among the contemporaries of Ambrose, no hymnist stands out more conspicuously than the Spaniard, Prudentius (348-424). He also had been a lawyer and a man of affairs. He had more literary gifts than Ambrose, and his poems show more personality, more charm, more unaffected sincerity. Bentley calls him “the Horace and Virgil of the Christians.” A single stanza may illustrate his spirit and style:

“The bird, the messenger of day, Cries the approaching light; And thus doth Christ, who calleth us, Our minds to life excite.”

Mention should be made of Fortunatus (530-609). He was, like the later Marot of psalm-version fame, “the fashionable poet of the day,” a precursor of the troubadours. Later in life he became religious, a priest, an almoner of a monastery, and finally Bishop of Poitiers. He wrote a processional to be used at the reception of a piece of the true cross presented by Queen Rhadegunda. The hymn “Vexilla regis prodeunt” has come down the ages. Dr. Neale calls it “one of the grandest in the treasury of the Latin church.” We make room for the first and last stanzas of Dr. Neale’s translation:

“The royal banners forward go; The cross shines forth in mystic glow; Where he in flesh, our flesh who made, Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.

* * * * * * *

Hail, altar! Hail, O Victim! Thee Decks now thy passion’s victory Where life for sinners death endured, And life, by death, for man procured.”

The influence and power of the Roman hierarchy were steadily exercised against the use of hymns and in behalf of the sole use of Scripture psalms and canticles. It is a far cry from Gregory the Great to John Calvin and John Knox, demanding the sole use of canonical material in the services of the church; and a like far cry from the Council of Toledo in Spain in 633, which made a strong plea for the use of hymns in the church’s devotions, to Isaac Watts and his prefaces to his several collections of modified psalms and of hymns. It was only toward the end of the twelfth century that hymns of “human composure” were used in Roman churches, and then were sung by clerical choirs in the larger basilicas of the capital city. The people were still shut out from their use.

But the impulse to write devotional material for the church service persisted. The Venerable Bede (672-735), scholar, theologian, philosopher, historian, general encyclopedist, wrote both Latin and Anglo-Saxon hymns in his faraway monastery at Yarrow, England. Theodulph (d.821), Paulus Diaconus, Odo of Cluny, Cardinal Damiana, and other minor hymnists wrote hymns, some of which, transformed by skillful translators, have found use in our day.

Notker, called Balbulus (850-912), of St. Gall in Eastern Switzerland, became weary of the long-drawn-out notes of the cadences of the final syllable of the “Alleluia,” which was prolonged to enable the deacon to ascend to the rood-loft to chant the Gospel. It was suggested that a text be supplied, a syllable for every note. At first these texts had no metrical form and were called Proses. Later they were given a definite form and were called sequences, because they followed the “Alleluia.” These sequences continued to be written for over three centuries and were brought to technical perfection by Adam of St. Victor.

These sequences, however, were an evidence of the abiding urge for lyrical expression rather than a step in the progressive development of the Christian hymn.

III. GREAT LATIN HYMNS

A more important figure in our study of Latin hymns is Rabanus Maurus (776-856), archbishop of Mainz, Germany, a great scholar, an influential teacher, a profound theologian, a voluminous writer, as well as a great hymn writer. He had been a notable figure in German church history before hymnological investigators proved that he was the writer of the great hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” the worthy successor of Fortunatus’ “Vexilla regis prodeunt.” Its authorship had been credited at different times to Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, and Notker Balbulus. It is the only metrical hymn officially recognized by the early English Church. It is sung at high ceremonies like the coronation of kings or the consecration of bishops. The accepted version is by Bishop Cosin. It appears in our leading hymnals.

The next bead in our rosary of great hymns is “Veni, Sancte Spiritus,” by the helpless little paralytic and humpback, Hermannus Contractus (1013-1054). An excellent historian, a renowned philosopher and theologian, a mathematician of unusual attainments, in short a universal and encyclopedic scholar, his chief glory now is that he wrote this hymn which Archbishop Trench rated “as the loveliest of all the hymns in the whole cycle of Latin sacred poetry.” There is space for one stanza only, the third of this great hymn:

“O most blessed Light divine, Shine within these hearts of thine, And our inmost being fill; Where thou art not, man hath naught, Nothing good in deed or thought, Nothing free from taint of ill.”

The tide of the years had been flowing quietly with only here and there rapids or an eddy, but now the current was hastening toward the great whirlpool of the Crusades. Hildebert, Peter the Hermit, Bernard of Clairvaux, Abelard, Peter the Venerable, Adam of St. Victor, stand out as lighthouses on an uncharted sea.

Not the least of these was Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux (1091-1153), scholar, orator, statesman, and man of affairs, of whom Archbishop Trent declares: “Probably no man during his lifetime ever exercised a personal influence in Christendom equal to his; the stayer of popular commotions, the queller of heresies, the umpire between princes and kings, the counsellor of popes.” This does not suggest the writer of such a hymn as “Jesu dulcis memoria,”[1] the tenderest, sweetest sacred lyric of the Middle Ages. But he was credited with it for centuries until it was found in a manuscript of the eleventh century and there credited to a Spanish Benedictine abbess, an origin more consonant with its spirit and with its finished Latinity. Would we knew more about her, this medieval precursor of Anne Steele, Sarah F. Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth P. Prentiss, and Fanny Crosby! Dr. S. W. Duffield holds “Bernard to be the real author of the modern hymn—the hymn of faith and worship”; but now the iconoclastic modern hymnologist denies him even the authorship of the “Salve Caput Cruentatum.”[2]

We know very little about the other Bernard, who was a monk in the greater abbacy of Cluny; but his authorship of the great indictment of the Roman church of his time, “De Contemptu Mundi,” is undoubted. His great poem of three thousand lines[3] occupied itself with the vice and moral filth which his pure soul detested. In his disgust with the moral ordure in which his feet were immersed, he suddenly takes wing and rises to the heights to contemplate “the Heavenly Land.” Dr. Neale, out of scattered lines and phrases of the original, with additions of his own, constructed the wondrous mosaics which we delight to sing: “Brief life is here our portion,” “Jerusalem, the Golden,” “For thee, O dear, dear country.”

One thinks of Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) as the Aristotelian logician, the profound Augustinian theologian, the philosopher, the invincible protagonist of medieval orthodoxy, rather than as a hymn writer; yet some of our present day hymnals contain two communion hymns of profound thought and deep feeling written by him. “Pange, lingua, gloriosi” is perhaps the finer; here is one stanza of Edward Caswell’s version:

“Now, my tongue, the mystery telling Of the glorious body sing, And the blood, all price excelling Which the Gentile’s Lord and King Once on earth amongst us dwelling Shed for this world’s ransoming.”

The other, “Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem,” has been rendered by Alexander R. Thompson, as follows:

“Zion, to thy Saviour singing, To thy Prince and Shepherd bringing Sweetest hymns of love and praise, Thou wilt never reach the measure Of thy most ecstatic lays.”

IV. MEDIEVAL DEVOTIONAL POEMS

We now reach the consideration of hymns and poems of great excellence in themselves but without the appeal, or practicability as hymns, possessed by the foregoing. Some of them appear in liturgical hymnals, or in more formal hymnals of non-liturgical churches, but their use is limited.

Among these is Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Sun,”[4] not a hymn, but a psalm of praise for all created things. For our day it has chiefly literary and antiquarian interest.

His follower and biographer, Thomas of Celano (?-1255), however, wrote a sequence or hymn that has intrigued the interest of generation after generation. Mozart’s “Requiem” uses parts of it as its text. Goethe introduces it in his “Faust.” Unnumbered translations of it have been made into all civilized languages. Theodore Parker called it the “damnation lyric.” In the original “Dies irae” there were eighteen stanzas. The version of W. J. Irons has fourteen stanzas of three lines each, a few of which follow:

“Day of Wrath! O day of mourning! See fulfilled the prophets’ warning, Heaven and earth in ashes burning!

Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth, When from heaven the Judge descendeth, On whose sentence all dependeth.”

Sir Walter Scott’s version is in four-line stanzas, three of which are used to make a practicable hymn. But who in our self-complacent age cares to sing any of these versions, portraying “The Last Judgment”?

Another famous hymn, written by a follower of Francis of Assisi, perhaps Jacopone da Todi, “the fool for Christ’s sake,” is the “Stabat Mater Dolorosa.” It celebrates the sufferings, not of Christ on the cross, but of Mary, his mother, standing at its foot. It is the supreme Mariolatrous hymn in sentiment and in diction. It is Roman, of course, not Catholic, and interests us only as marking the sincerity and the depth of the medieval sentiment and devotion to the Madonna.

This great hymn is noteworthy because of the many translations into modern languages which have been made, seventy-eight into German alone and as many more into English, in whole or in part. Its emotional possibilities have appealed to many music composers, including Palestrina, Pergolesi, Haydn, Rossini, and Dvorak—settings varied in style from Palestrina’s high dignity to Rossini’s almost theatrical treatment.

It must be remembered that the Greek hymns of the Eastern church, and the Latin hymns of the Western, were not in dead languages, as they appear to us, but in living languages, the vernacular of the persons producing and using them. While the common people may have spoken a different dialect, the monks and clergy used the classic speech as a very mother tongue. The hymns were for the most part a perfectly spontaneous expression of religious conviction and feeling, a living product of vital experience, an instinctive expression of profound faith.

In closing this rapid survey of a thousand years of Greek and Latin hymns, one is impressed that they are all clerical—even monastic—in type and character. There are in many of them spontaneity, genuine feeling, and personal experience, a profound sense of spiritual realities; yet over all of them falls the shadow of the tonsured ecclesiastic, with his heart set on the impressiveness of the forms of worship rather than on the ultimate result in creating spiritual reactions in the individuals of the congregation.

V. MEDIEVAL POPULAR HYMNODY

Although the hymns whose origin we have been tracing were used in enriching the services of the Roman Church, and for guiding the meditations and devotions of the clerical spiritually-minded readers, we get hints of a people’s hymnody used privately and in public processions, usually in the common speech of the region. It was the age of the Troubadours, a time of universal song. It is unthinkable that a people in whose lives religion was a commanding influence should have no songs of their own about it.

But among the Albigenses and Waldenses and other pietistic sects in remoter regions there must have been a hymnody all their own. They had no clergy, no connection with the Romish Church—were in utter opposition to its forms and organization. Hence their natural impulse for worship and praise compelled the creation of hymns of their own. They were spontaneous utterances expressing their spiritual life in a native vocabulary all could understand and appropriate.

Although this people’s hymnody has perished, because it was produced and used by the populace and contemptuously ignored or denounced by the clerical custodians of the literature of their day, or by those of succeeding generations, the hymns were widely sung in the homes, on the streets, at popular religious festivals, and even in the remoter village churches where the clerical choirs were wanting.

It was these popular religious songs, rather than the more stately hymns read and chanted by clerical and monastic choirs, that kept alive the vital spark of religious feeling and devotion to Christ. If most of the doves of song hovered over the head of the Madonna during this long period, it was because she was the mother of Jesus. It was as the representative of all motherhood that she brought home the true manhood of our Lord.

That this popular hymnody of the medieval period has failed to survive is no proof of its worthlessness. It is no condemnation of the sermons of Chrysostom, of Peter the Hermit, of Martin Luther, or of a thousand sermons preached every Sunday that they perish with the breath that gave them utterance. They served a good purpose in their brief hour. That hundreds of Watts’ hymns, and thousands by Charles Wesley, are no longer sung, does not establish their uselessness, but only that their spiritual as well as verbal idiom is not adapted to the needs of our day.

_Chapter XI_ LUTHER AND THE GERMAN HYMN

I. PRE-REFORMATION VERNACULAR HYMNS

While there has been a traceable logical progress in the development of the Christian hymn, as in that of material creation, the generative relations are not always clear. The link between Greek and Latin hymnody may be found in Hilary of Poitiers in the fourth century, but thereafter for five centuries they developed side by side along independent lines.

The same may be said regarding the Latin and German hymns, Luther furnishing the connection. But his connection is not so apparent with the clerical Latin hymn as with the general impulse toward the vernacular hymn.

Luther did not directly build upon the Latin hymns, although he did translate a few of them, but on the popular songs and hymns that were current in his day. Since the eleventh century vernacular hymns and religious songs had been in private use. The Gregorian rule that Scripture psalms and canticles only should be sung in public services had been strictly enforced in the monasteries and larger centers; but even there the proses and sequences had been allowed—in Latin, of course. The first hymns sung in the common speech were enlargements of the short responses allowed the people, “Kyrie eleison” and “Christe eleison” being surviving Greek phrases which were used as refrains to the stanzas of the hymns. They were called “Leisen,” or “Leichen.” Our English word “lay” is a derivative from the same source. Many of these “Leisen” mingled German and Latin words.

Back of the wrong conception of the way of salvation and the fanaticism expressed in self-torture, the Flagellant Monks of the later medieval period had an intensity of conviction and a selfless devotion that inevitably found expression in song. Bands of them made pilgrimages through Christian lands in processions, singing hymns to Mary and her Son in the common speech, little recking that they were helping to fertilize the soil from which should spring the Great Reformation.

When King Conrad was anointed in 1024, our information is that “joyfully they marched, the clergy singing in Latin, the people in German, each after his own fashion”, but this was not a church service, it was a festival procession.

Vernacular hymns became more and more numerous during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The troubadours and minnesingers could not but stimulate their production, furnishing the metrical and rhythmical models and no small part of the hymns themselves, especially those glorifying the divine motherhood of Mary. The monks, the custodians of the literary and scholarly product of this age, had no motive for making a record of these hymns, much less of their tunes, for which, indeed, no adequate system of notation existed; hence but little of this popular hymnody survives. It was not until Gutenberg brought in the age of printing that some of it was handed down to us.[1]

The great mystic, John Tauler (1290-1361), a Dominican monk of Strassburg, and others, wrote hymns of profound personal religious experience that were widely sung. John Huss of Prague (1369-1415), the renowned Bohemian martyr, wrote hymns in both Czech and Latin. In 1501 and 1505 Czech hymnbooks were issued, the first congregational hymnbooks in the vernacular, the latter containing no less than four hundred hymns, while Luther’s first collection, in 1524, nineteen years later, contained only eight.

It will be seen that the foundations of vernacular singing by the people, with popular tunes, had been laid, deep and wide, foundations on which Luther could later build his German hymnody. In almost every particular he had been anticipated by the Bohemian reformers, in vernacular hymns and psalms, in the use of the people’s tunes, in the revision of hymns current among the Catholics—by discarding their worship of Mary and the saints—in the emphasis placed on music as a vehicle for conveying Gospel truths and for the intensifying of the needed propaganda.

In France, in England and Scotland, in the Netherlands, the same impulses were felt. The fullness of the times had been prepared, and the great protagonist and organizer of the spiritual revolt against the hierarchy of Rome made of the hymn, which the ecclesiastical builders had rejected, one of the cornerstones of the new Church.

II. LUTHER’S RELATION TO GERMAN HYMNODY

Luther’s objective in regard to the hymn was entirely different from that of these representatives of traditional worship. He did not have in mind the perfecting of a liturgical service on the lines of ecclesiastical tradition, but the spiritual edification of the mass of the people whom the liturgic monks had been ignoring. While too appreciative of the Latin liturgy to cast aside psalms and canticles, as well as sequences, he rejected them as models for his hymns, and his creative impulse made the more appealing and practical folk songs his basis of form and spirit.

Luther was a great lover of poetry and music. In his youth he went about singing in the streets and in private homes. He knew both the popular and the churchly music and was well prepared for his future post of liaison officer between the Latin and the coming German hymnody.

His great work in hymnody is that he took both the psalm and the hymn from the clergy, put them into the vernacular in metrical form, with popular tunes, and restored them to the people. He added to the function of the hymn as worship those of instruction, meditation, and exhortation. He added an entirely new dimension to the value of the hymn, making it a means of creating a religious atmosphere for the whole life of the Christian—personal, family, community. He made the German people a singing people and laid the foundations for their later musical pre-eminence. As Dr. Benson says, “He took it [the hymn] out of the liturgies and put it into the people’s hearts and homes. He revived, that is to say, Paul’s conception of hymnody as a spiritual function.”[2]

Luther’s hymns are the root out of which grew all our Protestant hymnody. They are like Ambrose’s in their plainness but, owing to their popular models, are superior in their metrical variety and in their cheerfulness. They are purposely cheerful: “When we sing, both heart and mind should be cheerful and merry.” They had also a more definite evangelical content, both objective and subjective, more personal experience, more exhortation, thus immensely widening the horizon of the hymn. Much of this was doubtless due to the Hussite influence.

Luther anticipated Isaac Watts in demanding that the psalm should be transformed into a hymn, retaining its important subject matter, but excluding “certain forms of expression and employing other suitable ones.”

The most important characteristic of the hymns of Luther and his associates was the burden of biblical truth. “What I wish is to make German hymns for this people, that the Word of God may dwell in their hearts by means of song also,” gives us his ideal and his practical purpose.

Luther’s hymns bear the characteristics of their writer. They were straightforward, clear, and unpretentious, full of force and strong of conviction. He was no poet. He was not conscious of literary impulses. His diction often is more forcible than elegant. Indeed, he was a peasant within whose horizon the elegant did not appear. Dr. Philip Schaff says of him: “He had an extraordinary faculty of expressing profound thought in the clearest language. In this gift he is not surpassed by any uninspired writer; and herein lies the secret of his power.... His style is racy, forcible, and idiomatic.”

Lord Selborne, an English hymnologist, remarks on Luther’s hymns, “Homely and sometimes rugged in form, and for the most part objective in tone, they are full of fire, manly simplicity, and strong faith.”

Luther wrote thirty-eight hymns. Twelve of them were based on Latin hymns, among others, “Veni, Redemptor gentium,” “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” “O Lux beata Trinitas,” and “Te Deum Laudamus”; four were rewritten pre-Reformation hymns; seven were versions of Latin psalms; six were paraphrases of other portions of Scripture, such as the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer; nine were original hymns.

Nine collections were issued by Luther, beginning with the “Achtlieder Buch,” the first evangelical hymnbook in the German language, issued in 1524. It contained but eight hymns, four by Luther, three by Paul Speratus, court chaplain at Koenigsberg, and one of unknown authorship. Later in the year it was increased to twenty-five hymns, bringing fourteen new hymns by Luther; it was called the “Erfurt Enchiridion.” During this year, 1524, he wrote twenty-one of his thirty-eight hymns. Five years later, 1529, he issued another hymnbook containing fifty-four hymns. The issue of 1553, seven years after his death, contained one hundred and thirty-one hymns. Three of these nine issues had prefaces, as noteworthy as those of Watts to his several books of psalms and hymns in formulating the principles of the new Christian hymnody.

Luther’s masterpiece, “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A mighty fortress is our God”), is based on the forty-sixth Psalm. It is one of the greatest hymns in the whole Christian hymnody, great in itself, great in its influence on the Protestantism of northern Europe. Ranke, the noted church historian, says: “It is the production of the moment in which Luther, engaged in a conflict with a world of foes, sought strength in a consciousness that he was defending a divine cause, which could never perish.” Carlyle recognized its majesty, “a sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmurs of earthquakes.” Calling up the inspiration it brought to the Protestant armies, German and Swedish, in the religious wars after the Reformation, Heine characterized it as “the Marseillaise of the Reformation.” It has been recognized as the national hymn of Protestant Germany.

A number of translations into English have been made. Carlyle successfully reproduces its rugged strength in his version, but for congregational use the translation of Rev. Frederick H. Hedge, made in 1853, is more practicable.

Luther’s tune is worthy of the text in its ponderous majesty. A small congregation, or a larger one that does not know it very well, can do little with it; only a large congregation singing lustily and in the characteristically German slow _tempo_ can do it justice.

His Christmas hymn, “Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her” (“From heaven above to earth I come”), his praise of Jesus Christ, “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” (“All praise to Thee, eternal Lord”), a revision of a pre-Reformation popular hymn, and his doctrinal hymn, rejoicing over the salvation wrought out by Jesus Christ, “Nun freuet euch, lieb’ Christen G’mein” (“Dear Christian people, now rejoice”), have been very much beloved and were very effective in building up the Protestant cause.

Luther deserves well of the Christian Church, not only because of his own hymns, but because of the inspiration he afforded others among his contemporaries, and to the generations since his day, to take up the writing of hymns. Among the co-laborers in this field in his own generation were Justus Jonas, Paul Eber, Erasmus Alber, Lazarus Spengler, Paul Speratus, and Nicolaus Decius. Luther furnished the idea, the inspiration, and the model for all these hymnists. According to Koch, fifty-one writers contributed hymns to swell the Lutheran hymnody between 1517 and 1560.

As was to be expected, the early German hymnody was also enriched by a number of excellent hymns from the Bohemian Brethren. They were translated by Michael Weiss and Johann Roh, German ministers who had been associated with them.

No small part of the immediate success of Luther’s hymns was the tunes which he provided. He used the melodies already current among the people. He had providentially associated with him musical helpers like Johann Walther and Ludwig Senfl, who did the musical editorial work on his issues. His settings of his “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” and “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” are still a valuable part of the melodic treasury of the Christian Church.

_Chapter XII_ THE LATER GERMAN HYMNODY

I. THE RISING STANDARD OF LITERARY VALUES

After Luther’s death, the impetus of his hymnic influence gradually lost its evangelical force, and a more self-consciously literary coterie raised both the literary and musical standards. Prominent among them was Bartolomaeus Ringwaldt (1530-1598), who wrote “Es ist gewisslich an der Zeit”—the German “Dies Irae”—which probably suggested the English hymn, “Great God! what do I see and hear?” He was a very fertile writer. Equally fertile was Nicolaus Selnecker (1530-1592), who wrote nearly one hundred and fifty hymns.

More important than either was Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608), a Westphalian pastor, whose “Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern” (“O Morning Star, how fair and bright”) and “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (“Sleepers, wake, a voice is calling”) have been and are the most widely used of all German hymns outside of Luther’s two masterpieces. Nicolai wrote them while a great pestilence was raging in Unna, during which fourteen hundred persons perished. He wrote the hymns for his own comfort and that of his people. He also wrote the chorales to which they are sung and which have been called respectively the “Queen” and “King” of German chorales. On the basis of their intrinsic value rather than on that of adaptation to American spirit and type of church life, they occasionally appear in our hymnals, but they are rarely or never sung. Miss Winkworth’s translation of the “King” may be judged by the first stanza:

“Wake, awake, the night is flying; The watchmen on the heights are crying, Awake, Jerusalem, at last! Midnight hears the welcome voices, And at the thrilling cry rejoices; Come forth, ye virgins, night is past! The Bridegroom comes, awake, Your lamps with gladness take; Alleluia! And for his marriage-feast prepare, For ye must go to meet him there.”

This chorale was used by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy as one of the climaxes of his great oratorio, “St. Paul.”

The popular “Te Deum” of Germany, “Nun danket alle Gott” (“Now thank we all our God”), was written by Martin Rinkart (1586-1649). Miss Winkworth’s version is found in most modern hymnals and deserves wide use, for it is entirely practicable in a congregation of average size. Mendelssohn used this chorale in his cantata “Lobgesang” with much effectiveness. This great hymn was written at the conclusion of the horrible and disastrous Thirty Years’ War. Michael Altenburg (1584-1640) wrote the famous battle hymn of Gustavus Adolphus with which the great Warrior King has been credited; “Verzage nicht, du Haeuflein klein” (“Fear not, O little flock, the foe”) is still used in Germany. However, Luther’s “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” was the more usual battle hymn, as Altenburg’s hymn was not introduced until late in Gustavus Adolphus’ campaigns—indeed, has been called his “Swan song.” Martin Opitz (1597-1639) deserves mention as a valuable influence in regulating the meters and in stressing poetical values. One of the immortal hymns written during this period was that of Georg Neumark (1621-1681), librarian of the Duke of Weimar, “Wer nur den lieben Gott laesst walten” (“If thou but suffer God to guide thee”). Other hymn writers during this distressful period were Johann Heermann (1585-1647), who wrote distinctive hymns of prayer in a correct style and good versification; Johann Rest (1607-1667), who wrote six hundred and eighty hymns intended to cover the whole domain of theology (two hundred of which were in common use in the German churches); and Matthaeus Apelles von Loewenstein (1594-1648), Johannes Matthaeus Meyfart (1590-1642), and Paul Fleming (1609-1640).

This was a period of tribulation, calamity, and desperation, which, as Miss Winkworth remarks, “caused religious men to look away from this world” and led to a more subjective type of hymn, expressing personal feeling. In general, the literary value of the hymns of this period, in form and diction and imagination, exceeded that of those of the previous generation.

II. THE GOLDEN AGE OF GERMAN HYMNODY

The spiritual deepening of this age of sorrow, the widening of the scope of the hymn by the inclusion of more subjective elements, and the literary advance in the structure and diction were preparing the way for the Golden Age of German hymnody which followed the conclusion of the great religious war. It extended from Paul Gerhardt (1604-1676) to Christian Fuerchtegott Gellert (1715-1769).

Gerhardt had spent his young manhood amid the desolation and difficulties of the Thirty Years’ War. He did not enter the ministry until he was nearly fifty years old, having written no hymns up to that time. A great preacher and a devoted pastor, he was a man of deep piety and of unflinching loyalty to the truth, as it was given to him to see it. As calamity followed calamity, under strict divine discipline in preparation for his great work in the writing of hymns, not only for the German church, but also for the whole Christian world, he united in himself the two tendencies, the one of viewing God and divine things in an objective way, characteristic of the early Lutheran hymns, and the other, the expression of the emotion produced by such contemplation in the heart of the Christian, characteristic of the subsequent period. He had the body of the older hymnody and the spirit of the new.

Moreover, Gerhardt was a poet. Indeed, his writings were extensive lyrics rather than hymns. Some of them have furnished several hymns. He was the Keble of German hymnody, and his influence upon subsequent hymn writing has been most helpful. There is a poetic fertility in the man lacking in his predecessors.

He wrote one hundred and twenty-three hymns, of which Dr. Philip Schaff declares that they “are among the noblest pearls in the treasury of sacred poetry.” They are of such uniform excellence that it is difficult to select those of outstanding merit. “Befiehl du deine Wege” (“Give to the winds thy fears”) was translated by John Wesley. “O Jesu Christ, mein schoenstes Licht” (“Jesus, thy boundless love to me”) is another most successful translation by the same hand. “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” (“O sacred head, now wounded”) leans hard on “Salve, caput cruentatum,” but has a spirituality the older hymn does not so fully display. Thirty of his hymns are in general use in the German churches, and Germany recognizes him as her prince of hymnists, superior even to Luther.

Gerhardt’s contemporaries, John Franck (1618-1677) and John Scheffler (1624-1677), while fairly prominent do not compare with him in thoughtfulness and literary felicity. Both are more pietistic. The latter has a somewhat exuberant style, intense and enthusiastic. John Wesley translated and adopted one hymn known to our hymnals as “Thee will I love, my strength, my tower.”

III. THE PIETISTIC HYMN WRITERS

In the latter decades of the seventeenth century, Philipp Jacob Spener, August Hermann Francke, and Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen led a strong movement of protest, called Pietism, against the arid scholasticism and cold formalism of the Lutheran church. It was a second Reformation, emphasizing piety and sincere emotionalism. It postponed the blight of Rationalism for a few decades and led a generation into a devouter, more genuine, religious life.

Spener was a great leader and a good man, but no hymn writer; Francke wrote but few hymns, and so this phase of their work devolved on Freylinghausen. He was full of spirit, with attractive rhythms and florid music. His songs were very popular, but lacked permanent merit. Other writers of this school were Schade, Schutz, and Rodigast.

Less immediately connected with the Pietistic movement, but under its influence, are Hiller of South Germany, Arnold, a professor at the University of Giessen, and Tersteegen of Westphalia, a mystic, all of whom wrote very acceptable hymns. Tersteegen was highly appreciated by John Wesley, who translated his “Gott rufet noch; sollt’ ich nicht endlich hoeren?” (“God calling yet! shall I not hear?”). “Gott ist gegenwaertig! lasset uns anbeten” (“Lo! God is here; let us adore”) and “Jedes Herz will etwas lieben” (“Something every heart is loving”) are others found translated in current hymnals. Lord Selborne speaks of him as “of all the more copious German hymn writers after Luther, perhaps the most remarkable man, pietist, mystic, and missionary, he was also a great religious poet.” That he was a layman makes his religious life all the more remarkable.

A more widely known and striking personality was Count von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), a very devout but somewhat erratic man. He became the patron saint of the Moravian Church and shared—perhaps created—its zeal for foreign missions. He spent some time in the United States, in eastern Pennsylvania, and in the West Indies, doing evangelistic work. He wrote two thousand religious lyrics, disfigured to a large extent by extravagances and by repulsive materialistic similes and phrases. His associate and successor, Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg, long resident in America, and Bishop Christian Gregor also wrote very useful hymns. The Moravian hymnody is all the more noteworthy in that it had a great influence over the hymnic work of the Wesleys.

IV. GERMAN REFORMED HYMNODY

The Reformed Church in Germany long followed Calvin in exclusively using the Psalms of David, but finally felt the impulse of the Lutheran hymnody. Tersteegen, mentioned above, leaned to this branch of the German church, although not officially connected with it. Joachim Neander (1650-1680), a Reformed minister at Bremen, wrote some extremely valuable and popular hymns of praise and was called the Psalmist of the New Covenant. Among his best are “Sieh, hier bin ich, Ehren-Koenig” (“Behold me here in grief draw near”), “Lobe den Herren, den maechtigen Koenig der Ehren” (“Praise to the Lord! He is King over all the creation”), “Unser Herrscher, unser Koenig” (“Sovereign Ruler, King victorious”), still sung in every pious home in Germany.

V. TRANSITION TO RATIONALISTIC HYMNS

The transitional personality between this Pietistic and the succeeding Rationalistic era, was Christian F. Gellert (1715-1769), a professor in Leipzig University. He was a man of sincere piety; he was a teacher, not only in the classroom, but in all his literary efforts. He wrote moral _Tales and Fables_, _Moral Poems_, _Didactic Poems_, as well as _Sacred Odes and Hymns_. There were fifty-four of these, all in the same didactic style. They lacked the rugged strength of Luther, the poetical element of Gerhardt, and the mystic insight of Tersteegen; but this very matter-of-factness made his writings immensely popular. Of all his hymns, but one survives in our modern hymnals, his Easter hymn, “Jesus lebt, mit ihm auch ich” (“Jesus lives, no longer now”).

VI. RATIONALISM IN HYMNODY

German hymnody suddenly fell from its exalted Pietistic rhapsodies into a crass materialism. Dr. Philip Schaff gives a vivid glimpse into the situation: “He (Klopstock) was followed by a swarm of hymnological tinkers and poetasters who had no sympathy with the theology and poetry of the grand old hymns of faith; weakened, diluted, mutilated, and watered them, and introduced these misimprovements into the churches.... Conversion and sanctification were changed into self-improvement, piety into virtue, heaven into the better world, Christ into Christianity, God into Providence, Providence into fate. The people were compelled to sing rhymed sermons on the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the delights of reunion, the dignity of man, the duty of self-improvement, the nurture of the body, and the care of animals and flowers.”

There is no poetical, much less religious, lyrical impulse in rationalism, and the church lyrics of this period have left little impress on the hymnody of the Christian Church. It was the classic period of German literature, but it had few Christian elements in it. Athens and Rome, not Jerusalem, were the centers of intellectual interest; and it might almost be said that it is a pagan literature.

VII. HYMNS OF RENEWED RELIGIOUS LIFE

As in the immediate pre-Reformation age, in spite of the decadence of religious life among the Roman Catholic leaders, there was a semi-submerged piety that forced the Reformation inside the church; so in this recrudescence of paganism in the German church, there was a great body of earnest, pious Christians who kept the spirit of true German devoutness alive.

These were represented by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803), who, although he set the disastrous fashion of re-writing the older hymns in order to improve their literary value by removing archaisms and harsh lines, was yet a devout man, writing the great German epic “Messias” and also some deeply religious hymns that were too poetic for the common people. Another devout writer was Johann Kasper Lavater (1741-1801), better known by his treatise on physiognomy, who wrote some hymns after the style of Klopstock, but with greater popular success, for his “O suessester der Namen all” (“O name than every name more dear”) has been translated and used in English hymnals.

When the first intoxication of the new freedom from churchly, and even moral, restraint passed away, the German church again found able representatives to give expression to its religious life. Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801), also called “Novalis,” a mining engineer of fine literary ability, wrote some hymns of deep feeling and beautiful style. Friedrich de la Motte Fouque (1777-1843), chiefly known as the author of _Undine_, and as an outstanding representative of the Romantic school in literature, wrote some very beautiful hymns, including two missionary hymns of great excellence. There is a literary and imaginative charm in these hymns, as in his general German style, that betrays his Huguenot heredity. Both these writers had the literary emphasis that somewhat discounted the value of their hymns for the common people. They stand, however, as landmarks of the subsidence of the rationalistic period in German hymnody.

VIII. HYMNS OF PIETISTIC TYPE

In the reaction from Rationalism, Pietism again came into its own and a noble roster of sacred lyrists have given it expression. This includes Ernst Moritz Arndt, professor of history at the University of Bonn, whose “Wahres Christentum” was as necessary to every Christian home as the Bible itself, a patriot who won the hatred and persecution of Napoleon Bonaparte by his patriotic songs, and whose hymns are no small part of the treasury of later German hymnody. Among them are “Ich weiss, an wen ich glaube” (“I know in whom I put my trust”), which is one of the German classics.

Friedrich Adolf Krummacher (1767-1845) is best remembered by his hymn “Mag auch die Liebe weinen” (“Though love may weep with breaking heart”) and his missionary hymn, “Eine Herde und ein Hirt” (“One shepherd and one fold to be”). Still others are Friedrich Ruckert (1789-1866) whom Dr. Schaff calls “one of the greatest masters of lyric poetry,” Albert Knapp (1798-1864), editor of the outstanding critical collection of German hymns, “Der Liederschatz,” and writer of many widely used hymns, and Meta Heusser-Schweizer (1797-1876), of Switzerland, “the most eminent and noble among all the female poets of our whole evangelical Church.”[1]

The primate of them all is Karl Johann Philipp Spitta (1801-1859), “the most popular hymnist of the nineteenth century.” The fifty-fifth edition of his _Psalter und Harfe_ appeared in 1889. He was an Hanoverian pastor. He had been under rationalistic teachers at the University of Goettingen, but toward the end of his university course had a profound religious experience that affected all his future life; he wrote no secular verse after that time. He was recognized as a mystic and pietist and his promotion was antagonized on that ground.

Many of his hymns have been translated into English. Among the most successful are “O Jesu, meine Sonne” (“I know no life divided”), “Es kennt der Herr die Seinen” (“He knoweth all His people”), “O selig Haus, wo man dich aufgenommen” (“O happy home, where thou art loved the dearest”), “O treuer Heiland, Jesu Christ” (“We praise and bless thee, gracious Lord”).

Spitta may be called “the Gerhardt of the nineteenth century,” for he has many of that great hymn writer’s qualities as well as his popularity. He was sincerely devout, a man of an abiding sense of God’s care and nearness; his style is smooth and melodious as well as poetical.

Spitta’s hymns are very practical in length and form of stanza, and his themes grow out of the common needs and experiences of general humanity. For this reason they have been very largely translated into English—no less than thirty-three of them—and, what is more significant, selected by editors of hymnals, especially in England.

Karl von Gerok (1815-?) is another exceedingly popular religious lyrist of the nineteenth century, hardly second to Spitta. His “Palm-blaetter,” issued in 1857, reached its fifty-sixth edition in 1886. By this time it has likely reached the century mark. But his verses are religious poetry, not hymns, and but a few centos have been admitted to German hymnbooks.

Recently the new rationalism and sensual materialism have again submerged the religious life of Germany and the impulse to write hymns has lost its urgency. Whether the shattering of the illusion of world-wide power, and the sobering effect of its terrible losses of men and of wealth, will bring Germany back to her religious senses must be patiently awaited by those eager for her highest welfare. The recrudescence of paganism and its threat of renewed striving after world dominance need not blast this pious hope. God’s hand is still on the tiller of the German national bark, and the heart of the German people is not represented by the bulletins on the surface of its current events, caused by the pride of nationalism in the shallow vocal stratum that stridently claims the world’s attention.

In this hurried review of the development of the German hymn from Luther to Spitta much that is interesting and profitable has been omitted. But it is manifest that this German hymnody holds the supreme place in the hymnody of the Christian Church in all ages and nations. The reasons for this lie on the surface: the German people are a singing people, and the instinct to sing their thoughts and feelings is stronger than in any other race. Again, they did not lose two centuries under the spell of Calvin’s devotion to the Hebrew Psalms, as did Great Britain and America. In contrast with the Latin and Greek hymnodies, it is the voice of the people, not the restrained liturgical voice of the clergy.

The German hymnody is often ponderous and heavy, often tediously prolix and dull, but at the heart of it is a profound realization of the actualities of the Christian faith, and a responsiveness to its appeals to the hearts of men, that one cannot find elsewhere to the same extent.

_Chapter XIII_ METRICAL PSALMODY

I. CALVIN’S CONCEPTION OF CONGREGATIONAL SINGING

While Luther recognized the value of hymns as pre-eminent in his work, he still left a large place for the Psalms, himself making some admirable versions and inciting others to do the same. But there were limits to his sympathy with an undue and merely formal emphasis of them. He canceled the obligation of repeating the whole Psalter once a week, instituted by Cardinal Quimonez, as “a donkey’s burden.” Luther was a reformer, changing only what needed changing in order to secure a deeper spirituality. Calvin and Zwingli were not reformers, but re-creators, setting wholly aside all the liturgy, the ecclesiastical organization, the clerical rules, and the distinctive doctrines of the Roman church, and building up an entirely new church with no other sanction than their interpretation of the Word of God.

Perhaps unconsciously, Calvin harked back to the Roman attitude of Gregory the Great, in insisting on purely Scriptural sources for the service of song. He was too good a Biblical scholar not to know that the Apostolic Church used “hymns and spiritual songs” as well as Psalms; indeed he never categorically forbade hymns of “human composure.” But the people had been forbidden the Bible. The Psalms had been sung by the clergy alone in an already dead language. Calvin declared that “if a man sang in an unknown tongue, he might as well be a linnet or a popinjay.” So he reacted somewhat violently. He had a profound sense of the authority of the Word of God, and his mind was possessed by the idea of the divine sovereignty; hence religious rites of human origin seemed trifling and negligible.

This attitude was emphasized all the more by the Latin hymns sung and read in the churches, and on religious occasions, whose chief burden was worship of the Madonna, and even of the saints, against which his mind rose in outraged horror.

II. CALVIN’S FOLLOWERS MORE EXTREME

Human nature being what it is, it was inevitable that Calvin’s followers should carry his ideas to an extreme, and mechanically add the conclusion that hymns independent of the lyrics of the Scriptures should be forbidden.

While Luther stressed the Biblical content of the hymns and exalted the Psalms as the source of religious lyrical impulses, Calvin and his disciples added a rigid and almost superstitious regard for the mere form of the Scripture lyrics. They accepted their distortion and mutilation in giving them a metrical form as justified by the congregational necessity, and by the evident devotional results among the people.

III. MAROT’S SUCCESSFUL VERSIONS

Beneath his austerity Calvin evidently had an appreciation of literary beauty and grace, for he developed an ambition to clothe the Hebrew Psalms in a literary French metrical dress. It was while this problem was exercising his mind that there fell into his hands the French version of some of the Psalms by Clement Marot (1497-1544), who had come under the influence of Marguerite de Valois, the Huguenot princess, whose _valet de chambre_ he was during his early twenties. It is possible that he and Calvin met at Ferrara in 1535. Though the work of a Huguenot poet, these lyrics were admired in high political and social circles in France. Written in measures fitting them to popular tunes, they were very popular among the royal courtiers, Catholics as well as Protestants, and were soon introduced into other countries.

That he was later persecuted by the Roman ecclesiastics only recommended him the more to Calvin. Here was a poet of high reputation, a skillful versifier of the Psalms, a fellow-sufferer at the hands of the Roman hierarchy—why not commit to his hands the task of supplying Calvin’s new church with its needed book of Psalms? So Marot was called to Geneva.

IV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENEVAN PSALTER

In 1543, nineteen years after Luther’s first venture, the _Acht Liederbuch_, appeared, _The Genevan Psalter_ was issued in the French language. It contained fifty psalms by Marot. Marot died in 1544. The completion of the Psalter was committed to Theodore Beza of Burgundy, who revised Marot’s verses, eliminating the classical allusions and offensive gaiety. With the help of Bourgeois, and later of Goudimel, in completing and harmonizing the tunes, he finished the Psalter in 1562.[1]

V. ENGLISH PSALM VERSIONS BEFORE STERNHOLD

There had been English versions of some of the Psalms before Sternhold undertook the task. Bishop Aldhelm of Sherborne, who died in 709 A.D., composed a complete psalter. Two versions were due to Lutheran influence. That of Miles Coverdale, _Ghoostly Psalms and Spiritual Songs_, appearing sometime between 1530 and 1540, used some of the German chorales, including the great “Ein’ feste Burg.”

The Wedderburn brothers of Dundee, Scotland, issued the _Compendious Booke of Gude and Godlie Ballates_, also known as _Dundee Psalms_, on the return of John Wedderburn, soon after 1539, from Wittenberg, where he had been under the influence of both Luther and Melanchthon. Latin psalms and hymns had no value with young people, he insisted in his preface; “but when they hear it sung into their vulgar tongue, or sing it themselves, with sweet melody, then shall they love their God with heart and mind, and cause them to put away bawdry and unclean songs.” While considerably better than the songs the collection displaced, the new book was too cheaply popular, and undignified in many of its religious parodies of popular songs, to satisfy the elders of the Scottish Kirk (!) and they tried to suppress it.

But the lines of religious, social, doctrinal, and political influence connected England and Scotland with France and Geneva so closely that it happened that the new English and Scotch psalmody was based on the work of Marot and Calvin and not on that of Luther. To human minds with some sense of literary dignity and style and of a more spontaneous expression of religious life and experience, it seems a great pity!

The first response in England to the new version of Marot was the Latin version of George Buchanan in 1548. Latin was an entirely dead language to the commonalty, but was quite generally familiar to people of scholarship and culture. This version, in the scholarly language of all Europe (like the Mandarin in China), found wide appreciation in intellectual circles and many editions of it were issued. Of course, the mass of the English people was not affected by it, and it had little or no influence on the development of English psalmody.

That there were vernacular versions already in use, is quite certain. Robert Cowley anticipated Sternhold and Hopkins in the versifying of the whole Psalter, issuing his work in 1549. In the preface to this collection he refers to previous versions which had passages “obscure and hard.” Probably they were Lollard or Wycliffite in origin, for these “sweet singers,” precursors of the Reformation to come, worked among the lower classes in the Low Countries as well as in England, singing the Gospel in the vernacular.

VI. VERSION OF STERNHOLD AND HOPKINS

Undoubtedly it was the French Psalms of Marot, and their great popularity in the highest circles in France, that incited Thomas Sternhold to undertake a like version in the English language. His first issue, probably in 1547 and 1548, contained nineteen Psalms. In 1549 he published another edition containing thirty-seven Psalms. Sternhold died in 1549, leaving but nineteen additional Psalms unpublished. Another poet, John Hopkins, a near neighbor in Gloucestershire, contributed to the edition of 1551. In 1562 the psalter was completed. Of the one hundred and fifty Psalms, Sternhold had supplied fifty-one, Hopkins sixty, all in common meter, and the rest were contributed by various writers. It also contained metrical versions of the Canticles, the Ten Commandments, the Athanasian Creed, the Te Deum, the Lord’s Prayer, an English version of the festival hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” and several original English hymns.

This psalter had a popularity equaled only by _Hymns Ancient and Modern_ and the _Gospel Hymns_ series in the recent past. Within half a century more than fifty editions were issued. By 1841 no less than six hundred and fifty different editions had been absorbed by the religious public—more than all other metrical versions combined.

This version was adopted by the Church of England in 1562 and continued to be used for nearly two hundred and fifty years, despite its notorious crudities and imperfections, and despite the many efforts made to supersede it by other versions and by hymns. The singing of Psalms became universal. At St. Paul’s Cross, after the service, there were sometimes six thousand persons engaged in singing Psalms. It was a time of genuine community singing.

VII. THE SCOTCH VERSION

In 1556, John Knox issued his _Anglo-Genevan Psalter_, based on the 1551 edition of Sternhold and Hopkins, with some alterations and additions. It naturally was greatly influenced by Calvin’s _Genevan Psalter_. The _Anglo-Genevan Psalter_ is significant chiefly because of its influence on the Scotch Psalter. Through that, it is the source of some psalms and tunes still in use—notably, “All people that on earth do dwell” and “Old Hundredth” to which the Long Meter Doxology is sung.

The Scotch Psalter developed on a different line. The Psalm editors of the Scottish Church accepted eighty-seven of the Anglo-Genevan Psalms, added and somewhat altered forty-two from the final Sternhold and Hopkins editions, and supplied twenty-one from their own versifiers. It appeared in 1564 and was adopted by the General Assembly as its authorized Psalm book.

In 1600 James I began a revision and himself wrote thirty-five of the Psalms before his death. This psalter was completed by William Alexander and was issued in 1630, being known as the _Royal Psalter_. Charles I bound up a revised edition of it with a new liturgy prepared by the Scotch bishops in 1536, and ordered its exclusive use. But the Scotch clergy declined with thanks, having no use for “the mass in English.”

But the question of a revision of this Psalter having been raised, its deficiencies, which had been passively accepted, rose up into consciousness. Rous’ version, adopted by the Westminster Assembly in 1643, and hence widely used in England, was made the basis of the new Scotch Psalter and, after seven years of amending and revision, was adopted in 1650. It is still used in Scotland and in American Presbyterian churches whose eyes look back reverently to Scotland.

VIII. ROUS’ VERSION

Rous’ version was made by Francis Rous, Provost of Eton College, Oxford, a Presbyterian lawyer and a man of public affairs. It was an improvement on Sternhold and Hopkins, but still left much to be desired in smoothness of versification and grace of diction, owing to the continued loyalty to the original phraseology of the Psalms. Hence it had some “awful examples,” to use Matthew Arnold’s phrase, whose repetition here might amuse but not edify. But it also had some happy stanzas that we still are glad to sing, e.g.:

“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want; He makes me down to lie In pastures green; he leadeth me The quiet waters by.”

Compare this with Archbishop Parker’s version of the Shepherd Psalm written in 1557:

“To feed my neede: he will me leade To pastures green and fat: He forth brought me: in libertie To waters delicate.”

But with the blindness of the versifiers to the need of diversifying their meters in the interest of varied and attractive tunes, all the psalms were written in Common Meter.[2]

IX. TATE AND BRADY’S “NEW VERSION”

A new version by two Irishmen, Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, appeared in 1696. Tate was a literary man, a playwright, a poet, and finally poet laureate. Brady had a rather varied clerical career in Ireland and in England, becoming chaplain to King William. This will partly explain why this version received royal endorsement and gradually replaced Sternhold and Hopkins in the English Church. It was adopted by the Protestant Episcopal Church of America in 1789. The fact that the Nonconformist churches remained faithful to the “Old Version” and to Rous’ version, no doubt had its bearing on the final acceptance of the “New Version” by the Established Church.

This “New Version” was a little smoother than the “Old Version,” and had a little more literary grace, but still was shackled by devotion to “purity”—to the exact thought and phraseology of the Hebrew Psalms. Nevertheless, as Gillman says, “this book contained a plentiful supply of chaff, but perhaps a few more grains of golden corn than Sternhold’s.” “As pants the hart for cooling streams” and “Through all the changing scenes of life” are still highly prized, and Tate’s Christmas Carol, “While shepherds watched their flocks by night” (which appeared in a supplement to the “New Version”) is a masterly adaptation of the Nativity story. On the other hand, Montgomery, in comparing the “New Version” with the “Old Version,” remarks: “It is nearly as inanimate as the former, though a little more refined.” Of the “Old Version” he says: “The merit of faithful adherence to the original has been claimed for this version and need not be denied, but it is the resemblance which the dead bear to the living.” Old Thomas Fuller wittily says of Sternhold and Hopkins that “They are men whose piety was better than their poetry, and they had drunk more of Jordan than of Helicon.” Thomas Campbell even more harshly exclaims: “With the best intensions and the worst taste, they degraded the spirit of Hebrew poetry by flat and homely phraseology, and, mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime.” From the literary point of view these dicta are correct enough, but they overlook what is vastly more important—the high moral and spiritual uses which these homely versions so amply served.

X. AMERICAN PSALMODY

The Pilgrims brought with them from Leyden Ainsworth’s version of the Psalms, published in Amsterdam—Genevan rather than English in character. Its use was largely confined to the Pilgrims and their descendants. Presently the copies of both versions became rare and the service of song depended on the “lining out” of the verses.

The first book printed in America was the _Bay Psalm Book_, an independent version of the Psalms made by Thomas Welde, Richard Mather, and John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, a committee appointed in 1636. It was proposed to make it more scriptural than either of the previous versions used. It appeared in 1640. Its preface consisted of a discourse urging that psalm-singing was both lawful and necessary. During the next century and a half no less than seventy editions were printed. It was improved by Dunster and Lyon and reprinted in Great Britain, eighteen editions being called for in England and twenty-two in Scotland. This was America’s first contribution to the song service of the Mother Country, but by no means the last.

It may be interesting to see just what literary style this _Bay Psalm Book_ could display, and a few specimens are herewith given. The one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, for instance, was given the following form:

1. “The rivers on of Babilon There when wee did sit downe: Yea, even then wee mourned when wee remembred Sion.

2. Our Harp wee did hang it amid Upon the willow tree, Because there they that us away led in captivitee,

3. Required of us a song and thus ask mirth: us waste who laid, sing us among a Sion’s song unto us then they said.

4. The Lord’s song sing can wee? being in stranger’s land. Then let loose her skill my right hand, if I Jerusalem forget.

5. Let cleave my tongue my pallate on if minde thee doe not I if chief joys or’e I prize not more Jerusalem my joy.”

Cotton Mather’s rhymeless version was much more sensible in its form, for it eliminated the chief handicap in producing a literal version in metrical form.

As in the Psalm versions of England and Scotland, there was a vivid consciousness of literary and poetic shortcomings; but the sense of obligation to supply a literal translation of the Hebrew overrode all impulses toward a smoother rendering. The preface frankly states the position of the committee: “If therefore the verses are not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider that God’s altar needs not our polishing (Ex. 20), for we have respected rather a plaine translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the Hebrew words into English language and David’s poetry into English meetre.”

There were other American Psalm versions, but the only versions worth considering are the revisions of Isaac Watts’ Psalms, which will come up in introducing American hymnody later.

XI. THE VALUE OF THE PSALM VERSIONS

In smiling over this rude psalmody of England, Scotland, and America, it is always to be remembered that these versions were not a literary endeavor. Their ambition was to secure ‘purity,’ loyalty to the rather prosaically conceived doctrines of the originals. There was no thought of poetry or of literary finish. The meter and rhyme were practical devices to make congregational singing possible.

_Chapter XIV_ THE ENGLISH HYMN BEFORE WATTS

I. THE EARLIEST ENGLISH HYMN

Just as Gregory the Great did not create the music that bears his name, nor Luther the congregational hymnody, so Isaac Watts did not originate the English hymnody of which he is often termed the father. The Lollards, or Wickliffites, sang metrical psalms, and also hymns, in the Low Countries, as well as in England, long before Luther, or Marot, or Sternhold.

Moreover, the emphasis of the Psalms was an ecclesiastical, clerical attitude, while the people at large to whom the Scriptures had been a closed book, and the Psalms an unknown language, sang such vernacular hymns as sprang up among them; so, while we cannot doubt but that they sang some metrical psalms, based on the Wickliffe English Bible, the body of their singing was presumably hymnic.

Indeed, we must go back much farther to find the spring of religious song that was to become a great river of praise. Caedmon, a monk, originally a swineherd, of the early seventh century, supplied the earliest recorded English hymns:

“Now must we hymn the Master of heaven, The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father, The thought of his heart.”

Undoubtedly the times before Caedmon were resonant with earlier songs, for the Venerable Bede (673-735) in the next generation records the fact of a great deal of singing among the people. Indeed, he himself wrote hymns in Anglo-Saxon, as well as in Latin. Patrick and Colombo sang psalms and hymns and made them a means of converting the pagans of Ireland and Scotland.

II. ENGLISH HYMNODY SUBMERGED BY REFORMED PSALMODY

The urge, not only for versifying all parts of the Scriptures, including genealogies, but of actually singing them with fervor, submerged the native impulse of song. The religious loyalty to the letter of the Scriptures that followed closed the door against the development of the English hymn.[1]

Professor Reeves in his _The Hymn as Literature_ remarks: “As vigorous and variegated and prevalent as this union of popular poetry and popular music was in England, it strangely weakened and paled at the one time in English history when it might have been expected most to flourish. The Reformation, born of that new freedom of thought and worship which produces the best hymnody, did not in England, as it gloriously did in Germany, speak out richly in the native vernacular hymn.”[2]

III. ENGLISH LITERARY IDEALS UNFAVORABLE TO HYMN-WRITING

But it was not only the blight of a narrow bibliolatry that prevented the development of the English religious lyric. English poetry had lost its spontaneity and its gracious simplicity in a self-conscious devotion to false literary ideals.

The conception of a congregational hymn did not exist among the literary men of the Reformation and later. Indeed, that Reformation among the cultured and intellectual classes was not so much a religious transformation as a political and cultural repudiation of clerical bonds, and an enjoyment of new liberties. There was some religious feeling, of course, but it was expressed in elaborate forms, not in spontaneous simple lyrics that the people could sing.

The technic of the singing hymn had not been developed, nor its limitations recognized. It took nearly a century before even an approximation could be reached to the practicability of the Lutheran hymns, which were written, not by literary connoisseurs, but by men in close touch with the people, men who had with singleness of mind striven to win and edify them. As we study the English lyrics, written, not to be sung, but simply to express the personal feelings of the writer in the current style and in complicated measures, we see how far English poets had to go before a practicable singing hymn could be written.

The conceptions of poetry, the prevalent grandioseness of style, the studied phrasemaking, the excessive Latinity of vocabulary among distinctively literary men, made the simplicity needed in a congregational hymn impossible. Despite Mr. Horder’s enthusiasm over the possible use Luther would have made of John Milton, the German hymnody creator could have done nothing with the ponderous large-planning author of _Paradise Lost_, with his wealth of classical allusions and mythology, and his phrasing rich with preciosity. Milton’s Psalm versions, fine as they are, were simply not singable by the commonalty of his time who were to be depended on to do the singing. He was a writer of odes, not of singing hymns.

Here is a literary hymn—balancing phrases, piling up antitheses, consciously seeking striking and euphonious combinations of words:

“I praise Him most, I love Him best, all praise and love is His; While Him I love, in Him I live, and cannot live amiss. Love’s sweetest mark, laud’s highest theme, man’s most desired Light, To love Him life, to leave Him death, to live in Him delight.”

The writer of the foregoing, Robert Southwell, a Romanist martyr, writing in prison, could write simple lyrics out of the fullness and genuineness of his religious experience, but it was not in the accepted fashion. What Protestant dare refuse to sing this simple hymn of his?

“Yet God’s must I remain, By death, by wrong, by shame; I cannot blot out of my heart That grace wrought in his name.”

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIC OF WRITING SINGING HYMNS

All these writers, and many others that might be mentioned, had not acquired the technic of congregational hymn writing. They either did not recognize the limitations of the singing hymn, or refused to be hampered by its restraints.

But presently the idea of the singing hymn defined itself. Thomas Campion in 1613 issued a number of lyrics that combined spiritual insight, literary grace, and practical availability to a hitherto unattained degree. Dr. Benson characterizes his

“Never weather-beaten sail More willing beat to shore,”

as “among the loveliest of the lyrics expressing the heavenly homesickness.” Campion was a musician as well as a poet, which partly accounts for the singability of his hymns.

In 1623 George Withers issued a complete hymnbook for the Established Church. It was made up of Scriptural paraphrases and hymns for special occasions. The hymns are superior to previous attempts in structure and method, in their simple piety and practical purpose, and in their availability for actual congregational singing. But in the midst of admirable lines there were strange lapses in taste. The hymn whose first verse began so auspiciously,

“Come, oh, come, in pious lays Sound we God Almighty’s praise; Hither bring in one consent Heart and voice and instrument,”

makes the singing congregation a conductor directing a vast chorus:

“From earth’s vast and hollow womb Music’s deepest bass may come; Seas and floods, from shore to shore, Shall their counter-tenors roar,” etc.

Clever in a way, but hardly devotional!

Withers’ “Musicians’ Hymn” has a very practical hint to the “singers’ gallery,” as well as to the congregation:

“He sings and plays The songs which best Thou lovest, Who does and says The things which Thou approvest.”

What Withers’ influence on subsequent English hymnody might have been we can only conjecture: the Company of Stationers boycotted his book because he had secured the king’s order to bind it up with the Psalter and shut it out from the regular channels of trade. His second collection, “Hallelujah,” was even more practicable and candidly didactic in style. But Withers had but a slight, if any, influence, for Sternhold and Hopkins still ruled the worship of the churches.

His immediate successors in hymn writing, Herbert, Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan, were not influenced by his practical spirit and sang to please themselves, not to lead the congregation.

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a devout soul, full of a usually charming fantasy and fertile in imagery; but antithesis was still an allurement to poets in his generation. His “Antiphon” makes an effective hymn, but the inevitable contrast is still there:

“The heavens are not too high, His praise may thither fly; The earth is not too low, His praises there may grow.”

Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan all share in the quaintness of Herbert and also in his general hymnic impracticability.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674), the singer of rather worldly songs, but a literary artist withal, in his “Litany to the Holy Spirit” reaches more nearly up to the ideal of the singing hymn:

“In the hour of my distress, When temptations me oppress, And when I my sins confess, Sweet Spirit, comfort me.”

But when in the second stanza he descends to a description of a feverish sleepless night,

“When I lie within my bed Sick in heart and sick in head, And with doubts discomforted, Sweet Spirit, comfort me,”

a doubt of its congruity on the lips of a crowd of worshipers begins to rise. But when in the fourth and fifth verses one is asked to sing,

“When the artless doctor sees No one hope but of his fees, And his skill runs on the lees, Sweet Spirit, comfort me.

When his potion and his pill, His or none or little skill, Meet for nothing but to kill, Sweet Spirit, comfort me,”

one understands why, despite some fine lines, hymnal editors hesitate to use it.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691), chiefly remembered by his _Saints’ Everlasting Rest_ and _Call to the Unconverted_ and a mass of other most useful writings, prepared a metrical psalter which found little response; he also wrote some poetry, but, as a child of his age, delighted in antithesis. One of his books of poetry had as its subtitle _The Concordant Discord of a Broken-healed Heart_. His hymns, however, are simple in style and make a close approach to the practicable type. Two of them are still largely in use: “Lord, it belongs not to my care” and “Ye holy angels bright.” Had the churches in his day given a fair opportunity, or furnished the inspiration of demand, Baxter might have been one of our great hymnists, superior to Watts in his deeper spirituality.

John Austin (?-1669) wrote some excellent hymns for a book of “Devotions” for family use. Among them is

“Blest be Thy love, dear Lord, That taught me this sweet way, Only to love Thee for Thyself And for that love obey,”

which still finds a worthy place in our hymnals.

About this time (1616) the long poem, “Hierusalem, my happie home,” appears to have been written. Only the initials F. B. P. are attached to the manuscript, now in the British Museum. It is conjectured that they stand for Francis Baker Priest. Out of it have been fashioned two very useful hymns: “Jerusalem, my happy home,” by Joseph Bromehead in 1795, and “O mother dear, Jerusalem,” by an unknown hand. The debt of the original to the Latin is quite evident, but it has original values as well. Aside from its length, a common fault in its time, it approaches the final type of the congregational hymns very nearly in its simplicity, devoutness, and in its practicable measure.

Closely allied to the Herbert school of religious lyrics, Bishop Thomas Ken (1637-1711) had the advantage of belonging to a later generation in which the conception of the congregational hymn had begun to crystallize into a definite form. His Morning and Evening Hymns are both simple in structure—in Ambrose’s iambic long meter—free from affectations and bizarre rhetoric, easily comprehensible, and devout and spiritual. They have been accepted as among the best hymns in the language.

The doxology with which the two hymns close has been sung more frequently and with greater elevation of mind and heart than any other four lines in all earth’s literature. There is in this doxology a nobility, a majesty, a comprehensiveness of praise which have not been approached elsewhere outside of the choruses found in the Book of Revelation. English hymnody had at last found its voice, its spirit, and its model.

The conception of the congregational hymn had now been clearly defined and, from Bishop Ken on, English hymnody was established as a distinct department of English lyrical poetry. Hymn writers thenceforward were content to accept the mediocrity Montgomery later called for. The difficulty was that the English Protestant churches, still psalm-fanatic, were not ready to sing the hymns they needed so much for their highest spiritual development, and which now began to be supplied.

That the idea of singing hymns of “human composure” was making progress is evidenced by the issue in 1659 of the first collection of hymns, _A Century of Select Hymns_, by William Barton (1603-1678). He had issued a collection of versified Psalms in 1644 and a little book of Psalms and hymns of thanksgiving in 1651. A little later he published a review of the current Psalm version discussing its “errors” and “absurdities.” He issued six collections during his lifetime, most of whose content we would recognize as hymns. His work has little interest to us except as it, as well as that of Wither, Baxter, and Mason, helped to clarify the ideas of the young man Watts.

V. THE IDEAL OF THE SINGING HYMN REALIZED

It was the lack of preparation on the part of the churches, rather than any essential inferiority to Isaac Watts, that prevented John Mason (?-1694) from being recognized as the father of English hymnody. Watts’ superiority lay in his having an intenser consciousness of the greater value of the free hymn and the strength and ability to force the issue to a final conclusion.

Mason’s hymns were the first to be used in regular congregational worship. Twenty editions of his _Spiritual Songs_ were issued; considering the times and the small population, this was a marvelous success. This collection may be considered the thin edge of the wedge, later driven by Watts, between the churches and psalmody. Horder in his _Hymn Lover_ declares that “rarely did Watts rise to the height of thought and beauty of expression which are found in Mason’s hymns.”

One of Mason’s most widely used hymns is

“Now from the altar of my heart Let incense flames arise; Assist me, Lord, to offer up Mine evening sacrifice.

Awake, my Love! awake, my Joy; Awake, my Heart and Tongue: Sleep not: when Mercies loudly call, Break forth into a Song.”

High authority claims that Mason’s hymn, “Thou wast, O God, and Thou wast blest,” is one of the best in the language. Its third verse is particularly noble:

“To whom, Lord, should I sing but Thee, The Maker of my tongue? Lo, other lords would seize on me, But I to Thee belong. As waters hasten to their sea, And earth unto its earth, So let my soul return to Thee, From whom it had its birth.”

His influence on Watts was very considerable. George MacDonald says of Mason’s hymns: “Dr. Watts was very fond of them; would that he had written with similar modesty of style.” Mason was made to supply many a good line to the hymns of Watts, we are told by those who have compared the hymns of the two writers.[3]

The hymns are good, because the writer was good! Richard Baxter styled him “the glory of the Church of England,” saying that “the frame of his spirit was so heavenly, his deportment so humble and obliging, his discourse of spiritual things so weighty, with such apt words and delightful air, that it charmed all that had any spiritual relish.”

Before closing this chapter, mention must be made of Joseph Addison (1672-1719), who is so widely known because of his connection with the famous _Spectator_, a weekly devoted to essays on various topics, literary and otherwise. While his essays are his chief claim to literary honor, he wrote five hymns, three of which are found in most of our larger hymnals: “The spacious firmament on high,” “When all thy mercies, O my God,” “How are thy servants blest, O Lord.” These hymns are all most thoughtful and felicitously expressed. They are admirably adapted for the worship of God, but they too unanimously ignore the higher attributes of the divine nature as manifested in Jesus Christ, and the salvation he wrought out for fallen and needy humanity, to take a high place in Christian Hymnody. The same is true of Psalms, of course, but they were written before Christ appeared.

_Chapter XV_ ISAAC WATTS AND HIS PERIOD

I. THE HYMNIC NEED OF THE TIME

We have now reached the point in the development of the English hymn where the shortcomings of the metrical versions of the Psalms were keenly realized, and where the conception of the practicable congregational hymn was clarified and the model definitely established.

Someone of combative courage and of organizing ability was needed who would break down the wall of mere usage and custom in the churches—of the sheerly mechanical tradition and mental inertia; all the better, if he could replace the outworn Psalm versions with practicable congregational hymns that would more intelligently and efficiently voice the faith and the experience of God’s people. He needed to be a man of clear vision of the essential lyric needs of the church, of a clear conception of the type of hymns best fitted to supply those needs, of literary culture and adaptativeness, and of a high moral courage to face and overcome the extreme conservativeness that seems to be inherent in all ecclesiastical organizations.

II. THE LIFE OF WATTS

In the distinct providence of God, the man appeared, exactly fitted for the important task. Isaac Watts was born at Southampton, England, July 17, 1674, the son of a very intelligent and devout schoolmaster, who during the reign of Charles II was imprisoned and exiled from his family for his nonconformity. Isaac was extraordinarily precocious, studying Greek and Hebrew at the age of eight years, writing verses when a mere child, and attempting Latin and English poetry in his schooldays. His brilliant scholarship brought him offers of a career at one of the universities, but he refused, being staunch in his nonconformity.

He became a Nonconformist minister in 1698 and pastor of the Independent Church, Berry Street, London, in 1702. His health being frail, owing to his excessive study as a student, he was given an assistant, Rev. Samuel Price, with whom he spent “many harmonious years of fellowship in the Gospel.”

Visiting Sir Thomas Abney, a staunch Dissenter living at Theobalds in Hertfordshire, for a week, Watts was persuaded to remain with him and his wife permanently, making his home with them the rest of his life. He never married. His health was always precarious, and his pastorate at the Berry Street Independent Church, which ended only with his death, was largely nominal.

We rarely think of Isaac Watts as anything more than a hymn writer, but his intellectual activities were wide and his writing outside of hymnody extensive. He wrote a number of treatises on Theology. His textbooks on Geography, Astronomy, and Logic were used in the English universities, and at Yale and Harvard.

III. WATTS AS A HYMN WRITER

Watts had been recognized from childhood as having a talent in the making of verses. Returning from a church service in Southampton, he sharply criticized the hymns of Barton—an inferior contemporary of John Mason. His devout father, a deacon in the church, playfully, perhaps seriously, replied that he should try his skill in supplying a better one. The challenge was accepted and he brought his father the hymn:

“Behold the glories of the Lamb Amidst his Father’s throne; Prepare new honors for his name, And songs before unknown.”

He little realized that it was his life’s most illustrious task to fulfill the exhortation of the last two lines.

The success of the new hymn when lined out to the congregation and sung by them led to a demand for more. Thus unconsciously and unpretentiously was ushered in a new epoch in the devotional singing of the Christian Church. Presumably this occurred in his twenty-first year, for this and the succeeding year were spent at home in Southampton in varied studies and in writing hymns.

These hymns seem to have remained in manuscript for some years, despite the earnest protest of his younger brother, who declared that “Mason now reduces this kind of writing to a sort of yawning indifference, and honest Barton chimes us asleep.” This literary judgment of young Enoch must not be taken too seriously, except as expressing his eagerness to have his brilliant brother’s hymns brought before the public.

It was nearly or quite ten years after the first hymn that a collection of hymns and odes and other poems, _Horæ Lyricæ_, was issued, in 1706. It contained twenty-five hymns, four psalm paraphrases, and eleven religious songs in varied measures and meters. It also contained elegies, odes, and blank verse of a purely literary character. In his preface he suggests the spirit and methods which should later be more fully developed. “The hymns were never written to appear before the judges of wit, but only to assist the meditations and worship of vulgar Christians.”[1]

In 1709 the second edition of the _Horæ_ furnished an increased number of hymns. In the preface of this edition he confesses that in the hymns of the _Horæ_ “there are some expressions which are not suited to the plainest capacities, and differ too much from the usual methods of speech in which holy things are proposed to the general part of mankind.”

The hymns contained in the more popular _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_ in 1707, and in the augmented edition of 1709, were of a plainer type for “the level of vulgar capacities.” The edition of 1709 contained two hundred and fifty-five hymns, seventy-eight paraphrases, and twenty-two communion hymns. The hymns were in only three meters, Long, Common, and Short. Watts had an eye single for practicability.

The four Psalm versions contained in his _Horæ Lyricæ_ had a prefatory note, “An essay on a few of David’s Psalms translated into plain verse, in language more agreeable to the clearer revelations of the Gospel,” which makes certain that he had already clearly in mind the evangelical psalter which, despite his absorption in other tasks and his long illness in 1712, finally appeared in 1719, “The Psalms of David imitated in the language of the New Testament and apply’d to the Christian state and worship.” Watts excluded twelve Psalms entirely and omitted passages from some of the one hundred and thirty-eight that were retained, because they were not adapted to Christian use.

Although he never married, Watts was very fond of children. In 1715, in the midst of his program for the public service of song, his _opus magnum_, he prepared his “Divine Songs, attempted in easy language for the use of children.” It was to be used in connection with the “Catechism” he had prepared for their use. It was the first collection of its kind and was the forerunner of the immense supply of children’s songs that was to grow out of the activities of the Sunday school. One is amazed that the writer of “When I survey the wondrous cross,” or “Our God, our help in ages past,” could write so tender and graceful a lullaby as

“Hush, my babe, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed! Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head.”

IV. WATTS’ ARGUMENTS FOR THE HYMN

However kindly we may estimate the value of Watts’ hymns and of his evangelical metrical versions of the Psalms, we must recognize that his service as the protagonist of the free hymn is quite as great. His hymns and evangelical psalter would likely have suffered the fate of those of Wither and Mason, his immediate predecessors, had he not written attractive and practicable congregational hymns and versions, and not accomplished two other results essential to the substitution of the free hymn for the often grotesque Psalm versions.

He did not simply write a miscellaneous lot of religious lyrics and shoot them like arrows into the air; he had a clear and efficient theory of church song, recognizing not only the varied needs, but the psychology underlying those needs, and produced “a system of praise” that supplied those needs and conciliated current prejudices.

Again, in his prefaces and in his _Essay towards the Improvement of Psalmody_, he laid hymnological foundations that not only prepared the way for the introduction of his own hymns and versions, but also for such a fresh consideration of the whole subject as led to the revolution in the English song service; from these have come the freedom and spontaneity, genuineness and sincerity, definiteness of purpose, and deepening of personal experience which have blessed succeeding generations.

His supreme merit, in this definite onslaught on the rigid literalism of the churches, was that he not only brought destructive criticism, but supplied an adequate substitute for that which he condemned.

Watts denied the obligation to sing the Bible. The Scriptures were the Word of God to the soul and the hymn was the work of the soul in response to God. He further denied that the Book of Psalms was given as a hymnbook for the Christian Church. It was not even adapted to its use, for it was distinctly Jewish and not Christian in ideals and spirit. “Some of ’em are almost opposite to the spirit of the Gospel; many of them are foreign to the state of the New Testament and widely different to the present circumstances of Christians.” Before they can be sung in a Christian service they must be rewritten as if David were a Christian and not a Jew.

Even allowing that there was an obligation to sing the Word of God, Watts denied that the metrical Psalm was the pure Word of God. The demands of meter and rhyme so refashioned and even mutilated the Psalms that they no longer were the words of the Scripture, nor even its ideas. Its inspiration suffered a total eclipse under the hands of the versifiers, and the metrical Psalm became a work of “human composure” with none of the vital spirit of the free hymn.

Watts could not understand why “we under the Gospel should sing nothing else but the joys, hopes, and fears of Asaph and David.” He declared that “David would have thought it very hard to have been confined to the words of Moses and sung nothing else on all his rejoicing days but the drowning of Pharaoh in the fifteenth of Exodus.” He complained that even in those places where the Jewish psalmist seems to mean the Gospel, excellent poet as he was, he was not able to speak it plain, by reason of the infancy of that dispensation, and longs for the aid of a Christian writer.

He set aside the prevalent “superstitious reverence for the letter of the Jewish Scriptures,” and in an almost defiant spirit declared, “Though there are many gone before me who have taught the Hebrew Psalmist to speak English, yet I think I may assume the pleasure of being the first who hath brought down the royal author into the common affairs of the Christian life, and led the Psalmist of Israel into the Church of Christ, without anything of the Jew about him.”

Whatever devotional value we may assign to the Psalms, we must accept Watts’ fundamental idea that they are not the exclusive formulary of the use of song in the worship of God and in the life of the Church. His further contention that not all the Psalms, nor all parts of them, are adapted to Christian use, we cannot now gainsay. The Jews themselves only used about forty of them. It was not until centuries after the Apostolic Age had elapsed that, due to monkish superstition, all the Psalms were recognized as of equal exclusive use.

So many versions of individual Psalms make such satisfactory hymns and so many hymns are such faithful transcripts of passages from the Psalms, or echoes of their sentiments, that the distinction between psalm versions and hymns in individual cases might well be set aside entirely, as having no actual basis or value.

V. WATTS’ INSISTENCE ON PRACTICABILITY

While Watts laid the strongest emphasis on the awkwardness and absurdity of much of the Psalm paraphrasing, he was also impressed with the unavailability of the literary hymns of his predecessors, or even of some of his own in his first book. The common people would not sing them, they were out of their reach; moreover, they were not in practicable meters and measures, and did not fit the accepted tunes the people knew. Watts accepted the current Psalm version meters, Long Meter, Common Meter, and Short Meter, and the Psalm tunes at once became hymn tunes. It was quite a handicap to a literary hymn writer, but essential to the practical use of the hymn.

Watts deliberately avoided distinctly literary quality in his hymns, seeking only lucidity and plainness of expression, all within the capacity of the common people. To quote from his prefaces, he “endeavored to make the sense plain and obvious.... The metaphors are generally sunk to the level of vulgar capacities.... Some of the beauties of poesy are neglected and some wilfully defaced.”

Dr. Benson, whom it is always profitable to quote, says: “Watts’ work earns a place in the literature of power, the literature that leaves esthetic critics cold while it moves men.” Palgrave included nothing of Watts in his _Golden Treasury_, but elsewhere speaks of him as “one of those whose sacrifice of art to direct usefulness has probably lost them those honors in literature to which they were entitled.”

VI. THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF WATTS’ HYMNS

The offensive lines in Watts must be judged with due regard to their background. The Sternhold and Hopkins version was vastly worse. It was a time of dry doctrinal preaching and of a literal interpretation of the Bible which to the preachers was largely a mere collection of isolated proof texts. In these matters he was speaking in the idiom and with the accent of his own generation. In the two centuries that have since passed, the sand and gravel and debris have been washed away, and our hymnals contain the pure gold of his verse for our edification and delight. Outside of the hymnbooks of the Wesley brothers, where can we find such a placer mine of spiritual wealth?

At his best Watts wrote hymns of majesty and ecstatic adoration that have never been excelled:

“Our God, our Help in ages past, Our Hope for years to come; Our Shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal Home.”

How he has made the Long Meter measure sound like the great Open Diapason of the pipe organ in the following lines!

“Before Jehovah’s awful throne, Ye nations bow with sacred joy; Know that the Lord is God alone, He can create, and he destroy.”

What if John Wesley does add a majestic note or two in the foregoing hymn; the singer of the whole hymn is the noble spirit of little Dr. Watts.

Had David himself returned with an English tongue, he could not have reproduced the spirit of the seventy-second Psalm more nobly:

“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun Doth his successive journeys run; His Kingdom spread from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more.”

Solomon’s coronation song (Ps. 72) was no more majestic than this crowning hymn Watts wrote for his Lord.

But Watts could not only be majestic; he could be tender:

“When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.”

Is there a tenderer strain in all English hymnody than the third verse?

“See, from his head, his hands, his feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”

Not in the same exquisite vein of noble tenderness, but perhaps all the more useful for its reduced voltage, is his other hymn of the Crucifixion,

“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed? And did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head For such a worm as I!”

Its last verse has deepened the consecration of unnumbered millions as they sang the sacred vow:

“But drops of grief can ne’er repay The debt of love I owe; Here, Lord, I give myself away— ’Tis all that I can do.”

The list of the great hymns that have come down to us from Isaac Watts is too long to be given here, but they enrich the pages of all our hymnals and exalt the spirit of all our church services.

The criticism often urged that Watts wrote too much cannot well be gainsaid, but the striking fact confronts us that most of the great hymns were written by men who wrote too much! The same is true of the composers of our greatest music, as, for instance, Mendelssohn and Handel. Much writing develops technic, ease, spontaneity, unselfconsciousness, that make the heights of feeling and expression more accessible. But what Watts needed was not so much to write less, but to have a competent editor like John Wesley to eliminate his vulgar and often grotesque lines.

That Watts should find plenty of antagonists to pick up the gauge of challenge he threw out was inevitable. His hymns were called “Watts’ Whims” in sardonic derision. It is noteworthy that the opposition did not prove so heated against his hymns as against his _The Psalms of David Imitated_ (1719). In daring to amend the Judaism of David he had committed sacrilege! This volume practically closed his work of reforming the service of song in the English language. He was but forty-four years old at this time and he lived thirty years more—spent in theological, educational, and devotional writings.

The hymns of Watts slowly found their way among the Nonconformist churches. Before his death a large part of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches were nearly monopolized by them. However, the Established Church still clung to the Psalm Versions.

VII. CONTEMPORARIES OF WATTS

A contemporary of Watts, Simon Browne (1680-1732) issued a collection of hymns in 1720, _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_, designed as a supplement to Dr. Watts, containing one hundred and sixty-six hymns which had considerable vogue during the next generation. Now only one hymn, “Come, gracious Spirit, heavenly Dove,” survives in some of our hymnals.

Another contemporary was John Byrom (1691-1763), scientist and mystic, whose “Christians, awake, salute the happy morn” is still a Christmas favorite and whose “My spirit longeth for Thee” is “terse and tender in a very high degree.”[2] MacDonald speaks of his few hymns as a “well of the water of life, for its song tells of the love and truth which are the grand power of God.”

Another hymn writer of Watts’ day was Robert Seagrave (1693-?), who added fifty of his own hymns to a collection prepared for his own church at Lorimer’s Hall, Cripplegate, London, all of which had a high degree of excellence, of which “Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings” is found in most of our current hymnbooks.

A greater than any of the above was Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), who was a close friend of Isaac Watts, although nearly thirty years younger. He wrote three hundred and seventy-five hymns, most of them as pendants to sermons, recapitulating and enforcing the points of his discourse. They were not collected and published until four years after his death. The fine character and high ability displayed by Doddridge endeared him to many of the most important people of his day. The devoutness, literary grace, and adaptation to actual use of his lyrics were immediately recognized. Their distinctly homiletical character, combined with deep religious feeling and tenderness, and their varied topics, greatly appealed to ministers, and they were recognized as second only to Watts. The Church owes some of its most useful hymns to him: “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,” “Grace; ’tis a charming sound,” “How gentle God’s commands,” “O happy day, that fixed my choice,” “My gracious Lord, I own thy right,” are among the many found in all our hymnals. His relative standard may be inferred from the use made of leading hymn writers by Dr. Benson in his _Revised Presbyterian Hymnal_: Watts 49, Charles Wesley 24, Doddridge 13.

_Chapter XVI_ THE WESLEYS AND THEIR ERA

I. THE INFLUENCE OF WATTS ON THE WESLEYS

The line of hymnic succession between Watts and the Wesleys was direct and not through Doddridge, for the latter’s hymns did not appear until 1754. One-half of John Wesley’s _American Collection_, the first hymnbook published in America, issued in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1737, after two years’ work in the new Colony of Georgia, consisted of Watts’ hymns. It goes without saying that Watts’ hymnbooks, with others like Tate and Brady’s _New Version_, George Herbert’s poems, the hymns of John Austin, of Henry More, and of Norris of Bemerton, were so well known, and so appreciated, that copies of them were included among the books carried to America. In early manhood they met the already elderly Watts, and as they walked they sang together. Indeed, with Dr. Benson we may “infer that Watts’ _Psalms and Hymns_, in connection with Tate and Brady’s _New Version_, furnished the materials for the singing of the ‘Holy Club.’”

It is evident from the list of hymnbooks, and from the list of Wesley’s selections for his _American Collection_, that Watts was not the only influence that gave the impulse and fashioned the Wesleyan ideals of the public song service. It is noteworthy that Barton and Mason were not included. The High-Church Anglican Wesleys were not so prejudiced against Watts’ Nonconformist hymns as to exclude them.

II. THE HOME OF THE WESLEYS

With the Wesleys perhaps the strongest influence was that of the family and the home. Their grandfather, John Wesley, was a Nonconformist clergyman, and, what is more to the point, a poet. Their father, Samuel Wesley, was quite a voluminous poet (sixteen volumes), owing his Epworth rectorship to Queen Mary’s approval of his _Life of Christ, an Heroic Poem_. One of his hymns, “Behold the Saviour of mankind,” still appears in some of our current hymnals.

Their maternal grandfather was Rev. Samuel Annesley, LL.D., a scholarly Nonconformist clergyman. Their mother, Susanna Annesley, is recognized as a woman of extraordinary force of character, organizing ability, and intense piety, the “Mother of Methodism,” and even more gifted than her gifted but less steady and dependable husband. It will be noted that both grandfathers were dissenting clergymen.

The Epworth rectory life was intellectual, intensely devout, and full of the singing of psalms and hymns, for it was “a nest of singing birds.” When students at Oxford, John and Charles used to walk out into the meadows and sing songs and hymns together.[1]

III. THE MORAVIAN INFLUENCE

As we shall see, another extremely important influence was that of the Moravians on their personal religious experience, which under the Moravian guidance, on the Atlantic voyage and later, became intense and profound, furnishing tremendous motive power for all their work. The Moravian missionaries brought the realization of the power the Christian hymn can wield, and of the deep spirituality it may be used to express. It was not only the hymns the Moravian brethren sang that impressed John Wesley, but the spirit and genuineness of feeling with which they sang.

IV. JOHN WESLEY

John Wesley was born at Epworth in 1703. He inherited his mother’s organizing and administrative ability, no less than her deep religious nature. He was to Methodist hymnody what John Calvin was to the Reformed psalmody, its initiator and director. He added a critical power and a practical sense of relation of means to ends his younger brother lacked—Charles Wesley wrote the hymns and John winnowed and edited them. At Oxford he was called the “Father of the Holy Club.” His aggressive spirit drove him to Georgia as a missionary, where he was a misfit, but where he was subjected to needed spiritual discipline, and to the influence of the Moravian pietism and absorption in spiritual things, so valuable for his symmetrical preparation for his future work. It led to his conversion—or, if you prefer, to his baptism of the Holy Spirit—and that of Charles, in 1738, which opened out to them both a new spiritual dimension. It also led to his interest in the Moravian “Gesangbuch,” or hymnbook, from the German of which he translated several hymns for his _Charleston Collection_. On his return to England he took an early opportunity to visit Herrnhut, Saxony, the parent society of the connection. He was delighted with the atmosphere of piety and Christian song which he found there. His pietistic and mystical tendencies were greatly strengthened by his intercourse with Count Zinzendorf and Rothe whom he there met.

On his return to London John Wesley kept up his association with the Moravian brethren for some time; but his active temperament could not long be content with their quiet, contemplative attitude, nor could he overcome his dislike for the emphasis they placed on the merely physical aspects of the life and death of Christ which they had brought over from the Roman Catholic mystics. So they presently parted company to the advantage of the aggressive spirit the Wesleys were developing.

John Wesley was a scholarly man who had acquired all the culture of seven generations of intellectual family life and of the literary training of a great English university. He had the critical faculty well developed, a nice sense of the value of words, and the ability to marshal them for the expression of his thoughts. His sermons and his theological treatises reveal his logical and analytical mind. His feelings were strong, but not of the effusive character.

With this type of mind, it was not strange that as a hymn writer he would succeed better as a translator than as an original hymnist. His important contribution, therefore, consisted of translations from the German of Tersteegen, Gerhardt, Scheffler, Spangenberg, and Zinzendorf, and the amendment or even recasting of hymns by Watts, or of poems by George Herbert. Perhaps his greatest work in hymnody lay in encouraging as well as editing the work of his younger brother, Charles.[2]

In John Wesley’s plans to elevate the degraded population of England both spiritually and mentally, the hymn bears an important part. His keen and critical literary faculty was brought to bear upon its cultural as well as spiritual aspects, and his drastic corrections and revisions, as well as his translations, did much to lift the hymnody of his age to a higher literary plane.

V. CHARLES WESLEY

Charles Wesley was born at Epworth in 1707, being four and a half years younger than John. He inherited a full portion of the family religious nature, but with his mother’s mental energy he combined a double portion of the Wesley poetic temperament. With less of the rigid will of his older brother, he had a more sensitive spirit, a more emotional nature, a greater literary impulse. Critics scold that he wrote too much.[3] As well scold the mockingbird for being so prodigal of its notes or that it occasionally merely twitters.

When he “got religion,” his religion made him sing. Did he rejoice? His joy found utterance in a joyous hymn, “O for a thousand tongues to sing.” Had he trials? What more natural than a hymn of prayer, “My God, my God, to Thee I cry”? Was there a riot about him? A hymn of steadfastness, “Thou hidden Source of calm repose,” sang in his heart. The impulse to write was not always accompanied by creative insight, so, of course, he wrote inferior hymns. The urge to write was too spontaneous that it should wait for the critical attitude. Let John supply that! Charles had the joy of writing and John winnowed the product. There was chaff, of course, but the golden wheat cannot grow without chaff.

It must not be assumed that Charles was only a hymn writer. Immediately on his conversion, he began to preach the need of the new birth, and for fifteen years he vied with John in field work in behalf of the new movement. With his background, his culture and education, his poetic nature and wealth of vocabulary and depth of experience, Charles might be expected to preach a vivid, glowing, flaming message—and such was his style. His meetings carried him into all parts of England, Wales, and Ireland.

What a team the Wesley brothers were! John with his masterly logical sermons and profound theological writings, Charles with his hymns and his sermons aflame with feeling, the Annesley organizing instinct in both of them. What a spiritual force they set in motion that transformed the spiritual and moral life of England and saved its soul—nay more, it swept around the whole earth, and determined the character of nations yet waiting to be born.

VI. CHARLES WESLEY’S HYMNS QUITE SUBJECTIVE

By the necessities of the situation, by the character of the work, and by his own temperament, Charles Wesley was led to write subjective, emotional hymns, keeping personal experience to the fore. But his emotionality was not shallow sentiment, but spontaneous and genuine feeling, based on clear recognition of the actual truths of the Scriptures. In a very intense way he had actually experienced the sorrow for sin, the joy of salvation from its guilt and power, complete assurance of divine acceptance, the longing for divine communion, the sense of the love of God as it planned and fashioned his inner as well as his outward life, the certainty of safety from the power of sin in sanctification. He could write affecting invitations to sinners, for he knew their condition and danger, and also the results of peace and joy, of power and efficiency, that the acceptance of Christ would bring. The truths of the Gospel in passing through the crucible of his personality acquired an actuality, a poignancy of appeal, that made his hymns a mighty power, not only in the immediate campaigns of the Wesley brothers, but in the life and work of the Church in the generations to come.[4]

VII. WATTS AND CHARLES WESLEY

That was the difference between Wesley and Watts. The latter was objective, reasonable, formal. The majesty of a sovereign God appealed to him. He delighted in the infinite perfections of the divine nature. He surveyed the wondrous cross. He trembled before it, as did the children of Israel before the Holy Mount. His attitude was that of the Old Testament. Watts viewed the sovereignty of God objectively; Wesley felt the facts of salvation as actual experiences.

Charles Wesley was subjective; he expressed the feelings that the truths of the Gospel produced in him.[5]

God to him also was great, but as a Saviour, companion, friend. Why should he tremble? He was not Moses viewing the burning bush, but John leaning on the breast of Jesus. He shared the ecstasies of the apostles and disciples portrayed in the New Testament.[6]

So Watts gives dignity and majesty to the early topics of our hymnbooks on the attributes of God, his worship, the awe of the soul in the presence of its sovereign Lord in hymns like “Before Jehovah’s awful throne,” “Great God! how infinite thou art,” “I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,” “Our God, our help in ages past,” while Charles Wesley fills the sweeter, tenderer, more intimate departments of salvation, forgiveness, communion with God, with the odor of the spikenard of his heart in hymns like “Depth of mercy! can there be,” “I know that my Redeemer lives,” “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” “Love divine, all loves excelling.” How well these singers of the Lord’s song supplement each other, and how much more symmetrical and complete are our hymnals because both have written in their own lines and styles!

Which is the greater hymn writer? That is a mooted question that need not be decided here. In Scriptural content the older man is superior, as, at his best, he is in majesty of style. For formal services of worship his hymns are more fitting and impressive. On the other hand, Wesley was superior in quantity and in the number of hymns of high quality. It must be granted that he is more poetical, more graceful, more suave and human. His range is more extensive, his emotion deeper and more noble. In immediate results on the lives of the people Charles Wesley is incomparably richer than Watts, for his hymns then and since turned multitudes unto righteousness.[7]

VIII. THE ISSUES OF THE WESLEYAN HYMNS

Space is wanting, and the profit would be slight, to give a catalogue of the sixty-four original issues of hymns that John published from 1737 to 1790, the mass of them for the use of the evangelistic campaign. They were largely occasional, issued to meet a pressing but only temporary need. They varied from a single sheet containing but a single hymn (Charles Wesley’s hymn praying for his brother’s long life) to the two volumes with two thousand and thirty short hymns on Scripture passages. It was not until 1780 that a regular hymnbook “for the use of the people called ‘Methodists’” was issued, containing five hundred and twenty-five hymns.

IX. THE METHODIST TUNES

So practical a mind as that of John Wesley, who had from childhood engaged in sacred song, would not be expected to overlook the great importance of the tunes to which the new hymns were to be sung. In 1742 he printed a _Collection of Tunes_ in which only three of the _Old Version_ tunes appeared. Tunes were freely borrowed from the musical _Supplement to the New Version_, six were secured from German Moravian sources, and a few were new. Tunes were later supplied by Handel and Lampe; popular melodies which the Wesleys picked up in their preaching tours were also adopted.

Some twenty years later fugal tunes became popular among the churches, but became known as “Old Methodist Tunes,” although they had never been officially recognized and had first been written in Scotland.

When we regard the quantity and quality of the Wesleyan hymns, or their adaptation to the spiritual and evangelistic purposes for which they were written, or the body of teaching they conveyed, or the spiritual fervor they created and are still creating in millions of souls, or the influence they exerted on all subsequent hymnody, we do not find the sweeping statement of Dr. James Martineau, the Unitarian divine and hymnbook editor, as exaggerated: “After the Scriptures, the _Wesley Hymn Book_ appears to me the grandest instrument of popular religious culture that Christendom has produced.”

X. INFLUENCES OPPOSING THE WESLEYAN HYMNS

The contemporary prejudice against the Wesleyan hymnody was very strong and bitter. There were many influences against them: the conservative devotion to the psalm versions, “New” and “Old,” the Nonconformist loyalty to the psalms and hymns of Watts, the Established Church’s resentment against the revolters against established rule and custom within her bounds, the formalist objection to what seemed to them the fanatical, extravagant, and effusive type of piety, the emotional, subjective, experiential style of the hymns, and (worst of all!) the low social class that constituted the bulk of the followers of the Wesleys. The result was that both in Great Britain and in America the Wesleyan hymns crept very slowly into the hymnbooks of the churches outside the Methodist movement. It was many years before any appeared in the English church hymnals; even when they did, Charles Wesley’s name did not appear with them; it even happened that other writers were credited with them. In America, where the Methodists were the Salvation Army of their day, the Wesleyan hymns were slow of recognition. This was partly due to the general, almost fanatical, devotion to Watts’ hymnody.

The Arminian attitude of the Wesleys, as against the rigid Calvinism of both the Established and the Nonconformist churches, led to acrid theological discussions that intensified the opposition to the movement they headed. Even among those favorable to the spiritual reformation was there an element antagonistic to the Wesleys. Whitefield, Toplady, and the Countess of Huntingdon were leaders in this revolt.

The fact that Charles Wesley rather monopolized the writing of hymns undoubtedly had its adverse influence. John Wesley did not encourage others to write.[8] This accounts for the fact that comparatively few of their immediate associates wrote hymns, and some of these drifted into other relations. What else could a man expect who fearlessly amended, revised others’ hymns, and then warned the general hymnbook maker regarding the Wesleyan hymns as follows: “Hymn-cobblers should not try to mend them. I really do not think they are able.”

XI. OTHER METHODIST HYMN WRITERS

Among these transient supporters was Edward Perronet (1726-1792) of Huguenot stock. He wrote “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” which makes so noble a climax for many of our services. For a time he was a preacher in the Wesleyan connection. He then adopted Calvinistic views, and joined the forces of the Countess of Huntingdon, preaching under her direction. His caustic Gallic wit, exercised against the Established Church, offended his patroness and he became the pastor of a small congregation of dissenters.

Another associate of the Wesleys was Thomas Olivers (1725-1799), who had small educational advantages, but was an indefatigable worker. One of his hymns has kept its place in our hymnals, “The God of Abraham praise.” Montgomery says of it: “This noble ode, though the essay of an unlettered man, claims special honor. There is not in our language a lyric of more majestic style, more elevated thought, or more glorious imagery.”

John Bakewell, the head of a prominent academy at Greenwich, was a local preacher of whom his tombstone, near to that of John Wesley in the cemetery of the City Road Chapel, records that “he adorned the doctrine of God, our Saviour, 80 years and preached his Gospel 70 years.” He is remembered by the hymn, “Hail, Thou once despised Jesus,” which is found in most of the current hymnals.

XII. CALVINISTIC-METHODIST HYMN WRITERS

There were no poetic restraints felt by the adherents of the Calvinistic wing of the Methodist movement as met the associates of the Wesleys, and the number of hymn writers in its ranks is larger.

William Williams (1717-1791), “the Watts of Wales,” spent his life in working in the Welsh Calvinistic-Methodist connection. Early in his career the need of appropriate Welsh hymns was so pressing that recourse was had to a sort of Eisteddfod of hymn-writing in which he easily won first honors. He was an indefatigable preacher, taking all Wales for his parish. His chief claim to immortality is his hymn, “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,” originally written in Welsh, but soon used in the Whitefield Methodist Connection in England. His missionary hymn, “O’er the gloomy hills of darkness,” while not so popular, has had a wide use.

John Cennick (1718—1755) was originally associated with the Wesleys as a preacher, but the burning question of Calvinism separated them and he became associated with Whitefield and later with the Moravians. Two hymns of his were extremely popular both in Great Britain and in the early years of Methodism in America: “Jesus, my all, to heaven is gone,” and “Children of the heavenly King.” The former was used as the verse basis of a great many “spiritual” choruses in pioneer times. His “Lo! He comes with clouds descending” was reshaped and rewritten by Charles Wesley and Martin Madan. The literary quality of his hymns is not high, but their sincerity and adaptation to universal Christian experience give them practical value.

Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-1778) was associated with the Wesleys and with the Calvinistic-Methodist leaders, but was a Church of England clergyman. He wrote four hundred and nineteen hymns; only a few continue in use. Notable among these is “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” which has been almost universally used and most mercilessly amended and revised. It has been translated into many languages: Gladstone having translated it into Latin, Greek, and Italian.

Montgomery says of Toplady’s hymns: “There is a peculiarly etherial spirit in some of these, in which, whether mourning or rejoicing, praying or praising, the writer seems absorbed in the full triumph of faith.” Another hymn of Toplady’s, “Deathless principle, arise,” has been characterized as “almost peerless,” but it is rather a reading hymn.

XIII. BAPTIST HYMN WRITERS

While the Methodists were enriching the hymnody of the Christian Church, the Baptists were not idle. The second reformation of England did not leave them unaffected, even though they were not officially associated with it.

Their chief hymn writer was Anne Steele (1716-1778), an invalid of great spirituality and piety and of much literary felicity as well as facility. She wrote one hundred and forty-four hymns and thirty-four versions of psalms. Her hymns are meditative in style, graceful and gentle in spirit. She is best remembered by her hymn of resignation, “Father, whate’er of earthly bliss.” Other hymns still widely used are “Now I resolve with all my heart,” the hymn regarding the Scriptures, “Father of mercies, in Thy word What endless glory shines,” and the (for her) enthusiastic hymn of praise to Christ, “To our Redeemer’s glorious name.” Her vogue in America at one time was very great.

John Fawcett was another Baptist hymnist of note. He issued one hundred and sixty-six hymns, three of which are standards in our day: “How precious is the book divine,” “Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,” and “Blest be the tie that binds.” Besides the duties of a heavy pastorate at Wainsgate (with a salary of less than two hundred dollars) he did a great amount of literary work. The third hymn mentioned above has done more for Christian unity than all arguments and commissions.

Another hymn writer of note, who may be classed as a Baptist, was Robert Robinson (1735-1790). Converted under Whitefield’s preaching, he later took a Baptist pastorate at Cambridge. He was very active in a literary way. He began a _History of Baptists_ in 1781 which appeared in 1790, but in spite of laborious research it did not reach the completeness he desired. Besides eleven hymns of but moderate value written for Whitefield, he wrote a Christmas hymn, “Mighty God, while angels bless Thee” and the ever-useful and prayerful “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing.” This was another favorite basis for “Spiritual” revival choruses in America. There was a lack of steadiness in his temperament. After writing _A Plea for the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ_, he later came under suspicion as a Unitarian and Socinian.

Samuel Medley was a midshipman in the navy, but being sorely wounded in a terrible naval battle off Cape Lagos, he refused to continue as a naval officer. During his recovery he was soundly converted under the influence of his grandfather Tonge. After being at the head of a school for a time, he accepted a Baptist pastorate. Medley wrote a number of hymns, of which “O could I speak the matchless worth,” “Awake, my soul, to joyful lays,” “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and “Mortals, awake, with angels join,” are still found in most of our hymnals. He claimed no literary merit for himself, but his hymns have found a hearty response in England, and even more in America.

Joseph Grigg (1720-1768) was not a Methodist or a Baptist, but a Presbyterian. He is further noteworthy as an “infant phenomenon,” having written a very familiar hymn, “Jesus, and shall it ever be?” at the age of ten years. He was in humble circumstances at first, “a laboring mechanic.” He was assistant minister in a prominent London Presbyterian church for four years, then “married well” and retired, still writing and preaching. His “Behold, a Stranger at the door,” with a stirring tune by T. C. O’Kane, has been widely used in America as an evangelistic hymn with a refrain.

_Chapter XVII_ HYMNS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

I. RISE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH

Although the Wesleys were Church of England clergymen, the tide of religious feeling they set in motion could not sweep over the mass of the population without its waves dashing across all ecclesiastical and traditional barriers. But John Wesley’s somewhat arrogant spirit, the extreme methods which he found necessary to reach the lower classes, so desperately in need of a new religious impulse, above all, his sharp reaction against the high Calvinistic theology of the Church, repelled many who had been deeply affected by the Methodist atmosphere that enveloped them and had felt a new sense of obligation to bring back their people to a true religious life.

II. EARLY COLLECTIONS OF EVANGELICAL HYMNS

The effectiveness of the spontaneous Methodist singing was evident enough and the Evangelical ministers of the Established Church felt the need of collections of hymns that should achieve the same results without what seemed to them the doctrinal vagaries and emotional extravagances of the Wesleyan hymns. Nor were they at first willing to set entirely aside the psalmody that had served the church for so many generations.

As might be expected, the earliest collections of hymns for use in the Established churches were largely based on Nonconformist and Wesleyan materials, since most of their editors, and the churches they wished to serve, were under the influence of the Countess of Huntingdon, who in turn was in close touch with the Calvinistic-Methodist movement.

One of the first of the collections of the Evangelical wing was that of Martin Madan, _Psalms and Hymns_, containing 170 hymns without order or arrangement, except that sacramental hymns had a department by themselves. Madan used a free hand in revising and remodeling the hymns he selected, sometimes for good, frequently for ill. He was quite a musician, supplying tunes, thirty-three of which were his own composition, of which “Huddersfield” and “Helmsley” still occasionally appear in our hymnals. His book was used to a considerable extent and helped to hasten the introduction of hymns in the Church of England. Other collections of the same name and type were issued by Berridge and Conyers.

More important was Toplady’s _Psalms and Hymns_, issued in 1776. Despite his virulent attacks on the Wesleys, he used quite a number of their hymns, without credit and drastically revised. His collection contained 418 hymns, some by Watts and by other Nonconformists. His revisions were not wholly on doctrinal grounds, but on literary as well—“God is the God of _Truth_, of Holiness, and of Elegance. Whoever, therefore, has the honor to compose, or to compile, anything that may constitute a part of his worship should keep those three particulars constantly in view.” In this remark, found in his preface, Toplady anticipated the later period of the literary hymn by Heber, Keble, and Milman. This collection continued in use for nearly fifty years.

III. EVANGELICAL HYMN WRITERS

With the exception of this later collection of Toplady these hymnbooks were mere compilations. The impulse of this Evangelical wing to write hymns of their own did not long delay. The most notable of these hymn writers were John Newton (1725-1807) and William Cowper (1731-1800). They co-operated in the issue of _Olney Hymns_, so called after the village of which Newton was the curate.

John Newton was born in London. His mother, who was a pious Dissenter, and had dedicated her boy from his birth to the Christian ministry and had tried to train him in preparation for this work, died when he was but seven years old. He grew up to be a wild, profligate, wicked young man; he speaks of himself as “once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa.” At the age of twenty-three he again came under religious influences and became an ardent Christian.

It was not until he was nearly thirty-nine years old that he entered the ministry of the Established Church, being appointed curate of the village of Olney. He had always had an impulse, even during his wildest years, to read and study and to add to his general culture. Hence, in spite of his vagrant life (having spent eighteen years on the sea) and his secular pursuits, he came into the ministry with a rough-hewn education, and a practical and resourceful attitude of mind, that served him well in his aggressive ministry. His spiritual experience was deep and intense. He had been in close touch with Whitefield, the Wesleys, and other leaders in the great evangelistic movement.

For his work as a curate in the Established Church, the hymns of Watts lacked the deep personal spirituality for which his own soul sought expression. The Wesleys supplied that element abundantly, but their hymnbooks did not express his Calvinistic attitude, nor fit his local needs. His own urge to write hymns and his intimacy with Cowper, which undoubtedly seemed a providence, encouraged him to produce Olney Hymns, which contained 280 hymns by Newton and 68 by Cowper.

Newton sympathized with Watts in his objection to pronouncedly poetic elements in hymns; in his preface he remarks that “the imagery and coloring of poetry, if admitted at all, should be admitted very sparingly.” The book was dedicated to “the use of plain people,” to promote the faith and comfort of sincere Christians. To secure these, “perspicuity, simplicity, and ease” were sought. Yet some of Newton’s best hymns closely approach the best of his friend, the poet Cowper. Genuine feeling gave lyric wings.

Of his 280 hymns, the most successful in maintaining a place in our hymnals are: “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,” “Approach, my soul, the mercy seat,” “Glorious things of thee are spoken,” “Come, my soul, thy suit prepare,” “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” “Safely through another week,” “While with ceaseless course the sun,” “One there is, above all others.” What a noble chaplet of pearls for his Lord is this amazing contribution by the former “servant of slaves”!

Newton’s famous coworker on the _Olney Hymns_, William Cowper, was the son of one of the chaplains of George II and was born in Hertfordshire in 1731. He was frail and shy, and had a very painful experience among the boys of the Westminster School which he attended for ten years. Doubtless his later mental affliction was due in large part to the bullying of his schoolmates. He studied law, but did not find it to his taste. At the age of thirty-six he moved to Olney, where he met John Newton, who became his close friend and protector as well as his leader in the writing of hymns. He co-operated with Newton’s religious work as lay reader and wrote his hymns for the cottage prayer meetings that were a feature in Newton’s work.

While his literary work shows no trace of his melancholia, being cheerful and even humorous, his hymns frequently show traces of it, notably in “God moves in a mysterious way” and “Oh, for a closer walk with God.” Newton’s habit of introspection may have influenced him, and the obscurity of the people and of the occasions for which he wrote may have given him a sense of freedom in expressing his deeper, subconscious experience. He was an exceedingly spiritual-minded man. It was said of him by one who often heard him, “Of all the men I ever heard pray, none equaled Mr. Cowper.” He had a vivid and intense experience when he was converted: “For many succeeding weeks tears were ready to flow if I did but speak of the Gospel, or mention the name of Jesus. To rejoice day and night was all my employment. Too happy to sleep much, I thought it was lost time that was spent in slumber.”

Cowper’s literary work was done after he was fifty years old—indeed, after his contributions to _Olney Hymns_ had been made. His hymns were really preliminary studies for his secular work.

Cowper made a very important contribution to the Christian hymnody of the ages: “God moves in a mysterious way,” “Oh, for a closer walk with God,” “Jesus, where’er thy people meet,” “Sometimes a light surprises,” “There is a fountain filled with blood,” “Hark, my soul, it is the Lord,” which will all survive as long as devout hearts meditate and sing. _Olney Hymns_ was very widely accepted and had more to do with the introduction of hymns into Anglican services than any other hymnbook up to that time. It was speedily reprinted in America and was very popular there.

Beyond all its Church of England predecessors, it established the ideal of the hymn as evangelical, as an expression of personal spiritual experience, as a vehicle for the conveying of spiritual truth. It was closely akin to the Methodist ideal, but more sober and sedate, with less of the poetical element. The hymnbook was the crystallizing force of the Evangelical party and its unifying discipline. It did not win the co-operation of the whole Church, by any means, but it prepared the way for the final acceptance of the hymn as an inherent part of the Church service in that communion.

While the _Olney Hymns_ continued in use by the Evangelical wing of the Established Church, there continued to be _Psalms and Hymns_ issued by various compilers, Basil Woodd, Simeon Bidulph, Cecil Venn, and others, all giving increasing attention to the hymns, and extending their use, in the church service.

IV. HYMN WRITERS OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL

If in the actual singing hymn up to this time there had been any definitely literary quality or poetic spirit, it had been in spite of a theory that the hymn must be plain and simple and adapted to plain people, as in those of Watts and Newton, or somewhat unconsciously so by reason of an imagination vitalized by deep feeling, as in those of Charles Wesley. The hymn had been a practical religious vehicle for expressing feeling and impressing truth, not an artistic and a literary effort.

From this time on the Romantic movement in literature began to affect the ideal of the hymn. Since the hymn was to become a part of the religious service, instead of a Nonconformist addition to the sermon, and since the metrical psalm was to pass away because of its literary shortcomings and absurdities, it was felt that the opportunity had come to put a higher literary quality, a more vivid imagination, a more definitely poetic element into the hymn—hence the literary singing hymn came into being.

This was all the more opportune, since literature was turning to religion for its themes. Coleridge issued his _Religious Musings_, Wordsworth his _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, Moore his _Sacred Songs_, and the libertine Byron his _Hebrew Melodies_. In 1807 the literary remains of the lamented Henry Kirke White, including his ten hymns, among which was the sublime “The Lord our God is clothed in might” and his spiritually autobiographical “When marshalled on the mighty plain,” were edited by Robert Southey. It is also worth while noting that from 1809 to 1816 Reginald Heber printed his religious poems and his hymns. In 1827 John Keble’s _The Christian Year_ made its appearance with its materials for singing hymns. In the same year the hymns of Bishop Heber and of Henry Hart Milman greeted the Christian public.

As early as 1809 Heber was considering the use of a hymnal in his parish church. In 1811 he published four hymns in the _Christian Observer_ as specimens of a series he was contemplating. He proposed a hymnbook that should be “a collection of sacred poetry.” He sought the help of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey, and other literary men of prominence, but only Henry Hart Milman, the great church historian, responded. The ecclesiastical authorities sympathized, but thought the church unready for an authorized hymnbook.

After Heber’s death in India in 1826, his widow brought the manuscript back to England and it was published in 1827—not as a hymnbook, however, but in the form and style of current poetic issues. In this book appeared fifty-seven hymns by Heber and twelve by Milman. Having due regard to its size, it was probably the richest contribution ever made to Christian hymnody.

After the lapse of a century, his hymns are still in current use, many of them inevitable in every hymnal whether churchly or popular, such as “From Greenland’s icy mountains,” “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” “The Son of God goes forth to war,” “By cool Siloam’s shady rill,” “Bread of the world, in mercy broken,” “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning.”

The beauty of Heber’s style was recognized from the first. His hymns were distinctly literary in flavor, poetically conceived, with varied rhythms and forms of stanza. But he did not transgress the limitations of the singing hymn, as had the literary men of a century and more before, nor did he ignore the practicability of the small number of verses. The hymns were poems, but they were congregational hymns none the less. But they might have been all this and yet perished by the way. It was their deep spirituality, their lucid expression of Christian truth, transmuted by intense conviction and personal experience into a personal appeal that was abiding, that have made them immortal.

Dean Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) was a brilliant scholar and church historian and a poet of great reputation. His hymns are strong, churchly, thoughtful to a high degree, but they lack the poetic charm of those of Heber. Of the eleven that appeared in Heber’s posthumous collection, and of others that were printed later, only one, his Palm Sunday hymn, “Ride on, ride on in majesty,” is certain to be included in every hymnal. The litany, “When our hearts are bowed with woe,” and “Oh help us, Lord, each hour of need,” are only occasionally used.

Like Saul among the prophets, we find the author of _Lalla Rookh_, Thomas Moore (1779-1852), enrolled among our English hymn writers. The charm of his secular verse and songs is found also in his _Sacred Songs_, from which his ever-useful and tender “Come, ye disconsolate” has been taken; it is found in most of our hymnals. Less often do his “Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea” and “O Thou who driest the mourner’s tear” find a place. Not directly associated with ecclesiastical circles and lacking in religious fervor, he yet deserves a place among distinctly literary hymn writers.

No small factor in the development of the literary hymn was _The Christian Year_ by John Keble (1792-1866). It was not a collection of hymns, but a series of poems appropriate to all the several sacred times and seasons; but out of it were salvaged a number of hymns that have served the needs of high liturgical churches on special days. _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, the High-Church hymnal so popular in Great Britain and its dominions, contains no less than eleven of these adapted hymns. The Christian Church at large is a grateful debtor to this devotional poetry for the two hymns, “Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,” the evening hymn, and “The voice that breathed o’er Eden,” the wedding song. Beyond the value of these excerpts from his poems was the poetic stimulus that enriches all subsequent hymnody by raising the literary quality of the ideal hymn.

It was this literary quality of the work of the foregoing writers, their definite recognition of the liturgic needs of the Church, and their high church ideals and sympathies, that won the final victory of the hymn over the metrical psalm in the Church of England. This party had been the last stronghold in England of metrical psalmody.

V. CONTEMPORARY HYMN WRITERS

Although contemporary with the foregoing romantic school, Thomas Kelly (1769-1854), originally an Evangelical Church of England clergyman, later on an Independent, was not particularly influenced by them. He was an indefatigable hymn writer; his collection of _Scripture Hymns_ finally contained 765 hymns, all original. His ideal was still that of Watts, Wesley, and Newton—the useful hymn. He had no conscious striving after literary quality, but, like Newton, frequently rose to a high standard in this particular when lifted by his theme. He was an earnest, pious, zealous, enthusiastic preacher, and liberal with his large wealth. His influence in Ireland was widespread and counted largely for piety and for evangelistic aggressiveness.

Some of our most widely used hymns are from his pen: “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices,” “Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious,” “On the mountain’s top appearing,” “The Head that once was crowned with thorns,” “Zion stands with hills surrounded.”

Another distinguished contemporary, James Montgomery (1771-1854), was probably more directly influenced by the literary impulses of the times. A Moravian layman, the son of a Moravian minister, he was a professional writer and editor of a secular newspaper of considerable influence. For years a worldling, he was forty-two years old before he publicly professed his acceptance of Christ.

He had written quite a good deal of secular poetry up to this time; now he turned to writing hymns, which he had ceased to do since he was a boy of fourteen. His poetry was highly appreciated at the time, but it is now forgotten, although his hymns keep his memory green. He had served a full literary apprenticeship and had formulated his theories of the hymn—its character, its content, its limitations—before he began writing, so that his hymns have an average excellence and effectiveness that can be paralleled only by those of Bishop Heber. His critical attitude is very evident in his introduction to his second book, _Christian Psalmist_: “The faults in ordinary hymns are vulgar phrases, low words, hard words, technical terms, inverted construction, broken syntax, barbarous abbreviations that make our beautiful English horrid even to the eye, bad rhymes, or no rhymes where rhymes are expected, but above all numbers without cadence.” It is not surprising that, with this keenly critical approach, he made many alterations in Cotterill’s _Selection of Psalms and Hymns_, which he was asked to edit, nor that he almost rewrote the Moravian hymnbook on which he labored for twelve years.

The list of Montgomery’s widely accepted hymns is very large: _The New Methodist Hymnal_ has 8, the _New Presbyterian Hymnal_ 9, _Hymns Ancient and Modern_ (1904 Ed.) 13.

The most widely used of Montgomery’s hymns are: “Angels from the realms of glory,” “Forever with the Lord,” “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,” “Hark the song of jubilee,” “In the hour of trial,” “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,” “Oh, where shall rest be found,” “The Lord is my Shepherd, No want shall I know.”

VI. MINOR HYMN WRITERS

There are some minor writers in this and the succeeding generation that deserve passing mention. The man of a single hymn sometimes strikes twelve.

Among these is John Marriott (1780-1825), a Church of England vicar whose “Thou, whose almighty word” is in the first rank because of its dignity and sustained feeling. It is one of our best missionary hymns.

James Edmeston (1791-1867), a London architect, served his day and generation with hundreds of hymns for adults and children; only one of them has become a permanent addition to English hymnody, the evening hymn, “Saviour, breathe an evening blessing.”

Another layman, Sir Robert Grant (1785-1838), was conspicuous in his day as a statesman, and finally as Governor of Bombay; he was a man of deep piety and elevation of mind. He wrote a number of thoughtful and impressive hymns, but he made his most permanent contribution to the Christian Church’s sacrifice of praise in his noble “Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above,” which is in the first rank for its noble poetry as well as its profound devotion.

Another writer of high merit is the butcher’s son, Henry Kirke White (1785-1806), whose death at the early age of twenty-one years, after writing at the age of seventeen some poems of such merit as to arrest the attention of the literary world, was a distinct loss to English hymnody. How great that loss can be judged from the high quality of his “The Lord our God is clothed with might,” “Oft in danger, oft in woe,” and his Christmas hymn, “When marshaled on the nightly plain.” His struggles with poverty in seeking an education, with skepticism in finding peace of soul, with dread disease to which he had to succumb, invest his story with a poignant pathos.

Another hymnist deserving attention was Bernard Barton (1784-1849), a Quaker banker, twenty of whose hymns came into general use. Two of them seem to have won a permanent place in our hymnody, “Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace” and “Walk in the light! so shalt thou know”—not great hymns, but extremely useful.

Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847) entered the church as a profession, but presently was led into a deep religious experience by attending the dying bed of a neighboring clergyman who, too, had looked upon his work as a means of livelihood. The fruit of this experience was the hymns that have been so loved and appreciated on both sides of the ocean. The favorites among them are “Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide,” “Jesus, I my cross have taken,” “As pants the hart for cooling streams,” and “Praise, my soul, the King of heaven.” The pathetic story of his last days has touched the hearts of God’s people as they have sung his swan song, “Abide with me”—the finest evening hymn of the Christian church—if it is accepted as an evening hymn.

That a Unitarian, Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), should have written so noble a hymn about the cross of Christ as “In the cross of Christ I glory,” expressing all its spiritual implications, can be explained only by his orthodoxy of heart. His superficial reasonings were the outgrowth of his early educational and social environment, and were not in co-ordination with his deeper convictions. He was a voluminous writer. His extraordinary genius for languages is revealed in his series of “Specimens” from the poetry of no less than five European languages. Politically he was even more conspicuous than Sir Robert Grant, but, like him, his name will be ever revered for a single great hymn, “In the cross of Christ I glory.” Other hymns in common use are “Watchman, tell us of the night” and “God is love; his mercy brightens.”

Josiah Conder (1789-1855), the compiler of the _Congregational Hymn Book_, wrote fifty-six hymns for it, one of which is very impressive and worshipful, “The Lord is King! lift up thy voice,” which will undoubtedly live through coming generations. His other hymns are uniformly good and of a high literary standard, but with less appeal.

VII. THE HYMNS OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

Cardinal Newman held that John Keble was the originator of the Oxford Movement[1] by his great Assize sermon on “The Great Apostasy” preached at Oxford, and by his emphasis of the church’s calendar in his _The Christian Year_; but he can hardly be associated with the school of hymn writers that grew out of it, for some of them repudiated the literary hymn entirely.

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was the leader of the movement back to the ideals of the pre-Reformation church. He wrote some poetry, notably “The Dream of Gerontius,” and a few hymns. Of these, “Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom” is the most widely known, because of its attractive music, as he himself testifies. “Praise to the Holiest in the height” is really a more serviceable hymn for actual church services.

His disciples, Edward Caswall (1814-1878) and John Mason Neale (1818-1866), opened new veins of hymnic wealth in their translations from the Latin and the Greek, with which they greatly enriched the treasury of sacred song. In the enthusiasm evoked by their success, the suggestion was seriously made that all the post-Reformation hymnody be set aside to give way to the medieval and even earlier hymns!

Caswall devoted himself to the Latin medieval hymns and sequences and made some surpassing translations, or, if you please, transformations—e.g., “Jesus, the very thought of Thee,” “The sun is sinking fast,” “My God, I love Thee, not because,” and “When morning gilds the skies” from the German. He was a Church of England man, but in 1847 he entered the Roman Catholic Church, following his leader, Dr. Newman.

Dr. Neale did not leave the English Church, but was quite prominent in High-Church circles. He was intensely interested in the liturgics of his church, which led to his studies of the early Greek church and its breviaries. He brought to his translations of Greek hymns a literary skill, a spiritual insight, and a fervor that made him the primate among those who found their inspiration in these ancient books of service and breathed into these ancient lyrics the breath of modern life. Among his most notable successes are: “Art thou weary, art thou languid?” “Christian, dost thou see them?” “The day is past and over,” “Fierce was the wild billow,” “’Tis the day of resurrection,” “Brief life is here our portion,” “Jerusalem the golden.” It must be remembered that these are not literal translations, but English hymns made up of ideas suggested by phrases in the originals. Only a poet imbued with devout feelings, responding to the vague suggestions of the often obscure originals, could have produced them.

Another disciple of Cardinal Newman who also followed him into the Roman Catholic Church was Frederick W. Faber (1814-1863), a poet by the grace of God, a devout Christian, a man of intense convictions, but somewhat temperamental and impulsive. Among his many good hymns are: “My God, how wonderful thou art,” “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy” (sometimes beginning “Was there ever kindest Shepherd”), “O Paradise! O Paradise,” “Hark, hark, my soul! angelic songs are swelling,” “Faith of our fathers! living still.” Few that sing the last-mentioned hymn realize that it refers to the faith of the Roman Catholic saints and that the hymn had to be cleansed of its Mariolatry before being used in our Protestant hymnals. Nevertheless, in its present form it is a very impressive and valuable hymn that has been redeemed from the propagandist vagary of its original writer.

Still under the influence of the Oxford High, or Anglo-Catholic Church, we find Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander, (1823-1895), the writer of many hymns, especially for children, among which are a number that promise permanent usefulness: “There is a green hill far away,” “Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult,” “The roseate hues of early dawn.”

Bishop W. W. How (1823-1897) wrote a number of excellent hymns for his hymnal, _Psalms and Hymns_, some of which have since found their way into other hymnals. Perhaps those that have appealed most are “O Jesus, Thou art standing,” “We give Thee but Thine own,” “O Word of God incarnate,” “Soldiers of the cross, arise,” “Summer suns are glowing.” His hymns are thoughtful, devout, and full of tender feeling; their literary quality is admirable.

A very copious writer of the same generation was Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879), whose devotional poetry touched the heart of her generation to a remarkable degree. Her pen was quite facile, and not all she wrote had more than transient value: but some of her hymns the Christian Church will permanently treasure: “Take my life, and let it be,” “I could not do without Thee,” “True-hearted, whole-hearted,” “Lord, speak to me, that I may speak,” “I gave my life for thee.” Miss Havergal was a woman of profound Christian experience, which is voiced by her hymns.

Among the later writers is Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1927), voluminous writer on a variety of topics as well as a fairly popular novelist. He wrote the stirring “Onward, Christian soldiers” for a local processional of school children and assured himself of an immortality by a half hour’s writing that all his laborious literary work would not have won him. He also wrote an appealing evening hymn, “Now the day is over,” that Joseph Barnby has made popular by his pleasing tune, “Merrial.”

In spite of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns and a number of minor poets, and in spite of a wealth of charming folk songs, to prove that the spirit of song dwells in the Scottish breast, Scotland has made but a small contribution to English hymnody. The metrical psalm ruled the Scotch religious heart with a rod of iron. Only during the last generation has Scotia almost unwittingly made an important contribution. Horatius Bonar (1808-1889) was an industrious writer on many topics. He allowed no hymns to be sung in his church, but by a strange anomaly he issued three series of _Hymns of Faith and Hope_—in 1856, 1861, and 1866. While these hymns were being increasingly sung around the world, his church sang metrical psalms! More than one hundred of his hymns are in common use. Among them are the following: “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” “I lay my sins on Jesus,” “Go, labor on; spend and be spent,” “Beyond the smiling and the weeping,” “A few more years shall roll,” “I was a wand’ring sheep,” “When the weary, seeking rest.”

Another Scotchman, George Matheson (1842-1906), the blind preacher, has written, among many others, a hymn whose beauty and mystical suggestiveness has rapidly given it wide usefulness: “O Love, that wilt not let me go.” Fortunate in having a very pleasing and effective tune, St. Margaret by Albert L. Peace, it promises to be a permanent fountain of blessing.

_Chapter XVIII_ AMERICAN HYMNODY

I. THE TRANSITION FROM PSALMODY TO HYMNODY

The metrical versions used in New England were Ainsworth’s in Plymouth and vicinity under Pilgrim influence, and Sternhold and Hopkins’, where Puritan influence controlled. The New England ministers were scholarly and knew their Hebrew Bible. The Sternhold and Hopkins version was unsatisfactory, not so much for its literary deficiencies, but because it was not literal enough, did not reproduce the Hebrew minutely enough. This led, as we have seen in Chapter X, to the Bay Psalm Book of 1640, which was widely adopted, although Sternhold and Hopkins still had its partisans.

These versions could not but find sharp critics among a more or less scholarly ministry and in time their absurdities weakened their hold upon the New England churches.

The utter collapse of the congregational singing due to the lack of tunes in the psalm books, and the absence of competent precentors,[1] hastened the revolt among some of the Churches against the versions. Yet the tyranny of “use and wont” kept most of the churches in line, only a few of them adopting the later version of Tate and Brady.

The interest aroused by the “singing school,” and by the organization of choirs due to the multiplication of tune books, both English and American, delayed the abolition of the older metrical versions and postponed the introduction of Watts’ Imitations and Hymns for several decades, but the complaints from the larger and more cultured churches and their scholarly ministers became more vociferous.[2] The combination of the absurdities of the metrical versions, and those created by the senseless repetition made necessary by the fugue tunes then in use, became unendurable.

II. THE INTRODUCTION OF WATTS’ HYMNS

Watts’ _The Psalms of David Imitated_ was very well adapted to serve as an entering wedge. It brought a certain sanction by making David’s Psalms the foundation. They were still psalms, not hymns, and so satisfied to some degree the claims of tradition, and placated those who would have balked at hymns of “human composure.” Benjamin Franklin in 1729 was the first to reprint the Imitation, but complained that the copies remained on his shelves unsold. The demand evidently grew, for in 1741 he issued a second edition. The first reprint of Watts’ Hymns appeared in 1739 in Boston. Three years later, in 1742, Franklin reprinted them in Philadelphia, and years later still, they were republished in New York.

Whitfield’s visit to America and the outburst of singing of the Great Awakening (1742), with its profound religious experiences that could find no adequate expression in the Psalms alone, gave Watts’ Hymns a larger opportunity. In 1744 the singing of Watts’ Hymns was one of the diversions of the people when they met together.

It was not until after the Revolution that the introduction of Watts’ Psalms and Hymns became general. There were a number of issues with such abridgments or changes as were made necessary by Watts’ references to British conditions, by Joel Barlow, a patriotic poet, author of the _Columbiad_, and later U. S. Minister to France, and by Nathan Strong, Samuel Worcester, and Timothy Dwight, the distinguished president of Yale College. All these had considerable vogue, especially the last which contained metrical versions of the Psalms Watts had omitted and other psalms versified anew. President Dwight’s “I love Thy kingdom, Lord” appeared as a versification of Psalm 137. It is a classic, one of the two leading hymns on the Christian Church, and is rarely omitted in our hymnals. Besides the Psalms it contained 263 hymns, 168 of which were by Watts.

The contentions which had occurred over methods of singing—the “Deaconing” or lining out of the hymns, the use of choirs, the fugal tunes—now gave way to differences over the use of various editions of Watts, or over the use of hymns in church service. The tradition, happily unjustified now, that the music of the church constituted “the war department” seems to have been originated during that century of conflict.

III. THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN HYMNODY

Wherever Watts had been able to overthrow the tyranny of the metrical versions, he seemed to have instituted a tyranny of his own, to the detriment of the development of an American hymnody. But here and there lonesome birds were singing songs of their own, early harbingers of the springtime of American sacred song.

Samuel Davies, the eloquent President of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, began writing hymns in the middle of the eighteenth century that were accepted in English hymnbooks before they became generally known in America. Their quality may be judged from his hymn of consecration:

“Lord, I am thine, entirely thine, Purchased and saved by blood divine; With full consent thine I would be And own thy sovereign right in me.”

The other verses are equally good, if not superior.

Mather Byles, the brilliant Tory preacher of Boston, was a poet of no mean pretentions and in close touch with Swift, Pope, and Watts. He wrote hymns that served their purpose in his day and generation, but have not been recognized since, partly because of his political attitude and his advanced views, being one of the first to use Watts’ Hymns in his congregation. His somewhat oratorical style is evident in his hymn on the greatness of God:

“Who can behold the blazing light? Who can approach consuming flame? None but thy wisdom knows thy might; None but thy word can speak thy name.”

Another early songbird was Samson Occom, the Mohegan Indian, who raised the money in England which later became the financial nucleus of the present Dartmouth College. His autobiographical hymn, “Waked by the Gospel’s joyful sound,” was widely used in England and translated into Welsh, among whom it was used in their revivals and “led many hundred sinners to the cross of Christ.”

Harry Alline (1748-1783) was the most copious hymn writer of that early day, his _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_ containing four hundred and eighty-seven Hymns, all from his own pen. His

“Amazing sight, the Saviour stands, And knocks at every door! Ten thousand blessings in his hands To satisfy the poor,”

was quite a favorite for many years, but was finally submerged in the larger tide of sacred song that sprang up through the years.

The scholarly and eloquent Nathan Strong in his _Hartford Selection_ used several hymns of his own. His patriotic hymn, “Swell the anthem, raise the song,” has had a long life of wide usefulness.

While Watts still reigned supreme during the next quarter of a century, the impulse and the ability to write acceptable hymns was rapidly developing. Eccentric Elder John Leland (1754-1851) among a lot of almost amusing trash wrote an evening hymn that had very wide acceptance. Dr. Duffield characterizes it as a “classic in its unpretending beauty,” and Dr. Charles S. Robinson esteemed it so highly as to exclaim, “May it live forever and ever!” Unfortunately the supply of fine evening hymns is so great that in the competition Leland’s hymn has fallen by the way. The last verse will enable the reader to savor its quality:

“And when our days are past, And we from time remove, Oh, may we in Thy bosom rest, The bosom of Thy love.”

How many ministers who sing “Coronation” so heartily are aware that the composer, Oliver Holden (1765-1844), was a hymn writer as well as a musician? Yet one of his hymns had a wide use in both America and England:

“They who seek the throne of grace Find that throne in every place; If we live a life of prayer, God is present everywhere.”

After a long and useful life, it, too, has practically disappeared from our hymnals.

IV. COLLECTIONS OF AMERICAN HYMNS

By 1824 the evangelistic movement, partly a heritage from the Great Awakening, partly due to the Methodist aggressiveness, and partly to the religious needs of a widely scattered and pioneer population, made it evident that the hymns of Watts and his school, with minds set on worship in more or less formal services for the edification of the elect, and ignoring the needs of an urgent discipling, were not fitted for revival work. Rev. Asahel Nettleton, an evangelistic minister greatly interested in foreign missions, issued his _Village Hymns_, containing six hundred hymns, only fifty of which were by Watts. Some of Charles Wesley’s hymns were included, but most of these were credited to other authors. While other English sources were drawn upon, the book was noteworthy for the American hymns that appeared in it. Hymns by Davies, Occom, Alline, Strong, and Dwight were used. An eager quest for new American hymnists was rewarded by contributions from William B. Tappan (“’Tis midnight; and on Olive’s brow” and “The ransomed spirit to her home”); from Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (“I love to steal awhile away”); and from Abby B. Hyde (“Dear Saviour, if these lambs should stray”).

William B. Tappan (1794-1849) was a largely self-educated man, having attended school but six months. His hymn “There is an hour of peaceful rest” was widely published in America and England, and on the Continent, and used to be inevitable in the hymnbooks of sixty years ago. His “’Tis midnight; and on Olive’s brow” still holds its place, though largely descriptive, but none the less impressive and useful.

Mrs. Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (1783-1861) still is represented in most of our hymnals by her “I love to steal awhile away,” with its pathetic story of her misunderstood habit of prayer among the scenes of nature. Greater than the hymn, valuable as it has been, is her contribution to the progress of Christ’s Kingdom in the work of her missionary son, Rev. Samuel R. Brown, in China and Japan and that of her grandsons in the latter country.

But the revival took on an intenser form under the preaching and praying of Charles G. Finney and, bright as was the spirit of the _Village Hymns_, it called for something more vigorous and with a greater appeal to the unsaved people who were to be won, especially in the music. Rev. Joshua Leavitt, a Congregational minister, a militant reformer, enemy of intemperance and slavery (a dangerous attitude in those days), and an ardent believer in the revival work of Finney, issued his _The Christian Lyre_ in 1830, which created quite a sensation. Its hymns did not differ much from those of _Village Hymns_, but it was more practical in that it supplied the music on the page opposite to each hymn, no small advance on the ponderous tune book that had to be held in one hand and the hymnbook in the other. Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings had been editing these tune books filled with dull and stupid music, in whose abundant chaff an occasional grain of gold occurred, which the Christian Church has been glad to cherish. The music in _The Christian Lyre_ was bright and popular, being secular melodies the people were singing. Leavitt had taken a leaf out of the book of the old mass-writers, who used popular melodies for their descants, and of Luther and Bourgeois, in taking popular tunes to reach the people. It was an anticipation of Horace Waters’ policy in his _Sabbath School Bell_ in 1859. It was also an anticipation of Moody and Sankey’s _Gospel Hymns_, except that Leavitt had no Fanny Crosby or Lydia Baxter to supply new texts, and no reserve of popular music by Lowry, Doane, Bliss, and others to draw upon.

As Horace Waters stimulated Bradbury into developing the popular Sunday school music, one of whose by-products was the Gospel song, so Leavitt stirred up Mason and Hastings to begin the issue in 1832 of _Spiritual Songs for Social Worship_, in twelve parts, more nearly the archetype of the future _Gospel Hymns_. _The Christian Lyre_ left no residuum for future generations, but Spiritual Songs, edited by men of wide experience, in touch with the most cultivated clerical circle of the day, one of them a hymnist of both facility and felicity, made important permanent contributions not only to American but to universal Christian hymnody.

In this collection appeared Thomas Hastings’ “Hail to the brightness of Zion’s glad morning,” “Gently, Lord, O gently lead us,” “How calm and beautiful the morn,” “Child of sin and sorrow.” Here also appeared his enlargement of Thomas Moore’s “Come, ye disconsolate.” Add to these his tunes “Ortonville,” “Retreat,” “Zion,” “Toplady,” and others and his other hymns, “Return, O wanderer, to my home,” “Delay not, delay not, O sinner, draw near,” “The Saviour bids thee watch and pray,” and it will be seen that Thomas Hastings, even if he is not in the first rank as hymnist or composer, deserves well of the Christian Church.

In this same volume of Spiritual Songs first appeared Rev. Samuel F. Smith’s two great hymns, “The morning light is breaking” and “My country, ’tis of thee.” He was still a theological student, twenty-four years of age, when these were written. The theme of the latter was suggested in a general way by Lowell Mason, who needed a patriotic song for his children’s singing schools, and who supplied him with some music he had recently received from Germany. During a leisure moment his eye fell on “Heil dir im Sieger-Kranz,” the German “God Save the King,” written to the English tune, “God Save the King.” This latter fact he did not know, but liked the tune and was moved to write unknowingly our National Hymn. Sung by Lowell Mason’s children’s chorus, it was rapidly introduced and was presently _viva voce_ accepted as the long-desired National Anthem. Practically an improvisation, not intended for wide use, it is open to criticism; but it is greatly superior to its only competitor for national honors, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” because of its practicability in singing, its dignity, and its noble expression of the American spirit. That it refers to hills and not to prairies, and speaks of “pilgrim’s pride” (without the capital) is open only to captious criticism.

His “The morning light is breaking” was due to the missionary spirit that was prevalent in the theological seminaries during that period. It is the peer of Heber’s “From Greenland’s icy mountains” as a missionary hymn; many recent critics greatly prefer it.

Another great hymn that made its premier appearance in _Spiritual Songs_ was “My faith looks up to Thee,” by Dr. Ray Palmer (1808-1887), set to one of Lowell Mason’s best tunes, “Olivet.” Meeting Dr. Palmer on the street, Mason asked him whether he had not an appropriate hymn for his forthcoming book; young Palmer remembered he had some verses in his pocketbook and handed them to Mason. Meeting Palmer a few days afterwards on the street, Mason with great earnestness exclaimed: “Mr. Palmer, you may live many years and do many good things, but I think you will be best known to posterity as the author of ‘My faith looks up to Thee!’” The prophecy, so literally fulfilled, speaks well for Mason’s critical acumen. Ray Palmer, despite Bishop Wordsworth’s objection to the pronouns of the first person, wrote “My faith,” “I pray,” “my guilt,” for his hymn was not intended to be sung, but simply to express his own spiritual experience. It was a personal prayer none the less that it took a metrical form. It is one of the great factors in its world-wide appeal that it becomes the personal expression of every individual who sings it.

But Dr. Palmer was not the author of only a single song: he wrote many others of almost equal value. Writing a sermon on the words of Peter, “Jesus Christ, whom having not seen ye love,” he was suddenly overwhelmed by his rapture of love for the Christ, and, the sermon forgotten, he wrote down the hymn the church will never allow to die:

“Jesus, these eyes have never seen That radiant form of thine; The veil of sense hangs dark between Thy blessed face and mine.

I see thee not, I hear thee not, Yet art thou oft with me; And earth hath ne’er so dear a spot As where I meet with thee.”

In his dying hour he was heard to repeat with broken voice the last stanza of this hymn:

“When death these mortal eyes shall seal, And still this throbbing heart, The rending veil shall thee reveal, All glorious as thou art.”

Other important hymns of Dr. Palmer’s are: “Come, Jesus, Redeemer, abide Thou with me,” “O Jesus, sweet the tears I shed,” “Take me, O my Father, take me,” “O Christ, the Lord of heav’n, to Thee,” “Come, Holy Ghost, in love.” His translation of “Jesu, dulcedo cordium,” the Paris cento of “Jesu, dulcis memoria,” by an unknown Spanish abbess, is most highly esteemed: “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts.” This cento is made up of selected verses from “Jesu, dulcis memoria,” from which Edward Caswell took his admirable “Jesus, the very thought of Thee.”

Dr. Leonard Bacon (1802-1881), the son of a missionary among the Indians of Michigan, is noteworthy in two particulars: he issued, at the age of twenty-one, the first collection of missionary hymns printed in America, and he wrote the New England patriotic hymn still used in our churches,

“O God, beneath thy guiding hand Our exiled fathers crossed the sea; And when they trod the wintry strand With prayer and psalm they worshiped Thee.”

Born in Detroit, he sang the praise of the divine hand that founded the New England churches.

V. EPISCOPAL HYMN WRITERS

While the Anglican Church remained faithful to the traditional metrical versions well into the nineteenth century, the American Episcopal Church was hospitable to hymns much earlier. Already in 1789 the House of Bishops ratified the addition of hymns to the psalter. From decade to decade the demand for additional hymns grew until in 1823 William A. Muhlenberg, a rector of Lancaster, Pa., issued his _Church_ _Poetry_, consisting of psalms and hymns, which was adopted by the rectors of other Episcopal churches. In 1827 appeared _Hymns of the Protestant Episcopal Church_, the majority of whose hymns were by Watts, Doddridge, Steele, and Charles Wesley. Its most distinctive feature was the new hymns supplied by five Episcopal writers, Dr. H. U. Onderdonk, Dr. William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877), Bishop George W. Doane (1799-1859), J. W. Eastburn, and Francis S. Key (1779-1843).

Of Dr. Onderdonk’s nine hymns one came into general use, “The Spirit in our hearts.”

Dr. Muhlenberg was more successful, for three of his five are recognized as a part of American Hymnody: “I would not live alway; I ask not to stay,” “Shout the glad tidings, exultingly sing,” and the baptismal hymn, “Saviour, who thy flock art feeding.”

Bishop Doane was represented by two hymns, both of which still find a place in our hymnals: “Thou art the way; to thee alone,” “Softly now the light of day.” The latter is one of our most acceptable evening hymns. Fully as useful is his vigorous missionary hymn, which, with its very appropriate tune, “Waltham,” by J. Baptiste Calkin, is adding inspiration everywhere to the cause,

“Fling out the banner! let it float Skyward and seaward, high and wide; The sun, that lights its shining folds, The cross, on which the Saviour died.”

Francis S. Key, the well-known writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” to whom Baltimore has erected an elaborate statue, furnished a fine hymn of praise, “Lord, with glowing heart I’d praise Thee.”

VI. UNITARIAN HYMNODY

The production of original hymns in New England took a peculiar course. After Samuel F. Smith, the spirit of praise left the Orthodox churches and took refuge with the ostensible Unitarians. The reaction against the rigid and harsh Calvinism was not so much against the doctrine of the deity of Christ, as against the false corollaries drawn metaphysically from the noble doctrine of the Sovereignty of God, as well as the crass, materialistically conceived, conception of the state of the impenitent dead, that was painted so luridly and offensively in song as well as in sermon.

Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843), was the son of Professor Henry Ware, who held the chair of Divinity in Harvard College for thirty-five years. He himself became professor of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastoral Care in the same institution in 1830. The pastor for thirteen years of a prominent Unitarian church in Boston, he never wavered in his faith in the deity of Jesus Christ. How otherwise could he have written that triumphant Easter hymn:

“Lift your glad voices in triumph on high, For Jesus hath risen, and man cannot die; Vain were the terrors that gathered around him, And short the dominion of death and the grave.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), America’s first great poet, wrote five hymns for Henry D. Sewall’s Unitarian Church hymnal in 1820. He was a member of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in New York City. Yet in 1865 he could write a hymn containing the following stanza:

“Lo! in the clouds of heaven appears God’s well-beloved Son; He brings the train of brighter years; His Kingdom is begun; He comes, a guilty world to bless With mercy, truth, and righteousness.”

In 1875 he could still write in a hymn on “The Star of Bethlehem,”

“Yet doth the Star of Bethlehem shed A luster pure and sweet; And still it leads, as once it led, To the Messiah’s feet.”

An even more remarkable Unitarian was Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), the great physician, but even greater poet. He had the reputation of being rather radical in his religious views; he was a humorist whom human life rather amused than impressed seriously (though he was tender enough to human suffering), but, when a hymn seemed an appropriate close for one of his genial essays, he could write,

“Lord of all being, throned afar, Thy glory flames from sun and star; Center and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near.”

But unless in the deeper depths of his soul there still lingered faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, how could he write,

“O Love divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, On thee we cast each earthborn care; We smile at pain while thou art near.”

Especially that last verse of unshaken faith:

“On thee we fling our burdening woe, O Love divine, forever dear; Content to suffer while we know, Living and dying, thou art near.”

What might not Oliver Wendell Holmes have done for Christian hymnody, had he had Charles Wesley’s evangelical experience and piety?

Another Unitarian deserving recognition was Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876), who is not remembered because of his successful pastoral career of forty years, nor by his theological treatises and religious writings, but by his two Christmas hymns, perhaps the best written in America (not forgetting Bishop Brooks’ “O Little town of Bethlehem”)—“Calm on the listening ear of night” and “It came upon the midnight clear.” The first was written soon after his graduation from Harvard College in 1834, and the other in 1849 after he had been in the pastorate over a decade. Of course, he was a firm believer in the deity of Christ, else he could not have written these hymns.

After Dr. Ray Palmer, our best American hymnist is John G. Whittier (1807-1892), who never aspired to such honors! His hymns have been most deftly extracted from longer poems and, despite their being mere fragments, are distinctive hymns in progress of thought and structure. Moreover, they are the very choicest passage in these longer poems. The additional marvel is that this Unitarian Hicksite Quaker, who was not taught to sing hymns in his youth, should have given finer expression than any other writer to the sense of present intimate communion with Christ:

“But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee.”

VII. LATER ORTHODOX HYMN WRITERS

To this generation George Duffield, Jr. (1818-1888), may be said to have belonged. His hymn, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus,” is never omitted from any reputable collection of hymns, liturgic or popular. He was a foremost figure in the Philadelphia revival of 1857 and 1858, being associated with Alfred Cookman, the Methodist, and Dudley A. Tyng, the Episcopalian, whose dying words suggested the hymn.

Old Dr. Lyman Beecher was a giant in his day, but his chief glory was in his remarkable family of children. While Henry Ward was most conspicuous in his day, he was hardly more so than Harriet Beecher Stowe (1812-1896), the author of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, which, with Hanby’s _Darling Nellie Gray_, prepared the heart of the North to buy at a tremendous cost of treasure and blood the Emancipation Proclamation. But Mrs. Stowe is not simply a historic character whose work is done; she is living still in her hymns, notably the exquisite morning hymn, “Still, still with thee, when purple morning breaketh,” a fitting mate for Lyte’s evening hymn, “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.”

Mention should be made of Anna Warner (1820-1915), whose children’s hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” set to Bradbury’s simple pentatonic melody has girdled the globe. Other hymns by Miss Warner are “One more day’s work for Jesus” and “We would see Jesus; for the shadows lengthen.”

Among later American hymn writers is Mary Artemisia Lathbury (1841-1913), who wrote “Break Thou the bread of life” (not a communion hymn, by the way) and “Day is dying in the West,” with William F. Sherwin’s tunes, which are to be found in all our hymnals and which are very tender, very useful.

The American Episcopal Church has supplied some admirable hymns through Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe (1818-1896), who wrote “Oh, where are kings and empires now,” the almost apocalyptic “We are living, we are dwelling,” and the missionary “Saviour, sprinkle many nations,” all hymns of high worth; and Bishop Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), whose “O little town of Bethlehem” is a favorite Christmas carol.

Mrs. Frances Crosby Van Alstyne (1820-1915), familiarly known as “Fanny Crosby,” would be the premier hymn writer of America if the criteria were quantity and wideness of use. There can be no question as to the evangelistic and devotional value of her hymns, whatever their literary quality or permanent appeal may be. “Safe in the arms of Jesus,” “Rescue the perishing,” “Blessed Assurance,” “Pass me not, O gentle Saviour,” “Saviour, more than life to me,” “I am thine, O Lord, I have heard thy voice,” “Jesus, keep me near the cross,” and many others will probably be permanent in hymnals and song collections of a popular and evangelistic type.

Valuable hymns of the same practical gospel song type have been written by Mrs. Lydia Baxter, Philip Paul Bliss, Annie Sherwood Hawks, Mrs. Ellen Huntington Gates, Rev. E. A. Hoffman, Miss E. E. Hewitt, Mrs. C. H. Morris, President J. E. Rankin, D.D., and many others.

Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss (1818-1878), daughter of the saintly and greatly beloved Rev. Edward Payson, wrote _Stepping Heavenward_, a book that stimulated and cheered multiplied thousands and lifted their spiritual ideals. Of her 123 _Religious Poems_, one has won a permanent place in our hymnals, “More love to Thee, O Christ.” It is not a substitute for Mrs. Adams’ “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” but a complement.

Other writers of single hymns that the Church has used with great effect are Dr. Washington Gladden’s (1836-1918) “O Master, let me walk with Thee,” a hymn of Christian service; Dr. Sylvanus Dryden Phelps’ “Saviour, Thy dying love;” Dr. Edward Hopper’s “Jesus, Saviour, pilot me;” Dr. Joseph Henry Gilmore’s (1834-1918) “He leadeth me, O blessed thought;” Ernest W. Shurtleff’s (1862-1917) “Lead on, O King eternal;” Frank Mason North’s (1850-1935) “Where cross the crowded ways of life”; the second, third, and fourth of the songs just mentioned have a Gospel song origin.

More recent writers are Rev. Frederick L. Hosmer and Rev. William C. Gannett in whose _The Thought of God_ are found hymns of deep piety and strong religious feeling. Room is made for two stanzas of Dr. Hosmer’s “Found,”

“O Name, all other names above, What art thou not to me, Now I have learned to trust thy love And cast my care on thee?

What is our being but a cry, A restless longing still, Which thou alone canst satisfy, Alone thy fullness fill?”

A more important recent hymn writer is Rev. Louis F. Benson, D.D. (1855-1930), the editor of the current Presbyterian hymnals. This history of Christian hymnody cannot close more fittingly than to quote part of a stirring hymn by this greatest of American hymnologists:

“Forward! singing ‘Glory To our Lord the King’; Forward! Trusting only In the name we sing. See the day is breaking And the road points far; March, with eyes uplifted To the Morning Star.

Blessed is the Kingdom; Blessed be the King! Crowned is every duty His commandments bring. Now to serve like soldiers, Now to work like men; Oh, to love as God loves And to conquer then.”

THE SINGING CHURCH