Chapter I: A True Hymn

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

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

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

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

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

O blessèd Well of Love, O Flower of Grace,
O glorious Morning Star, O Lamp of Light!
Most lively image of Thy Father’s face,
Eternal King of Glory, Lord of Might,
Meek Lamb of God, before all worlds behight,[6]
How can we Thee requite for all this good?
Or what can prize that Thy most precious blood?

Yet nought Thou ask’st in lieu of all this love,
But love of us for guerdon of Thy pain:
Ay me! What can us less than that behove?
Had He requirèd life of us again,
Had it been wrong to ask His own with gain?
He gave us life, He it restorèd lost;
Then life were least, that us so little cost.

But He our life hath left unto us free,
Free that was thrall, and blessèd that was banned;
Nor ought demands but that we loving be,
As He Himself hath loved us afore-hand;
And bound thereto with an eternal band,
Him first to love that us so dearly bought,
And next our brethren to His image wrought.

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

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

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

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

There’s not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green;
There’s not a bonnie bird that sings
But minds me of my Jean.

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

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

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

O Lord my God, Thou art very great;
Thou art clothed with honour and majesty.

Both might have ended with

Let my meditation[9] be sweet unto Him;
civ. 34.

or, in the words of another psalm—

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation[9] of my heart, be
acceptable in Thy sight,
O Lord, my Strength, and my Redeemer.
xix. 14.

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

There is a land of pure delight,

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

When I survey the wondrous Cross

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

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

In the Epistle to the Ephesians he writes:

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

In the Epistle to the Colossians:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
c. 4.

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

Jerusalem makes melody
For simple joy of heart,
An organ of full compass she,
One tuned through every part;
While not to day or night belong
Her matins and her evensong,
The one thanksgiving of her song.[19]

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

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

Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet:
Praise Him with the psaltery and harp.
Praise Him with the timbrel and dance:
Praise Him with stringed instruments and the pipe.
Praise Him upon the loud cymbals:
Praise Him upon the high-sounding cymbals.

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

Praise Him every tuneful string;
All the reach of heavenly art,
All the powers of music bring,
The music of the heart.[20]

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

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

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

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

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

God sent His singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.[24]

The Christian poet is a teacher and an evangelist.

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

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

The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords,
Is when the soul unto the lines accords.[25]

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

So Cowper prays—

Forgive the praise that falls so low
Beneath the gratitude I owe:
It means Thy praise, however poor;
An angel’s song could do no more.

So Keble sings—

Childlike though the voices be,
And untunable the parts,
Thou wilt own the minstrelsy
If it flows from childlike hearts.

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

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

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

Here memory mocks the toil of genius. Christ
Beamed on that cross; and pattern fails me now.
But whoso takes his cross, and follows Christ,
Will pardon me for that I leave untold,
When in the fleckered dawning he shall spy
The glitterance of Christ.[26]

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

A solemn reverence checks our songs,
And praise sits silent on our tongues.

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

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

Join all the glorious names
Of wisdom, love, and power,
That ever mortals knew,
That angels ever bore;
All are too mean to speak His worth,
Too mean to set my Saviour forth.

But O what gentle terms,
What condescending ways,
Doth our Redeemer use,
To teach His heavenly grace;
Mine eyes with joy and wonder see
What forms of love He bears for me!

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

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

Jesu, Lover of my soul

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

Lover of souls, to rescue mine
Reveal the charity divine
That suffered in my stead.

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

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

Come then, and to my soul reveal
The heights and depths of grace,
The wounds which all my sorrows heal,
That dear disfigured face.

Personally I should not touch even Faber’s

Sweet Saviour, bless us e’er we go,

though I wish he had used another epithet; and I certainly could not draw a rough pen through Cowper’s tender line

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power.

There is something due to the men who wrote thus. If they loved much, we should let them speak their love to all the ages in terms of strong affection, and our colder hearts may learn to burn within us as we draw near with them to Him who ‘sought us Himself with such longing and love.’

Bad taste is an error of judgement, not irreverence, but it has very much the same effect upon the worshipper, and it is to be regretted that some very great hymns, consecrated by ten thousand sacred memories, are marred by phrases which will not bear comment or meditation. If the hymn were new, not many modern books would include Cowper’s lines

There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

but nothing could long preserve in common use Watts’s verse—

His dying crimson like a robe
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then am I dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.

3. Closely allied to reverence is _Dignity_, the elevation and refinement of thought and language which beseem the worship of God. Nor is it any disadvantage to the less enlightened or less educated in the Christian assembly that they should learn to speak the language of the family of God. Dignity is not necessarily obscure or pompous. It represents what is worthy of man’s thought when it is engaged on the highest of all themes. The intrusion into the most sacred moments of what is mean or vulgar in sound or association is a grievous offence. Hymns belong to the _belles lettres_ of the literature of devotion; to be familiar with them should be in itself a liberal education.

4. _Beauty._—‘Intercourse between God and the human soul,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘cannot be poetical’—a characteristically dogmatic assertion for which there might be some excuse in his day, but which succeeding years have overwhelmingly disproved. A hundred years ago it was necessary to include in a hymn-book compositions that compensated for their lack of poetry by their undoubted piety, but we have such a wealth of song at our disposal that there need be nothing poor, prosaic, commonplace in our hymnals. Watts’s greatest error was his excessive tenderness for ‘vulgar capacities.’

5. _Simplicity._—We may say of great hymns what Tennyson said of great men—they are

In their simplicity sublime.

Heavy words are rightly to be regarded as fatal to a good hymn. Charles Wesley was peculiarly prone to use words which make hymns impossible in public worship. Who desires in prayer or praise to use such words as ‘consentaneous,’ ‘implunged,’ ‘choral symphonies’?

The best hymns are made up of short words, and have a large preponderance of monosyllables. The words, too, should be such as men use in the more serious intercourse of daily life. It goes without saying that colloquialisms and words with mean associations are not fit for the sanctuary, but the finest hymns are often those which the plain man recognizes as written in his own tongue.

Bishop Ken’s great hymns are models of simple directness of thought and expression, and so are some verses of Pope’s _Universal Prayer_.

What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do;
This, teach me more than hell to shun,
That, more than heaven pursue.

If I am right, Thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way!

Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

6. _Fervour._—If there is no fire or glow in a hymn, it might as well be prose as poetry. Indeed, many hymns are so prosaic, so _wooden_, that it is difficult to see how they can ever

Teach our faint desires to rise

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

Quench then the altar-fires of your old gods,
Quench not the fire within.[29]

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

Why breaks not out the fire within,
In flames of joy, and praise, and love?

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

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

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

Sing we merrily unto God our Strength.[31]

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

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

Ah! Lord, with trembling I confess,
A gracious soul may fall from grace;
The salt may lose its seasoning power,
And never, never find it more—

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

Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given,
More happy but not more secure
The glorified spirits in heaven.

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

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