CHAPTER I
[1]Dr. Phelps goes on to say, “Yet the greatest of these, that grace which above all else vitalizes a true hymn, is that which makes it true—its fidelity to the realities of religious experience.”
[2]“A hymn must have a beginning, middle, and end. There should be a manifest graduation in the thoughts, and their mutual dependence should be so perceptible that they could not be transposed without injuring the unity of the piece; every line carrying forward the connection, and every verse adding a well-proportioned limb to a symmetrical body. The reader should know when the strain is complete, and be satisfied, as at the close of an air in music.” (James Montgomery.)
[3]Dr. Parks, back in 1857, remarks: “That is not always the best church song which sparkles most with rhetorical gems. There are spangled hymns which will never excite devotional feeling.”
[4]Sung at President McKinley’s funeral.
[5]Greece never had a sacred book, she never had any symbols, any sacerdotal caste organized for the preservation of dogmas. Her poets and her artists were her true theologians. (Renan, in Studies in Religious History.)
[6]“Even when deeds and events of an innocent and pure character are thus sung, there is nothing more of spiritual worship in it than in the recitation of an epic poem. The singer confesses no need, asks no blessing, reveals no yearning, expects no response. There is no communion of thought and feeling, no aspiration for purity, no laying hold of moral strength.” (Rev. G. O. Newport, a missionary in India, quoted in The Hymn Lover.)