The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and Sang

by Edmund S. Lorenz

I. SELECTION SHOULD SECURE UNITY OF SERVICE

Next in importance to the minister’s selection of his text comes the selection of his hymns. If he has a clear conception of the real unity of his service, it will appear in this more than in anything else.

Narrow Conception of Unity.

If the minister is a narrow, mechanically-minded man, with a sense of the need of mere logical unity, he will make the subject of his sermon the governing consideration in all parts of his service. The hymns will needs be all or nearly all didactic, the type with the least emotional or inspiring value.

The early hymns of the service will in an ineffective way anticipate the points of his discourse and, in so far as they have effectiveness, weaken by their more lucid and concise statement the discussion in the sermon. As the congregation usually does not know what the topic of the discourse is to be, the pertinency of the selection is not evident. The same is true of the Scripture lesson, if it is read before the long prayer. Logically the whole basis of selection is absurd.

Broader Conception of Unity.

The sermon is simply a co-ordinate part of divine service, not its governing feature to which all things else must be subordinated. The early hymns should not be selected with reference to the theme of the sermon; the last hymn should sum up not so much the ideas of the sermon as its emotional values.

Unity Based on Purpose.

Among heathen people instruction must be the leading purpose of any meeting held for their benefit; but among well-taught Christian people, the chief purpose should be worship, to which the sermon should be simply one of several aids. The hymns should be emotional, worshipful, and not exclusively didactic, and should harmonize with the sermon by being subordinated, with the sermon, to the clearly-conceived worshipful purpose of the entire service. Dr. Austin Phelps, more than three-fourths of a century ago, enunciated the right policy: “It aims at unity of worship, not by sameness of theme, but by resemblance of spirit. It would have a sermon preceded and followed, not necessarily by a hymn on the identical subject, but by a hymn on a kindred subject, pertaining to the same group of thought, lying in the same perspective, and enkindling the same class of emotions.” To announce the theme of the coming sermon in the first hymn, to read a Scriptural passage as a basis for it, to grope around that theme in the prayer, to emphasize another phase in the second hymn, is a case of professional egotism so flagrant that its only shocking mitigation is that it is the accepted clerical estimate of the situation.

Now every service, of whatever form or character, is properly intended to bring the soul into conscious relation with God. Every phase of the soul’s activities is to be brought under the influence of this dominating purpose. As it cannot comprehend God in His completeness at any one moment, different attributes of His nature and the varied relation of these several attributes to manifold human needs furnish an endless abundance of worshipful themes. They will appeal to the understanding through the truth, to the heart through an emotional realization of that truth, and to the will by the choices offered to the soul’s supreme tribunal. Here, then, in this clearly-conceived phase of worshipful attitude, you find the basis for the logical unity of the service—a living unity that moves heart and will as well as reason.

There is in this no fetter to the intellectual activity of the preacher, but rather a fresh stimulus and source of suggestion. It brings to bear vital forces within the speaker’s own soul that too often find little exercise, and changes the emotional elements of the service, the prayer, and the music—now too often mere haphazard, characterless excrescences—into definite sources of power for the realization of the desired spiritual results.

A preacher whose heart is a barometer of the spiritual condition of his people has no difficulty in finding subjects and texts for his sermons. If the needs of his people press upon him, those needs furnish an arc light that illuminates the Bible, and a suggestiveness that brings him an embarrassment of homiletical riches. Given a clear recognition of a definite immediate need and the consequent definite purpose, it will not only make sermonizing easy but will control the rest of the service. Not the theme of the sermon, but the purpose of the service as a whole, will be the organizing vitality.