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.