The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and Sang

by Edmund S. Lorenz

IV. THE MINUTE STUDY OF HYMNS

There can be no adequate knowledge of a hymn without a survey of the whole field of hymnology. It is necessary to understand the character and limitations of the hymn, to visualize its history and development, in order to secure its proper interpretation and use. It is unfortunate that too many ministers are satisfied with this general knowledge which is, after all, only a preparation for the study of the individual hymn. It is only in the individual hymn that the point of contact with practical results is reached. One may know all about Isaac Watts and yet know so little of his great hymn “When I survey the wondrous cross” as to announce it at a church banquet before all the people are done eating! Imagine John, Peter, and the rest munching dried figs or dates as they stand before the cross on which their Master is dying!

Only as the individual hymns are fully understood as to their meaning, and as to the methods required to get that meaning transformed into experience and character, can hymnology become a practical force.

Analysis of the Hymn.

1. The first step is the investigation of its structure. The form of the stanza, the kind of measure used, the proper occurrence of accents, the schedule of rhymes all are important, controlling the music and the reading of the hymn.

The logical structure is even more important as governing the development of thought. Recognition of the relation of the several verses to the general plan of the hymn will reveal their individual value and prevent mutilation when circumstances demand omission of verses. This structure is more evident in didactic and homiletical hymns, of course, but the progress of thought usually lies near the surface. The doctrinal teachings should be clearly and explicitly thought out.

2. There is a logic of emotion more or less paralleling that of thought. There are ebb and flow of feeling, radical change of feeling, one feeling merging into another, that must be recognized. The climaxes of interest in the succeeding verses, rising higher and higher and culminating in the supreme climax of the last verse, should be noted that they may be expressed in the reading and the singing. This recognition of the emotional character of the hymn is absolutely essential to its real effectiveness. The hymn is fundamentally an expression of emotion, and only as such has it practical value.

3. After this general analysis of the structure and thought and of the general emotion of the hymn, there will need to be a study of its detailed phrases. The minister ought to study it line by line and phrase by phrase. The Scriptural allusions need to be located and their connections noted. What did Charles Wesley mean in his great hymn, “Love divine, all loves excelling,” by the phrase in the second verse, “the second rest”? Why did he pray “Finish, then, thy new creation”?[3] What is the Scriptural justification for the phrases of Newton’s “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds”?[4] In Doddridge’s “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,” what Biblical authority has he for “cloud of witnesses,” or the ideas of “prize” and “race”?[5] What did Watts mean in the third verse of his “Not all the blood of beasts,”

“My faith would lay her hand

On that dear head of Thine,

While like a penitent I stand

And there confess my sin”?

Without the picture of the high priest laying his hands on the head of the scapegoat and confessing the sins of the people before sending it out into the wilderness (Lev. 16:21), what meaning can these lines convey?

The Background of the Hymn.

1. The interpretation of the hymn cannot be complete without a recognition of the person who wrote it. His type of mind, his responsiveness to divine truth, his conception of the work of the Church, stamp themselves on the product of his pen. The personality of Watts, of Wesley, of Whittier, and of Faber interpret their several hymns.

Knowledge of the circumstances under which a given hymn was written will add to the value and correctness of the interpretation, by giving a sense of actuality to the thought and feeling expressed.

2. The age in which a hymn was written will be a large factor in its interpretation. The sheer objectiveness of the ancient hymns, the meditativeness of the medieval hymns stressing the sufferings of Christ on the cross, the worship character of the pre-Wesley hymns, including those of Watts, the warm, tender, experiential hymns of the Wesleyan Revival, all stamp their several hymns ineffaceably with their characteristics. “A mighty fortress is our God” bears the stigmata of the opening battles of the German Reformation. “Jesus, the very thought of Thee” is permeated by the peace and ardent piety of the Spanish nunnery whose devout abbess wrote the Latin original. “Stand up, stand up for Jesus” sounds the militant note of the great Philadelphia revival of 1857 and the Antislavery campaign that was so soon to drench the South with the noblest blood of both sections.

Watts’ hymns must be analyzed in the light of the prevailing psalmody, of the religious aridity of his time, and of the formalism, not of the Established Church only, but of that of the Nonconformist societies as well. Wesley’s hymns cannot be understood except as expressing the struggle between extreme worldly-mindedness, sensuality, and social decay outside of the Church, allied with the mere formalism and the cold and sheerly pharisaic morality within, on the one side, and the emphasis of conversion, profound religious experience, and aggressive evangelistic propaganda on the other. The objectivity and essentially liturgic spirit of Watts’ hymns and the subjective warmth and the poetic glow of those of Charles Wesley immediately become full of meaning and historic vitality.

3. The greater hymns gather about themselves the noble associations of the many generations which have lived and died with their lines upon their lips. Would “Rock of Ages, cleft for me” or “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” if written now, speedily win the place they now hold in our Christian hymnody? Would “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing” be widely sung, if it were not that in England and America it had been an impressive voice of worship in chapel and home, in stately church, and in mountain schoolhouse on the American frontier? Lips now trembling with age lisped them in childhood; memories of father and mother, of thrilling religious experiences, when the very heavens seemed to open to the soul, cluster about them.

4. Only in this way can he secure a clear idea of what parts of a hymn will serve his immediate purpose, which lines and phrases will enrich his discourses or bring his points to an incandescent glow, or which verses when sung will assure the definite effect he has in mind. There may well be occasions when he will want his people to sing, not the first verse of Whittier’s tender hymn, “We may not climb the heavenly steeps,” but the second,

“But warm, sweet, tender, even yet

A present help is He;

And faith has still its Olivet,

And love its Galilee,”

or the even more comforting third verse,

“The healing of the seamless dress

Is by our beds of pain;

We touch him in life’s throng and press,

And we are whole again.”

Such a study in interpretation will greatly enhance the spiritual values of the hymns to the minister himself, enriching mind and heart. It will make it possible for him to interpret them to his people. To any person the hymn is what he understands it to mean, no more; its effect on him is in due proportion to the completeness of his interpretation of it. The minister, therefore, is in duty bound to supply each singer in his congregation with an accurate and complete understanding of the hymns that are sung.

Making a Hymnal of His Own.

The minister who has given his hymnal the study that has been suggested will wish to garner and organize the materials he has thus won. He will proceed to make a little hymnal of his own by selecting a given number of the hymns that appeal to him—say one hundred—in his regular hymnal. This will constitute his inner hymnal to which from time to time he will make additions.

These hymns will be marked in his own copy of the church hymnal, a wide margined one, or an interleaved one, if it can be secured. As he analyzes each one, finding the joints in its structure, he will indicate the results by lines of division with the proper captions. His dissection of the phrases will disclose more or less obscure allusions needing explanation, like “Siloam’s pool,” “Mt. Nebo’s lonely height,” “Gog and Magog,” “Ebenezer” and many others that convey no meaning to the average mind. These should be underlined for explanation. Some phrases are so suggestive, so packed with meaning, that their value eludes the ordinary singer—for instance, the second verse of Monsell’s “My sins, my sins, my Saviour.” These should be put in quotation marks to remind the preacher to unpack by spirited comment their wealth for the edification of his people.

Numbers referring to his card index or commonplace book will bring to mind helpful facts about the hymn, or its writer, or illustrations that will quicken both mind and heart. Enclosing a verse or verses in brackets will mark those that can be omitted without wrecking the symmetrical progress of the thought. That will eliminate the usual thoughtless phrase, “We will omit the third verse.” If there is a choice of tunes, the most practicable one can be indicated; or a tune better known to the congregation elsewhere in the hymnal may be suggested with its number.

Verses to be read by the congregation, or to be sung by the choir or by a soloist, before being sung by the people may be starred. Changes of force, or speed, may be marked p. for soft singing, or f. for loud singing. A passage marked rit. will be retarded, or hurried if marked accel. A repeat sign, bis, after a verse will suggest that a verse may be profitably repeated. Scripture references will suggest passages that can be used to emphasize the sentiment of the hymn, such as Genesis 28:10-13, for the hymn, “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” M before a verse may mark it as a memory verse to be sung with closed hymnal. P may indicate that it is a prayer, to be sung before the long prayer. Dates connected with a hymn will show when it has been sung, and so prevent its unduly frequent repetition from mere force of habit. Every alert-minded minister will have methods and devices of his own that should be recorded in connection with the hymns so treated.

Such a hymnal, individual, practical, wealthy in resources, will be of incalculable value to the wide-awake, aggressive minister, rendering him independent of moods, of dull spirits, of disturbing environments. He needs but open his hymnal, a treasure house of practical suggestions, and his resources, immediately accessible and fully prepared, await his use.

A personal hymnal like this will not be made in a day or a month. Week by week, as hymns are selected, they are fully investigated and studied and their points recorded in the preacher’s copy. His skimming of newspapers and magazines, his daily experiences, his hearing of addresses and sermons; his reading of history and literature, no less than his study of hymnological literature, will pay heavy tribute to such a royal treasury.

The books of hymnic material, pretty largely historical, are fairly numerous, and their help should not be despised, for they offer very useful illustrative matter. Robinson’s Annotations upon Popular Hymns is not as up-to-date nor as scholarly exact as the later Duffield’s English Hymns, or as Nutter and Tillett’s Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church, but is richer anecdotally and more suggestive of expository comment. Dr. Benson’s still later Studies of Familiar Hymns, Series I and II, will be found very rich in practical material. The present writer’s Practical Hymn Studies[6] offers help most ministers need. The matter found in these and other like collections should be carefully sifted and recorded. A condensation of the selected items, particularly of the longer anecdotes, may be ample for all practical purposes.

Is it necessary to suggest again that all this varied material should be well organized in a loose-leaf blank book small enough to be carried about or, better yet, in a rebound, interleaved hymnal?

In making such a thorough study of as many hymns as he has leisure to analyze, the minister is really editing a hymnal of his own, none the less his own that it is embedded in the larger collection. There are very few preachers who do not have such an inner hymnal made up of the hymns they are in the habit of using; the pity is that it is frequently so small, so poorly selected, so unsymmetrical, so dependent on an unresponsive memory, and so lacking in the materials that would help to make the hymns effective.

Memorizing Hymns.

A large number of hymns should be committed to memory for his own mental enrichment and comfort. It will enlarge his devotional vocabulary, his power of expression of spiritual things—nay more, increase the spontaneity and spirituality of his thinking and feeling, for memory lies nearer the springs of subconscious intuition and impulses than the printed word. A wealth of spiritual thought, of sanctified imagination, of vibrant religious feeling, of apt and expressive phrase and vocabulary, is provided by such a well-stocked memory.

The subconscious mind will furnish the fitting quotation, whether he writes his sermon or speaks ex tempore. In unexpected emergencies, when there is no time to leaf over the hymnal for a verse to be sung, the mind automatically supplies it. In personal work, in cheering the sick, in comforting those who mourn, in inspiring the lagging and discouraged ones, the apt quotation will be exceedingly effective. There are moments in a service, unexpected episodes of an emotional character, climaxes of feeling in a discourse, when a verse of a hymn sung by the congregation will exceed in impressiveness any oratorical outburst; if the minister can trust his memory, he can carry the faltering memories of his people and realize an effect otherwise impossible, not only not losing any momentum, as he would if it were necessary to refer to the hymnal, but indefinitely increasing it. The great hymns of the Church should be made a part of his mental furniture, become a large share of his clerical working capital. He should not be satisfied to have less than a hundred hymns at his mental fingers’ ends for efficient use at a moment’s notice.