Highways of Canadian Literature

by J. D. Logan; Donald G. French

Hymn Writers

THE HYMN WRITERS OF CANADA—ALLINE­—CLEVELAND—SCRIVEN— MURRAY—SCOTT­—RAND—DEWART—WALKER—AND OTHERS.

A hymn is a form of sacred lyrical literature. It must be popular literature, but not necessarily pure poetry or permanent literature. A hymn is properly defined not by what it is in literary qualities but by what it does for the human spirit—for the heart and the religious imagination. It aims lyrically to express dependence on divine providence, to praise the divine perfections, to give thanks for divine mercies and benefits, and to supplicate divine aid in doubt and weakness and divine consolation in tribulation and defeat. A hymn, in short, is the spontaneous lyrical expression of a paternal and filial relationship between Man and God.

The structural qualities which constitute a true hymn are few and readily understood. Since a hymn must above all things be potent over the hearts and imagination of all the people, its diction must be vernacular—simple words of one and two syllables. Since a hymn must be singable by all the people in concert, its metrical flow must be short and rhythmical. In aesthetic qualities a hymn should be simple but beautiful in thought, sentiment and imagery. In moral qualities a hymn should be suggestive of human but holy relations between Man and Divine Providence. These are the prime qualities that constitute the popularity of a hymn and give it a place either in permanent poetry or in permanent hymnody.

Several Canadians, émigrés or native-born, have written hymns which have a rightful and permanent place in church hymnody. The history of Canadian hymnography dates back to the year 1786. In that year Henry Alline, leader of the ‘New Lights’ schism in Nova Scotia, published his Hymns and Spiritual Songs. He was as prolific a hymn writer as Charles Wesley, having five books of hymns to his credit. His diction is not always true to the demands of a hymn; sometimes it is stilted and too literary. But his imagery is simple and the movement of his thought is direct. The chief merit of his hymns is their genuine lyrical quality; they have rhythmical flow. One or two of them have held a permanent place in church hymnody, as, for instance, the hymn beginning with this homely image expressed in vernacular English:—

Amazing sight! the Saviour stands

And knocks at every door—

Of the Cleveland family in the Old Colonies two members emigrated to Nova Scotia—Aaron Cleveland, who became minister of Mather’s (now St. Matthew’s) church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Benjamin Cleveland who joined in with the ‘New Lights,’ and emulated Alline as a hymn writer. One of his hymns still finds a place in church hymnody in Canada, the familiar hymn beginning

Oh, could I find from day to day

A nearness to my God.

None of the hymns of Alline or Cleveland, however, attained a world-wide popularity. The first Canadian to write a hymn that has become not only world-famous but also has been translated into several ‘heathen tongues’ as well as civilized languages was Joseph Scriven, author of the simple spiritual song, What a Friend We Have in Jesus. The man and the hymn have a remarkable history, which is recounted by Rev. James Clelland in his biographical sketch in a tiny thirty-page booklet entitled: What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and Other Hymns by Joseph Scriven. It was published at Port Hope, Ontario, in 1895.

For many years the hymn had been attributed, without authentication, to Dr. Horatius Bonar. But in 1893 a letter appeared in the New York Observer, in which it was stated that the hymn had been found amongst some papers belonging to Joseph Scriven, who had ended his life by suicide. Scriven was a local preacher but he was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and was, therefore, a man of respectable culture. Like Cowper, Scriven suffered from melancholia; and it is natural to suppose that he had written the hymn after recovery from one of his fits of melancholia. He was a shy man, and after writing the hymn gave a copy of it to his mother, from whom he extracted a promise that she would not reveal its existence or show it to anyone else. But whether the mother’s pride in her son’s accomplishment overcame her, or whether due to some sort of accident, the hymn reached a certain Mr. Converse, a musician, and he at once set it to music of the more popular kind. Soon the hymn attained a popular vogue in the United States and from there gained equally popular vogue in Canada. Some are inclined to believe that it was not the hymn itself but the musical setting that created its popularity. No doubt the musical setting to Lyte’s Abide With Me, or to Newman’s Lead Kindly Light, has considerable to do with the appeal of those hymns. Newman expressly attributes the popularity of his hymn to the musical setting and not to the spiritual beauty of the text. But the musical setting to Scriven’s What a Friend We Have In Jesus is so poor in melodic invention and so lacking in cantante quality and rhythmic flow that as a tune or melody it is not singable or infectious and could not be a compelling ‘sacred folksong.’ We must, therefore, charge its popularity to the appeal of the text of the hymn to some elemental want or need of humble human hearts.

But whatever the cause of the popularity of this hymn, whether the words or the musical setting or both, the fact remains that it is the most widely known hymn in Christian hymnology. It has been translated into many of the civilized and the barbaric languages of the world, and more than a hundred million impressions of the hymn have been printed. Searching for a psychological explanation of its appeal to the universal human heart, we know that as a matter of fact it has solaced, as one writer puts it, ‘millions and millions of souls, from the criminal on his way to the scaffold to the ocean traveller in his last moment aboard a sinking ship; from the negro in his wretched plantation cabin to the highest dignitary of the evangelical churches; from the unclad heathen denizen of the cannibalistic South Sea Islands or in wildest Africa to the most learned savant of the most civilized land.’ The obvious explanation of its appeal is that Scriven’s hymn expresses, both for the humble and for the highest, the elemental and inevitable sense of dependence for life and happiness on some spiritual power that is mighty to comfort, solace, sustain, and save. When that sense of dependence comes over any human being, and when such a human being feels that there is an ever-ready invisible hand to sustain or succor, in that moment the sense of dependence and of ever-ready aid, and of joy or comfort or hope thus awakened, are expressed in emotionalized rhythm, which is religious song.

Scriven lacked lyrical or rhythmical sensibility, and his famous hymn possesses no aesthetic or artistic appeal. But in times of need, aesthetics are the poorest support and solace. In spite, then, of the lyrical and aesthetic defects of Scriven’s simple hymn, it has remained, by virtue of its elemental appeal to people of all estates and by its solacing and sustaining power, one of the world’s perduring sacred songs.

From a strictly Canadian point of view and with reference to aesthetic qualities which give a hymn a dignity of poetry, the most notable and significant hymn composed by a native-born Canadian is Robert Murray’s From Ocean Unto Ocean. The author was born and educated in Nova Scotia. From early childhood he disclosed a Keltic gift of imagination and fondness for expressing his emotions in verse. Dr. Murray was a religious journalist, and, as editor of The Presbyterian Witness, did much to raise ordinary journalism to the dignity of literature.

It was his custom to write hymns and to publish them anonymously in the religious press. Those who had an eye for the revision of church hymnals were struck by the aesthetic beauty and dignity as well as religious fervor of Dr. Murray’s hymns. They are indeed extraordinary, and the substance of them is so universalized that they fit the hymnals or Books of Praise of any Christian communion, Protestant or Catholic. His hymns are included in the Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church of Canada; in the Book of Common Praise of the Church of England in Canada; and in The Hymnary of the Scottish Churches. Rev. A. W. Mahon observes in his readable brochure, Canadian Hymns and Hymn Writers (1908): ‘Thirteen Canadians contribute to the New Church of England Book of Common Praise, including Canon Welsh of Toronto and the late Dean Partridge of Fredericton, but Dr. Murray’s contributions exceed all other in number and in intrinsic merit.’

To appreciate Murray’s From Ocean Unto Ocean—its intrinsic merits, as well as its special qualities and fervor which embody and express the Canadian national spirit—the whole poem must be read and felt both as a hymn for devotional and for national occasions. Following is the full text of Dr. Murray’s hymn:—

From ocean unto ocean

Our land shall own Thee Lord,

And, filled with true devotion

Obey Thy sovereign word.

Our prairies and our mountains,

Forest and fertile field,

Our rivers, lakes, and fountains,

To Thee shall tribute yield.

O Christ, for Thine own glory,

And for our country’s weal,

We humbly plead before Thee,

Thyself in us reveal;

And may we know, Lord Jesus,

The touch of Thy dear hand;

And, healed of our diseases,

The tempter’s power withstand.

Where error smites with blindness,

Enslaves and leads astray,

Do Thou in lovingkindness

Proclaim Thy gospel day;

Till all the tribes and races

That dwell in this fair land,

Adorned with Christian graces,

Within Thy courts shall stand.

Our Saviour King, defend us,

And guide where we should go;

Forth with Thy message send us;

Thy love and light to show;

Till, fired with true devotion

Enkindled by Thy word,

From ocean unto ocean

Our land shall own Thee Lord.

The diction of this hymn is simple, vernacular; of 160 words in the text only ten are of Latin origin, and even these are as short and familiar as our Anglo-Saxon diction. The rhythmic flow is thoroughly lyrical. But though simple in diction and lyrical structure, there is a universality of reach or sweep in its imagery that, at least relatively to most other hymns, raises Murray’s hymn to the dignity of poetry. There is no provincialism in it. There is no denominationalism in it. There is no narrow or bigoted ethics in it. It is thoroughly human and humane. It possesses universality and spiritual dignity. It is all that a true hymn should be.

Murray’s hymn, moreover, in humanity and spiritual dignity, contrasts winningly with the original form of the British, which is also the Canadian, National Anthem. This so-called anthem has been revised so as to remove from it certain inane thoughts and sentiments and imagery that were not consistent with Christian charity and the ideal of human brotherhood. Canada has, too, its own indigenous National Song or Hymn which is the text to a sonorous organ-toned musical setting by Calixa Lavallée. The original text of the Canadian National Hymn is by Routhier. It is patriotic in the old exclusive sense, containing that kind of patriotism which is solicitous about the mere material success and aggrandizement of Canada. But Murray’s From Ocean Unto Ocean is so human and so humane, so unracial, so unprovincial, so unsectarian, and by its imagery so informed with the free and all-embracing spirit of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, bounding the vast Canadian prairies and mountains and forests, that its spiritual sweep takes in the whole of Canada without respect to race or region or religion, or high degree or low degree of person, and is fitted to be, if not the National Anthem, at any rate the National Hymn, of Canada. It is at once both Christian and Universal—a distinctive and authentic hymn, and an original contribution to permanent Canadian hymnody.

Murray was not a creative poet in the sense of being a systematic poet. But Canon Frederick George Scott, who is a member of the Systematic School of Canadian poets, has written hymns. They are strictly evangelical, rather than universal in thought and scope, and are in the traditional hymn form. They have a sweet simplicity and a spiritual dignity but, beyond their lyrical or rhythmic expressiveness, have no especial aesthetic and artistic qualities that call for particular critical consideration. The same appreciation suits a critical estimate of the hymns by Silas T. Rand, Edward Hartley Dewart, Charles Innis Cameron, Louisa Walker and other accepted Hymn Writers of Canada.

Rand’s Latin Hymns are interesting as translations and are literary phenomena by themselves. Cameron was a poet and his hymns have an excellence of structure, imagery, and color that give them quite the quality of poetry, though again, it must be observed, they are evangelical, rather than universal, in scope and sweep. Anna Louisa Walker is famous as the author of the hymn Work, For The Night Is Coming. This is really a ‘sacred folk-song.’ It has indeed a wide popularity, but by no means as wide as Scriven’s world-famous hymn. Albert Durrant Watson and Alexander Louis Fraser are hymn writers of distinction. Summarily: Canadian Hymn Writers have contributed substantially to the hymnody of the Evangelical Church in Canada, and, at least in two instances, to permanent hymnody. But no Canadian hymn has the structural beauty and spiritual sublimation which belong to such hymns as Newman’s Lead, Kindly Light, or Baring-Gould’s Onward, Christian Soldiers, or Lyte’s Abide With Me, and which lift these hymns into the realm of authentic poetry.