Hymns Are Prayers
“A little while ago I was in a service where a minister of no little eminence was suddenly called on to pray. His response was simply the repeating of the entire hymn, whose first stanza reads:
‘My faith looks up to Thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Saviour Divine!
Now hear me while I pray,
Take all my guilt away,
Oh, let me from this day
Be wholly Thine!’
If one man’s experience was typical, that individual hymn with its ‘I’ and ‘My’ brought scores of people into a spiritual aggregate and made a ‘common supplication.’
“Much of the same thing happened in the bishops’ meeting not so long ago. We were having a prayer service, only that, and it must have continued for two and a half hours. One bishop’s prayer that night was simply a repeating of Whittier’s hymn:
‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our feverish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.’
As we were all on our knees we were led to treat that hymn as a public prayer; and it was at once an inspiring and exalting thing. Our services would be enriched beyond measure if only this spirit of prayer could be more definitely attached to the songs of our corporate worship.”
Here is a personal testimony from Fanny Crosby concerning