All are too mean to speak His worth,
Too mean to set my Saviour forth.
But O what gentle terms,
What condescending ways,
Doth our Redeemer use,
To teach His heavenly grace;
Mine eyes with joy and wonder see
What forms of love He bears for me!
It would be easy to give illustrations of offences against the spirit of reverence, especially in hymns of the eighteenth century and the earlier part of the nineteenth. The Moravian hymns in particular were often disfigured by the most revolting phrases, so had indeed that one does not care to give them even the notoriety of emphatic condemnation.[27] But such gross offences are rare in our time, and are practically unknown to Protestant hymnals. Some of the Romish hymns, and a few in Anglican books, refer to the details of our Lord’s Incarnation and Passion with irreverent and even indecent realism, and those addressed to the Virgin Mary are often as bad as any found in the older Moravian books.
We are, on the other hand, in some danger of carrying our sense of what is reverent too far, and of altering without reason the glowing words of devout Christian affection. John Wesley shrank from including