Why breaks not out the fire within,
In flames of joy, and praise, and love?
As might be expected, it is among the Anglican and the rationalistic communities that there is the greatest dread of the emotional in worship. Yet Dr. Martineau is the ablest apologist for fervour in religious poetry.
The editor of a hymn-book will not think it necessary to graduate the fervour, the imaginativeness, the grandeur of the compositions admitted into his volume, by the cold, level, and prosaic condition of mind which may possibly prevail among some who use it. Thus, to damp the fire down to the temperature of the fuel, seems to offer but a small prospect of kindling anything. We must not thus forgo the glorious power which art exercises in worship. Its peculiar function in connexion with religion is to substitute for the poor and low thoughts of ordinary men, the solemn and vivid images of things invisible that have revealed themselves to loftier souls, and to present the objects of faith before the general mind in something of that aspect under which they rise up before the great artists of poetry and of sound. These gifted men are to lift us; we are not to depress them. In sacred music we acknowledge this principle at once; we confess that it is a noble thing, when we think of the origin of things, and call God the Creator, to have within us the mighty transitions of Haydn’s genius instead of our own puny dreams; to have the incidents of sacred story glow and live before us at the touch of a power like that of Handel or of Spohr; to find ourselves, at such bidding, with the ‘Shepherds abiding in the field,’ not far from the holy chant falling on the midnight air; or to hear in a voice, melting as Christ’s, ‘Come unto Me, ye weary’; or, as we pass from bereavement to bereavement of this world, to be haunted, as with a sudden peace, by the echo of that unearthly strain, ‘Blest are the departed.’ Not less elevating is the poetry than the melody of faith, when it is equally left alone with its first fresh power, and not reduced halfway to prose as a condition of its entrance into worship.[30]
We should, perhaps, hesitate to say that a Christian hymn may have the ‘fine, careless rapture’ which is the glory of Browning’s thrush, but we must not deny to it the ‘inward glee’ as well as the ‘serious faith’ of Wordsworth’s stock-dove. The fervour of Christian song is the bright expression of our glorying in the Lord.
Sing we merrily unto God our Strength.[31]
7. Truth of doctrine.—If it be allowed that hymns play an important part in the teaching of the Church, it is hardly necessary to press this point. Indeed, there is often more to be feared from theological pedantry than from doctrinal sensitiveness. The essential unity of the faith of Christendom is nowhere better illustrated than in the number of hymns which belong to the common treasure of the Church. There is already a union of hearts in the language of devotion which is the surest promise of the reunion of Christendom. At the same time, there are not a few hymns which must either be excluded from denominational hymn-books, or be revised into accord with the faith of the congregations that are to use them.
I well remember the distress of a distinguished Independent minister when I quoted to him Wesley’s verse—
Ah! Lord, with trembling I confess,
A gracious soul may fall from grace;