The salt may lose its seasoning power,
And never, never find it more—
and the pained incredulity with which he deprecated my assurance that the hymn was still in use in our congregations. I remember, too, how abruptly an eminent Methodist minister closed his hymn-book and directed the congregation to cease singing when he found them approaching the last verse of one of Toplady’s hymns—
Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given,
More happy but not more secure
The glorified spirits in heaven.
The verses set forth accurately and appropriately the teaching of the Churches to which the hymns respectively belong, but they are impossible in other theological regions. A very wide range should be allowed to religious thought as expressed in hymns, but those which contradict the things most surely believed in a Church are rightly excluded from its hymnal.
8. We should add, I think, if not to the essentials, yet certainly to the virtues of a good hymn, Scriptural language. Our greatest prose writers have found in the English Bible the most effective, forceful, impressive words; and the hymn-writer has the advantage not only of its pure, strong diction, but also of the hallowed associations which the words of Holy Scripture preserve for all Englishmen.