The Hymn-Book of the Modern Church: Brief studies of hymns and hymn-writers

by Arthur E. Gregory

Translations from the Greek, Latin, and German furnish many of our finest and most popular hymns. In regard to modern hymn-books, the German are the older, and indeed many of the Latin hymns are actually of a later date than those of Luther and even Paul Gerhardt. John Wesley’s intercourse with the Moravians introduced him to the German hymns, and his translations are almost as important a feature in our hymn-books as Charles Wesley’s original compositions. Miss Winkworth’s Lyra Germanica is one of the great devotional works of the nineteenth century.

The Oxford Movement drew attention to the hymns of the Greek and Roman Churches, and Hymns Ancient and Modern popularized many hymns suitable to the worship of all the Churches. Bishop Mant, Isaac Williams, Edward Caswall, and Dr. Neale led the way in translating these hymns into English verse, and they quickly secured a large place in hymn-books. Not only have they great historic interest, but they give us some of the sublimest and the sweetest of our hymns of penitence and praise, ranging from the solemn tones of the ‘Dies irae’ to the lovely lyrics of Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Jesu, the very thought of Thee.’ No survey of the hymn-book of the modern Church can be complete without reference to them, but I am compelled to pass them by with only this brief mention.

CONCLUSION

Our study of English hymns has carried us through three centuries and a half—from the rough, halting lines of Coverdale to the smooth and easy rhythm of the hymn-writers of to-day.

From Sternhold and Hopkins to the modern hymn-book is a long and delightful journey. ‘I envy not in any mood’ the man who finds in devotional poetry only matter for criticism. If it be true that the heart makes the theologian, it is more true that the heart makes the hymnologist.

The earlier stages of our study may yield little actual fruit in the shape of hymns which a modern editor would delight to add to his hymn-book. But it yields much in the way of inspiration, bringing us into communion with men like Herbert, Donne, Sandys, Vaughan, and, in his measure, Wither—men who might have lived the courtier’s life had they not chosen to serve the King of kings. So far as their poems are concerned, it is a mere accident that Herbert and Donne were in orders. They are not clerical hymn-writers, but, like others of their school, are poets of the inner and individual life. They touch our hearts, not because they have written what expresses the common need of a congregation, but because they speak in graceful form what most of us can feel but could never put into words. Campion and the two Austins represent the devout laymen of the professional class—men who might, if they pleased, have been mere men of the world. It would be quite possible to discuss English hymns with scarce a mention of such names, but, it seems to me, that in losing them our study would lose its richest charm.

Ken may be considered the first of the Anglican, Mason of the Evangelical, and Watts of the Dissenting hymn-writers. They wrote, not simply for their own delight or relief, but for the sake of others. Ken had no immediate successors, though he is the founder of the school of Heber, Lyte, Keble, and Ellerton. Mason’s immediate successors were Shepherd, Newton, and Cowper; Watts was the first of a long succession of the later Puritans.

It is usual to call the eighteenth century the golden age of hymn-writing; but I am not sure that this will be the final verdict. I confess that in many respects I find both the earlier and the later period more attractive. If we leave out of the account Wesley’s hymns, many of which owe their long use in the Methodist Churches to other than poetic considerations, the vast majority of the eighteenth-century hymns have disappeared from modern use. It is interesting to compare the hymn-books of 1750-1850 with those issued within the last twenty years. Rippon’s Selection, in its various editions; Collyer’s Hymns; Dobell’s New Selection of Nearly Eight Hundred Evangelical Hymns; Bickersteth’s Christian Psalmody; and Snepp’s Songs of Grace and Glory, compared with the most recent hymn-books, show not only what great additions have been made to the treasury of Christian song, but how many hymns once regarded as almost indispensable are now forgotten, and are never likely to be revived. The formal, didactic, preaching hymns, so popular a hundred years ago, have been steadily losing ground. They not only fail to touch the heart of present-day worshippers, they have no element of distinction, nothing that could or should give them a permanent place in the songs of the Church of Christ. Hymns of the period before Watts are much more common in twentieth-century hymn-books than in those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the hymns characteristic of the eighteenth century are rapidly disappearing. They were written to meet the needs of the Dissenting meeting-house and the Evangelical Revival. But among them are many which voice the experience, ‘not of an age, but of all time’; they speak the language of the soul that seeks and finds and follows the Saviour.

Nineteenth-century hymns were largely affected by the great Anglican Revival—a much wider term than ‘the Oxford Movement.’ The best known and loved of the hymns of the last eighty years are those which, in one way or other, emphasize the idea of the Church, which help the worshipper to realize that he belongs to that Holy Church which, throughout all the ages and in all lands, acknowledges God to be the Lord. It is one of the unexpected and undesired fruits of the Anglican Revival that every denomination now claims its place in an undivided Church. The longing for unity which led the Tractarians first to look and then to move toward Rome, led the Free Churches to reconsider their own position, and to seek for a larger and more scriptural conception of the Church. A narrow Calvinism had, on the one hand, kept many coldly isolated from their brethren; and, on the other, a narrow fervour, a too literal belief that Methodism, and Methodism alone, was Christianity in earnest, made others keep themselves warm by their own firesides, under the impression that their neighbours sat by cold hearths or crouched over smouldering embers. For this estrangement of brethren, the earlier hymn-books are to some extent responsible. The spirit of Christian charity, of genial mutual appreciation, has wonderfully developed since denominational hymn-books became shining evidences of unity in diversity. Some of Wesley’s earlier hymn-books illustrate this, and it is to be regretted that he did not make a more liberal use of the work of other men when he issued his final hymn-book for the people called Methodists. The earliest great catholic Collection with which I am acquainted is the Moravian book of 1754.[206] Disfigured as it is by a number of the bad Moravian hymns, it yet deserves a place—considering the time at which it was issued—beside Palgrave’s Treasury of Sacred Song. It was a by no means unsuccessful effort to do for the Moravians of the mid-eighteenth century what the Methodist Hymn-book has done for our own Church at the beginning of the twentieth century. It gathers into one volume most of the best hymns of other Churches, while preserving those peculiarly suited to the needs and tastes of its own members.

In this regard the hymn-books of the Methodist and of the Anglican Church represent a different type from those of the principal Nonconformist Churches. The latter include very little that is distinctive of the Churches for whose use they are prepared. Where they differ it is usually a matter of taste, not of doctrine. The Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregational books might be used by any or all of these Churches. And there is much to be said in defence of the elimination of denominational characteristics.