A rapid sketch of blind Matheson’s experience before writing “O Love that wilt not let me go” will set the heartstrings of the congregation quivering in the emotional key of the hymn. A vivid picture of the death of Christ on the cross in a dozen sentences will inspire a preacher’s people to sing “Beneath the cross of Jesus” with genuine emotion. Drawing a picture with rapid touches of the charge of the Light Brigade as it went to its death at Balaklava, and quoting a few lines of Tennyson’s poem, will stir the pulses for the singing of “Lead on, O King Eternal.” “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire” may be introduced by a few tender sentences on the vital necessity of prayer to a sincere Christian. A minute’s resume of the influence of the cross of Christ on an individual life, or on the upward sweep of the human race under its influence, will give the people a clue to “In the cross of Christ I glory.” The tender aspect of the atonement made by Christ for sin may be solemnly suggested before singing “Alas, and did my Saviour bleed?”
Where a hymn has allusions not likely to be recognized by the average singer, they ought to be made plain. How many of the millions who have sung the well-known hymn, “Come, thou Fount of every blessing,” knew what the word “Ebenezer” signified? Striking phrases, packed with deep thought and feeling, like Matheson’s
“I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be,”
should have their treasures brought to light, lest the average churchgoer should overlook them. In other words, there should be a rapid exposition of unusual and also of over-familiar hymns, so that the congregation may sing with its mind and heart.
The range of possible comment is so wide, and the opportunity of using it is so limited, that only the most striking and impressive illustrations should be considered for actual use. Rhetorical and anecdotal illustrations should be used sparingly—only when they promote an exalted and distinctly spiritual state of mind. They are apt to be prolix, to distract the mind from spiritual contemplation. They are permissible with joyous, aggressive, victorious hymns rather than with those that are tender, emotional, subjective.
The inexorable limitations of time must always be borne in mind. When a hymn is announced the people expect to sing, not to listen to a hymnological dissertation or to a long-winded anecdote. The simile or metaphor, or other oratorical comment, must explode with a very short fuse of preliminary remark. The anecdote must be compact, shorn of unessential preface or background, and reach its peak of interest, or of appeal to feeling, with the succinctness of an epigram. Better limit the illustrations and comments to those that can gracefully and lucidly be uttered in one or rarely two minutes.
Discussions and illustrations of hymns are often confined to the hymns as hymns, which is rarely necessary. It is not the hymn that needs emphasis, much less its writer: it is the message, the burden, the feeling of the hymn that is to be enforced. An instance of the saving of a “down and outer” from the Jerry McAuley mission in New York, or the Pacific Garden mission in Chicago, will create more responsiveness to “Rescue the Perishing” than biographical facts about Fanny Crosby or about the composer, W. Howard Doane. The anecdote of missionary success from the last missionary bulletin or magazine will lead a Congregation to sing “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” more enthusiastically than an explanation of Watts’ having metricized the seventy-second Psalm with a free hand, making the Jew, David, sing like a Christian. Illustrating the sense rather than the form of the hymn will be found very much more thrilling to the people.
In evening services of song, or in midweek lectures, historical backgrounds will be very helpful and interesting. A series of lectures on the great hymns of the Church, or even a general survey of the development of our Christian hymnody, will lay the foundations of a more intelligent song.