Some minds, although strong and keen, seem to have a very small visual angle. Some such persons condemn all hymns that are not direct praise. The line in Lyte’s “Abide with Me”—“Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes”—has been objected to as Romish by some, blind to the fact that it is a prayer to Christ.
Others exclude hymns in which the pronoun of the first person singular occurs. Bishop Wordsworth, himself a hymn-writer of no mean merit (vide “O Day of rest and gladness” and “See, the Conqueror rides in triumph”), says, in his introduction to his Holy Year, that while the ancient hymns are distinguished by self-forgetfulness, the modern hymns are characterized by self-consciousness. As illustrative examples, he cites the following: “When I can read my title clear,” “When I survey the wondrous cross,” “My God, the spring of all my joys,” and “Jesus, Lover of my soul.” It is strange that so keen a mind should not have seen that his objection would apply to all liturgies!
The minister with his eye fixed upon his spiritual purpose can afford to ignore all these supersensitive critics who have refined refinement until sensibility becomes hyperesthesia, a veritable disease.
The use of hymns of a somewhat indifferent literary value is often thoughtlessly condemned because the importance of the recognition of its topic is overlooked. Such a topic as “Church Erection,” or “Education,” may not occasion the deep feeling necessary to the writing of a great hymn, and yet it must find a place in the practical work of the church. Here again Dr. Phelps gives a useful warning: “The severity of aesthetic taste must not be permitted to contract the range of devotional expression in song.... Our desire to restrict the number of hymns upon occasions, and other hymns of infrequent use, ought not to banish such hymns entirely.... A hymn intrinsically inferior, therefore, may be so valuable relatively, as justly to displace a hymn which is intrinsically its superior.”
Aside from the topical symmetry referred to, this principle will find other applications in the practical use of hymns. Some inferior hymns have for some occasions a greater immediate effect than much better ones, perhaps because of a more singable tune or because its sentiment fits into the situation or because it makes a desired impression in a more efficient way.
Chapter II
THE PURPOSE AND VALUE OF HYMNS
I. THE IMPULSE TO WRITE HYMNS
The writing of the best hymns of the Christian Church was not a matter of ulterior purpose, any more than is the singing of the hermit thrush in the wilderness. They are the result of the urge for expression that lies back of all the best architecture, literature, and art of the human race. There is the vision, the sense of reality, the subjective response to truth, to beauty, and to exalted experiences that must find an objective bodying-forth in some appropriate form.
The great doctrines of Christianity loom up in their dignity and majestic sweep, in their adequacy to the highest and deepest needs of the human soul. The spontaneous hymn is but a cry of astonished delight, of exalted inspiration, of self-forgetful contemplation of the revealed glory, an instinctive appeal to other souls to share the rapture of the vision. Such a hymn is not calmly planned; it forces itself upon the mind of the rapt poet.