CHAPTER III
[1]“To get behind the hymnbook to the men and women who wrote its contents, and to the events, whether personal or public, out of which it sprang and which it so graciously mirrors, is to enter a world palpitating with human interest. For a hymnbook is a transcript of real life, a poetical accompaniment to real events and real experiences. Like all literature that counts, it rises directly out of life.” (Frederick J. Gillman, in The Evolution of the English Hymn. [New York: The Macmillan Co., 1927.] Used by permission.)
[2]J. Balcom Reeves, The Hymn in History and Literature. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1924). Used by permission.
[3]“There is an inclination to fence in what are called ‘literary lyrics,’ as if to fence out singing lyrics! Now there is, of course, a distinction between poems meant to be sung and poems written in the pattern of lyrical poetry, but never meant to be sung; but the terminology which classes one kind as literary, thereby implying that the other kind is not of the realm of literature, is inaccurate and unhappy.” Ibid.
[4]“In his volume, The English Lyric, Professor Felix E. Schelling virtually disposes of the hymn with the remark that ‘we may or may not “accept” certain hymns, but we do not have to read them.’ That is readily granted—unless, of course, one wishes to know them or to write just criticism about them.” Ibid.
[5]“Frequently a hymn is a prayer; and it is a rule for the structure of prayers that they exclude all those recondite figures, dazzling comparisons, flashing metaphors, which, while grateful to certain minds of poetic excitability, are offensive to more sober and staid natures, and are not congenial with the lowly spirit of a suppliant at the throne of grace. A simile may be shining, but it may not be exactly chaste; and a hymn prefers pure beauty to bedizening ornament.” (Dr. Edwards A. Park, in Hymns and Choirs.)
[6]These numbers, of course, refer to the number of syllables in a line.
CHAPTER IV
[1]The vagaries of credit for writing given hymns is illustrated in the appearance of the intensely Calvinistic Toplady’s name as the writer of Charles Wesley’s intensely Arminian “Blow ye the trumpet, blow.”
[2]Those who care to make a fuller study of the revision of hymns than the following discussion affords are referred to the full treatment of the subject, and to the abundant cases cited, by Professor Edwards A. Park, D.D., of Andover Theological Seminary, in Hymns and Choirs, issued in 1860 by Drs. Austin Phelps, Edwards A. Park, and Daniel L. Furber. The lapse of years has in no way diminished the value of this volume. It is unfortunately out of print and inaccessible to the average pastor, outside of public libraries.