V. REASONS FOR THE MINISTER’S APPRECIATION OF HYMNS
Hymns Are Evidences of the Effect of the Bible.
The hymnbook is an evidence of what the Bible can do with unregenerate human nature. That the truth of the Bible should be able to take Newton, the slave driver, and make of him a minister of God, not only himself writing such hymns as “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” “Glorious things of Thee are spoken,” or “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” but inspiring and encouraging the poor hypochondriac, William Cowper, so that from his heart should well forth the hymns, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” “God moves in a mysterious way,” and “Sometimes a light surprises,” is in itself one of the great evidences of Christianity.
Hymns and Psalms Affected the Life of the Church.
The extraordinary result of the use of hymns and psalms in the life of the church and of believers is another reason for the minister’s valuing hymns highly. The awkward lines of Sternhold and Hopkins’ version of the psalms entered into the speech and private devotion of Scotch and English Christians as even the Bible itself did not, becoming a very liturgy to the condemners and flouters of liturgies. Thomas Jackson in his life of Charles Wesley remarks that “it is doubtful whether any human agency has contributed more directly to form the character of the Methodist societies than the hymns. The sermons of the preachers, the prayers of the people, both in their families and social meetings, are all tinged with the sentiments and phraseology of the hymns.”
Hymns in Personal Christian Experience.
Listen to the personal experiences of Christians in our own day and you will hear more reference to hymns than to the Scriptures. There is now no such committing to memory of passages of the Bible and of hymns as there was in preceding generations, but almost without set purpose, by simple absorption, the average Christian can quote more lines of hymns than he can of Scripture verses. This extraordinary place in the affections and life of Christian people is no derogation to the Bible, for the hymns are simply the Bible in another form.
Hymns as Stimulating the Spiritual Life of the Minister.
To some men who lack emotional and poetic insight, the hymnbook may appear dry and uninteresting. It certainly is uninteresting to the unspiritual man, no matter how poetical he may be, and this will account for the occasional attack upon the hymns of the Christian Church as being without poetical power or merit. But the Christian minister, who deals with spiritual things, for whom the emotions of the human heart give a great opportunity for sowing the seed of life, ought to find the study of his hymnbook a great delight.