Biblical Precedent.
There is plenty of Biblical precedent. The original compiler and editor of the Psalms, be he Asaph or Ezra, inserted a version of the eighteenth psalm differing from the original as found in the twenty-second chapter of Second Samuel. It cannot escape the most casual reader of the New Testament that its quotations from the Old Testament, whether poetical or prose, are by no means accurately reproduced. Moreover, the writers of psalm versions from Marot and Luther down to Watts did not hesitate to condense, alter, or interpolate new ideas in their transcriptions of the sacred originals. They had no sense of presumption; their minds were preoccupied with the practical ends they were trying to serve.
IV. ANALYSIS OF CHANGES MADE
It may be instructive to study more in detail the occasions for changes made in our hymns and learn the justification for many of them. If some of them seem somewhat microscopic and even captious, none the less they make for exactness, for nice discrimination, and for more intelligent appreciation of the literary and spiritual values of our magnificent body of hymns.[2]
The Omission of Verses.
A very important change from the original of many hymns is the omission of some of the less valuable stanzas, or even a condensation of some of them by omitting unattractive lines.
“Oh for a thousand tongues to sing,” the fine hymn that opens all but recent Methodist hymnals, originally began, “Glory to God and praise and love,” and had eighteen stanzas. The hymn as now used consists of stanzas 7 to 12 of the original. Some hymnals omit stanza 10.
In the Trinity hymn sometimes ascribed to Charles Wesley, “Come, Thou Almighty King,” the second of the original five stanzas is always omitted:
“Jesus, our Lord, arise,
Scatter our enemies,