Unto heaven
For the Saviour to us given.
Although Wallin reverenced the old traditional hymns of the Church in spite of their many defects in form and language, he was unrelenting in his demand that every new hymn adopted by the Church should be tested by the severest classical standards. “A new hymn,” he declared, “aside from the spiritual considerations which should never be compromised in any way, should be so correct, simple and lyrical in form, and so free from inversions and other imperfections in style, that after the lapse of a hundred years a father may be able to say to his son, ‘Read the Psalm-book, my boy, and you will learn your mother tongue!’”
The profound influence which Wallin’s hymns have exerted over the Swedish language and literature for more than a century is an eloquent testimony, not only to his poetic genius, but also to the faithfulness with which he adhered to the high standards he cherished.
The charge has sometimes been made that a number of Wallin’s hymns are tinged by the spirit of rationalism. It is true that in his earlier years the great Swedish hymnist was strongly influenced by the so-called “New Theology,” which had swept over all Europe at that time. His poems and hymns from this period bear unmistakable marks of these rationalizing tendencies. Even some of the hymns in the first part of the “Psalm-book,” dealing with the person and attributes of God, are not entirely free from suspicion.
However, as Wallin became more and more absorbed in his great task, his own spiritual life seems to have been deepened and a new and richer note began to ring forth from his hymns. In 1816 this change was made manifest in an address Wallin delivered before the Swedish Bible Society, in which he declared war on rationalism and the “New Theology,” and took his stand squarely upon the faith and confessions of the Lutheran Church. He said:
“So far had we traveled in what our age termed ‘enlightenment’ and another age shall call ‘darkness,’ that the very Word of God ... was regarded as a sort of contribution to the ancient history which had already served its purpose and was needed no more.”
The atonement of Christ now became the central theme in his hymn-book, the pure evangelical tone of which may be heard in one of his own hymns:
There is a truth so dear to me,
I’ll hold it fast eternally,