Thine own dear guidance everywhere.
A very different group are the hymn-writers of the Jesuit Order, to whom we owe many hymns which have been ascribed to mediaeval authors, although they have marked characteristics which betray their authorship. Thus the Eia Phoebe, nunc serena has been ascribed to Innocent III., the O esca viatorum to Thomas Aquinas, the O gens beata coelitum to Augustine, the Pone luctum, Magdalena to Adam of St. Victor; while the later Middle Ages have been credited with the Angelice patrone, the Ecquis binas columbinas, the Jesu meae deliciae, and the Plaudite coeli. The London Spectator ascribes a very early origin to the Dormi, fili, dormi. All these are Jesuit hymns, collected by Walraff (1806) out of the Psalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum a Patribus Societatis Jesu. The title of that collection (Psalteriolum) is suggestive of the contents. As the critics of the Society long ago remarked, there is a mark of pettiness on the literature, the art, the architecture, and the theology of the Jesuits. In both prose and poetry they tend to run into diminutives. No hymn of theirs has handled any of the greatest themes of Christian praise in a worthy spirit. The charge made against them by the Dominicans that in their labors to convert the Chinese and other pagans they concealed the cross and passion of our Lord, and presented Him as an infant in His mother’s arms, whether literally true or not, is not out of harmony with their general tone. Christ in the cradle or on the lap of His mother is the fit theme of their praises. In their hands religion loses its severity and God His awfulness. To win the world they stooped to the world’s level, and weakened the moral force of the divine law by cunning explanations, until, through Arnauld and his fellow-Jansenists, “Christianity appeared again austere and grave; and the world saw again with awe the pale face of its crucified Saviour.”
Some of the Jesuit hymns are very good of their kind. The Dormi, fili, dormi anticipates the theme of Mrs. Browning’s “The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus,” and of Dr. George Macdonald’s “Babe Jesus Lay on Mary’s Lap.” It is beautiful in its way, but betrays its Jesuit origin by its diminutives. The Ecquis binas columbinas is a very graceful poem, and the best passion hymn of the school, but is below the subject. The Tandem audite me is a hymn based on the false interpretation of Solomon’s Song, but is very pretty. The Pone luctum, Magdalena is perhaps the greatest of all Jesuit hymns, and has found nine Protestant translators to do it into English. It is rather a fine poem than a fine hymn. The Parendum est, cedendum est is a death-bed hymn whose length and ornateness rob it of a sense of reality. Of the Altitudo, quid hic jaces and the Plaudite Coeli Mr. Duffield has left versions which will enable our readers to judge of their worth for themselves:
ALTITUDO, QUID HIC JACES?
Majesty, why liest thou
In so low a manger?
Thou that kindlest heavenly fires
Here a chilly stranger!
O what wonders thou art doing,
Jesus, unto men;