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Title: The Hymnody of the Christian Church
   [The Stone Lectures, 1926, Princeton Theological Seminary]
Author: Benson, Louis FitzGerald (1855-1930)
Date of first publication: 1927
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1956
Date first posted: 11 February 2010
Date last updated: 11 February 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #479

This ebook was produced by:
Brenda Lewis, Stephen Hutcheson
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net



﻿
                           by Louis F. Benson




                   THE HYMNODY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH


                             John Knox Press
                           RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

This 1956 edition of _The Hymnody of the Christian Church_ is reprinted
from the 1927 printing by George H. Doran Company, New York, through
arrangement with Harper & Brothers, owners of the copyright.


            Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 56-11827


                 Printed in the United States of America
                                  4536




                                 PREFACE


A good Providence has committed to the hands of every pastor, for such
use as he can make of them, the three arts that lie nearest the human
heart,--speech, poetry and music. The mission of poetry and music no
doubt transcends the limits of congregational singing, but nevertheless
it proves most spiritually effective in a self-expression by the people
themselves in common song.

With these thoughts in mind I welcomed the call to deliver the Stone
Lectures at Princeton as an opportunity to present the whole subject of
our Christian Hymnody to those soon to be concerned in its administration
in a way that might prove helpful in preparing them for so great a
responsibility. In retaining the lecture-form here I have sought not only
to express my appreciation of the original opportunity but also to retain
something of the larger freedom of direct address.

In preparing the lectures for print I have omitted most of the passing
pleasantries (and other things) that emphasized the ecclesiastical
connection of the lecturer and a majority of his hearers. But even in a
book for wider use, if that may be, it is convenient to have our thoughts
directed to some specific object, whether it be a focusing point for
one's rambling reflections or a target for one's reproaches. And so, amid
references to many communions, I have here and there singled out the
Presbyterian to serve such a purpose; particularly in making, for reasons
fully stated, its _Hymnal_ of 1895 the basis for a discussion of the
textual criticism of hymns.

The motive that runs through the book like a recurrent refrain is that
the hymn belongs among the things of the spirit, and that hymnody is
essentially a spiritual function. The hymn is a melody in the individual
heart: hymnody is the harmony of brotherhood.

Lecture I reveals its spiritual foundation. Lecture II shows how
precariously, even in the Church, the hymn, like other things of the
spirit, has maintained a footing. Lecture III shows how the elusive,
spiritual thing we call a hymn relates itself to the forms of speech we
call literature. Lectures IV and V take up the religious functions of the
hymn, its spiritual and literary content, its fit expression. The last
lecture discusses the spiritualization of music, to the end that the hymn
may fulfill its destiny as common song.

Hymnody, then, is a spiritual function, and its welfare proceeds from the
heart. Nevertheless its congregational expression needs guidance and a
thoughtful ordering as much now as at Corinth in the days of St. Paul.
Most of all it needs the inspiration which can only be imparted to
preoccupied hearts by a pastor who cherishes it as among the best of
God's gifts, and understands it because he has learned the lessons of its
chequered history, has measured its resources and traced the different
lines of its ministry; and who is resolute to cultivate the spirit of
song among his people.

It is the special purpose of this book to furnish the materials for that
better understanding of Christian Hymnody as a preparation for getting
the most we can out of it in life and worship.

Beyond expressing a sense of the practical importance of the subject I do
not know that I can offer any inducement to read the book except to say
that I have made it as interesting as I could. I might add that it takes
the place of a Primer of Hymnology long in mind, and that even its
dullest passages press more lightly upon human patience than the primer
would have done.


  Philadelphia,
    _July 27th, 1927._




                                CONTENTS




                               LECTURE ONE
                     THE APOSTOLIC IDEAL OF HYMNODY

                                                                   PAGE
     I The Hymn                                                      17
        I _In Its Relation to Theology_                              17
       II _In Comparative Religion_                                  22
      III _In Its Christian Definition_                              23
    II The Inauguration of Christian Song                            25
   III Christian Song in the Jewish-Christian Church                 29
    IV Christian Song in the Gentile Churches                        33
        I _The Liberty of Christian Praise_                          33
       II _The Inspirational Hymn_                                   35
      III _The Enrichment of the Hymnody_                            38
     V St. Paul's Theory of Hymnody                                  39
    VI The Materials of the Song                                     45
        I _The Apostolic Hymn Book_                                  45
       II _The Hymns Quoted in the Epistles_                         48
      III _St. Paul as a Hymn Writer_                                50
       IV _The Odes of the Apocalypse_                               51


                               LECTURE TWO
               THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO HOLY SCRIPTURE

     I A Question: Around Which the Whole History of Hymnody Turns   57
    II The New Christian Hymns                                       58
   III The Greek Settlement of the Question                          63
    IV The Latin Settlement                                          67
     V The Lutheran Settlement                                       75
    VI The Calvinistic Settlement                                    79
   VII Doctor Watts' Settlement                                      86
  VIII The Modern Disposition of the Question                        91


                              LECTURE THREE
                 THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO LITERATURE

     I Leo X's Scheme of a Classical Hymnody                         99
    II Calvin's Poetical Standard of Psalmody                       100
   III English Psalmody Apart from Literature                       102
    IV Religious Lyrics and the First English Hymn Book             105
     V The Poetic Hymnody of the Restoration                        109
    VI Watts' Divorce of Hymnody from Literature                    110
   VII The Wesleyan Hymns as Poetry                                 115
  VIII The Unpoetic Evangelical Hymnody                             122
    IX Montgomery's Critique of Current Hymnody (1823)              125
     X The Lyrical Movement in Hymnody                              127
    XI The Hymn as Related to Poetry                                132


                              LECTURE FOUR
                        THE CONTENTS OF THE HYMN

     I A Hymnody of Praise                                          141
    II A Hymnody of Edification                                     143
        I _The Doctrinal Hymn_                                      143
       II _The Hymn of the Spiritual Life, and Its Tests_           149
   III A Churchly Hymnody                                           165
        I _The Hymn of the Church Militant_                         166
       II _The Hymn of the Church Triumphant_                       168
      III _The Liturgical Hymn_                                     170


                              LECTURE FIVE
                          THE TEXT OF THE HYMNS

     I The Puritan Zeal for "Purity" of Text                        189
    II The Textual Criticism of Our Hymns                           192
   III The Confusing State of the Text                              195
    IV The Causes of This Confusion                                 198
     V The First Attempts to Verify the Texts                       204
    VI The Textual Canons of 1895                                   207
        I _The General Principle of Conformity_                     208
       II _The Limits of the Principle of Conformity_               211
      III _The Latest Menace to the Integrity of Our Hymns_         220


                               LECTURE SIX
                              HYMN SINGING

     I The Hymn and the Hymn Tune                                   227
    II The Primitive Singing                                        232
   III Plainsong Melodies                                           236
    IV The Lutheran Chorales                                        240
     V The Genevan Melodies                                         243
    VI The English Psalm Tunes                                      246
   VII American Song                                                252
        I _Psalm Tunes in New England_                              252
       II _American Hymn Tunes_                                     254
            _a._ Billings' Fugueing Tunes                           255
            _b._ Lowell Mason's Work                                256
            _c._ The Parlor Music Type                              258
            _d._ The Congregational Tune Book                       260
            _e._ The Tunes of the Oxford Movement                   262
            _f._ The Gospel Hymn                                    265
            _g._ The Later Degeneracy                               268
  VIII The Inheritance and the Outlook                              270




                               LECTURE ONE
                     THE APOSTOLIC IDEAL OF HYMNODY


I begin with a simple expression of satisfaction; not so much that the
reverend Faculty have again recognized Hymnology as a subject worthy of a
hearing, as that they have once more made a place for it in a lectureship
confined by its founder to "topics kindred to theological studies." They
confirm its title to a place in the crowded ranks of theological
disciplines that make for the preparation of the ministry of the gospel.

To this word of appreciation I should like to add a few more in regard to
the study of Hymnology itself and to the marks of that kinship with
theological studies.


There is to-day no complaint more general from those who still care for
the services of God's House than that against the way in which the
interests of the people are disregarded in the administration of church
song. In liturgical Churches the complaint is that the participation of
the congregation is becoming more difficult and often impracticable. In
"non-liturgical" Churches the complaint is that the pastors treat
congregational song as perfunctory and negligible; to be disposed of by
following the lines of least resistance; or else that they use it in a
way that makes it simply a reënforcement or extension of the voice of
the preacher rather than an opportunity for the people to express the
things God puts into their hearts. And who could withhold some sympathy
from these long-suffering complainants?

Naturally their criticisms go beyond the pastor to the theological school
that turned him out. They express a conviction that however he may have
been equipped for the ministry of the Word, he was not properly trained
to administer the Hymnody. My own opinion is that in this matter (and the
present occasion confirms it) our seminaries are feeling their way. There
are at all events some things to be suggested looking toward a suspension
of judgment.

We all know what a problem the curriculum of a theological school has
become, and the multitude of studies clamoring for recognition. Hymnology
is one of the latest of these claimants, and weakened its claim by
starting among ourselves on a wrong turn.

Hymnology was made in Germany, the fatherland of the modern hymn.
English-speaking Protestantism turned its back on Lutheran songs. It
reverted to the inspired Psalm as the only authorized "subject-matter of
praise." And the correlated study was Exegetics. When the singing of
"human composures" had become familiar, "Hymnology" meant simply the body
of hymns collectively. I cannot satisfy myself that the word was used in
its proper sense of the study of them until the nineteenth century was
growing old. Lord Selborne's famous article, "Hymns," in the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_ of 1881 fought shy of it. Dr. Julian's
_Dictionary of Hymnology_ (1892) first made the name familiar and first
covered the subject.

An interest in hymns had awakened before that. But it was disposed to
treat them as "Sacred Poetry," as a minor department of English
literature, which, when not conspicuous for charm, was retrieved by moral
values. It was a wrong start; not so much because of the pious assumption
that the hymn was to be included within the domain of poetry as because
any dealings with it as "mere literature" dissevered it from its motive,
its environment and its function; thus making it a sort of literary
bric-a-brac. That accounts for the nervous irritation, not to say the
spirit of derision, in which our hymns have been ever since regarded by
literary critics. Perhaps it may make the more modest claim of the newer
Hymnology to a kinship with theological studies seem less of a venture
than a counsel of prudence.




I. The Hymn




                    1. _In Its Relation to Theology_


The kinship of these studies becomes more discernable and more suggestive
if we trace it along the tripled lines on which our hymns exercise their
religious functions.

(a) _They are a singularly effective medium of Christian doctrine,_--as a
container of doctrine and as a circulating medium, but, back of all that,
as a means to the spiritual apprehension of truth and its expression
devotionally.

The theologian and the hymn writer traverse day by day the same country,
the Kingdom of our Lord. They walk the same paths; they see the same
objects; but in their methods of observation and their reports of what
they see they differ. So far as Theology is a science the theologian
deals simply with the topography of the country: he explores, he
measures, he expounds. So far as hymn writing is an art the writer deals
not with the topography but with the landscape: he sees, he feels, and he
sings. The difference in method is made inevitable by the variance of
temperament of the two men, the diversity of gifts. But both methods are
as valid as inevitable. Neither man is sufficient in himself either as an
observer or a reporter. It is the topography and the landscape together
that make the country what it is. It is didactics and poetry together
that can approach the reality of the spiritual kingdom.

Poetry is always an illumination, and sometimes an actual discovery, of
truth through imagination and feeling. And for mystical aspects of truth
poetry and music afford the only available expression. We all feel that
with some Scripture Psalms and some great hymns we take in more truth
than we could shape didactically. Maybe it is only light and color, but
it _is_ illumination. He would be a dry-as-dust theologian who shrank
from using Psalm or hymn in explication of his themes. It is more
important to remember that in the mind of the plain everyday Christian,
where feeling conditions reflection so strongly, the hymns he uses
devotionally, and especially those he loves, do more to form his
religious thinking than anything else except the Bible.

For doctrine, then, the hymn book takes its place beside the catechism.
And Hymnology thus supplements Catechetics.


(b) _Hymns are equally effective as helps toward Christian living._

To bring the inspirations of poetry to bear upon the religious life is
the Church's unending task. The most natural solution is to provide a
collection of lyrics of life and duty, and to keep it fresh and appealing
by revisions as circumstance and feeling change. This the Jewish Church
did in her Psalter, and this most of the Christian communions try to do,
whether by modernizing that Psalter or by providing hymns of their own.
That is to say the Church puts in her people's hands two books: the canon
of Scripture as the revelation of the spiritual view of life, and a canon
of hymnody as a manual of the spiritual life.

The hymnal thus ranks as "a means of grace," and Hymnology becomes
"kindred to theological studies." The content of the two canons must
accord. The searchlights of Christian Ethic must play upon the hymnody.
Poetic sentiment must submit to the restraints of a sound Christian
Psychology.


(c) _Hymns are the most effective medium for the people's participation
in public worship._

And when their singing becomes a recognized part of worship Hymnology
becomes a branch of Liturgics.

Liturgics is the study of the philosophy, the history and administration
of public worship. The chairs in many theological schools seem to have
been named in a spirit of excluding Liturgics from Reformed Theology. If
so the protest was quite vain. Theology deals with the knowledge of God:
Liturgics is the application of that knowledge to His worship. "God is a
spirit" is theology. "They that worship Him must worship in spirit and in
truth" is liturgics,--the heart of it. This division of Churches into
"liturgical" and "non-liturgical" is easily misapprehended. There is no
such thing as a non-liturgical Church other than one in which a
prescribed formula of worship is not imposed by authority. I always feel
at Friends' Meeting that the very restraints constitute a form of
worship, and that the unwritten rubrics are distinctly liturgical.

Zwingli, as we all know, tried to persuade the Reformed Church that
preaching and hearing sermons was the only worship. In our own communion
at least all such misapprehensions and even the later Puritan exaltation
of preaching over worship are repudiated in the Church constitution,
which declares:

"As one primary design of public ordinances is to pay social acts of
homage to the most high God, ministers ought to be careful not to make
their sermons so long as to interfere with or exclude the more important
duties of prayer and praise" (_Directory for Worship_, VII, vii).

Church song finds place here among the acts of social homage more
important than sermons rather than as an appendage to them. Hymnology
therefore relates itself to Theology through Liturgics and not
Homiletics.

The distinction is important in two directions. First, in its compelling
insistence upon bringing the church hymnal four square to the church
constitution. It seems obvious that any communion which discards the
homiletical ideal of worship is bound to provide its congregations with a
hymnal that shall be a service-book rather than a cyclopedia of religious
verse coördinated by an "Index of Scripture texts."

The distinction bears also upon theological education. It suggests that
the training in Hymnology already referred to should be along the lines
of a preparation for the liturgical use of church hymnody, apart from
sermon illustration. It is no doubt a line that to many an eager heart,
thrilled by the call to preach the gospel, will seem to be a theological
discipline in the most onerous sense.




                      2. _In Comparative Religion_


It is quite time to put the question--What is a hymn? If you looked it up
in _Webster_, the _Century_, the _Standard_, and in the disappointingly
meager offering of the great _Oxford Dictionary_, you would, I think,
find it puzzling to strike a common denominator. Most of us by now are
accustomed to regard as hymns the songs to Pagan divinities used in
ritual. But hymnody has had recently a new development by the band of
scholars coöperating in _The Dictionary of Religion and Ethics_ under
Dr. Hastings' undaunted lead. The opening article of its seventh volume
gathers into 116 columns, under the compendious title of "Hymns," the
best account in English of what we used to call "The sacred poetry of
early religions,"[1]--Babylonian, Vedic, Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, etc.,
as well as Jewish and Christian. But, says one of the writers, we shall
have to extend our "use of the word 'hymn' to include some more or less
philosophical poems" and also the versified spells or charms against
hostile powers used on the lower or magical side of religion.

Whether this extension brings gain or confusion will be decided
differently. Most likely the label so affixed in an influential quarter
will stick. And there are enough materials gathered there to indicate a
new study--Comparative Hymnology. We shall have to revise our
nomenclature accordingly and accept the designation of "Christian
Hymnology" for what concerns us here and now. _Christian Hymnology_ was
indeed the precise title given in 1870 by Dean Murray of Princeton to his
little book on hymns. But by "Christian" he meant only to mark them off
from Jewish Psalms, and by "Hymnology" he no doubt meant Hymnody.




                    3. _In Its Christian Definition_


What is the Christian hymn, of which we speak so familiarly; and manage
to get ourselves understood, after a fashion?

In the Septuagint "humnos" applies to Psalms voicing Israel's praise. But
in the New Testament St. Paul twice refers to "hymns" in a way to
distinguish them from Psalms--"Psalms _and_ hymns." St. Augustine,[2] who
was captivated by the new metrical strains of Ambrose, limits the word to
"songs with praise to God." "Without praise," he claims, "they are not
hymns," and "if they praise aught beside God," they are not.

Augustine's became the recognized church definition. But is it not a bit
dogmatic? Are all the Psalms pure praise? And from Homer and Hesiod down
"humnos" had applied to songs or odes addressed to other gods and to
heroes. Our English poets by common consent have followed the classical
and not the church tradition; from Spenser's earlier "Hymne in honour of
Love" to Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" and Swinburne's "Hymn to
Proserpina." Even our irreproachable Longfellow has his "Hymn to the
Night."

Even modern Christian practice itself shows no agreement as to what makes
a hymn.

When we speak of the hymns of the Greek Church, most of us have in mind
the metrical versions Neale and Brownlie have prepared for congregational
use. But the originals are in prose, not verse. They are set into the
texts of the various offices, often so interlaced with Psalm or gospel or
homily that only an expert can unravel the tangle. And they are not sung
by the congregation or put into their hands, but reserved for the
officiants alone.

In the Roman Catholic Church, "Hymns" are the versified devotions
inserted in the prose Psalms of the Daily Office, as distinguished from
the "Sequences" of the Mass. They are not vernacular but Latin. They are
not sung by the people, and outside of monasteries it is enough that the
priests read them in silence. Nowadays that communion has also its own
popular hymns for certain uses and occasions.

In the Anglican Church the makers of the Prayer Book called the prose "Te
Deum" and "Benedictus" hymns, but not so the L. M. and C. M. versions of
"Veni Creator." The editors of successive editions seem on the whole to
have thought of a hymn as a prose canticle taken from the New Testament
in contrast with an Old Testament Psalm.

In early American Presbyterianism "hymn" was a term of adventure or
reproach. It covered verses of human manufacture offered to take the
place of inspired Psalms. To our separated Presbyterian brethren that
meaning and that reproach still linger in the word.


In fact all these varied applications still linger in the word. And if we
are to discuss hymns rationally we must remember them all. The only
feature common throughout seems to be the intent of use in worship. A
Christian hymn therefore is a form of words appropriate to be sung or
chanted in public devotions. Almost every Protestant hymn book contains
the prose "Te Deum," ill-adapted as it is to congregational singing, and
some prose Psalms and canticles set to chants. At the same time an
immense preponderance of metrical compositions, divided into stanzas that
a congregation can sing by repeating the tune to each one, shows that
such in the main is the present-day Protestant conception of the word
"hymn."

And that is perhaps all we can do in the way of defining the word in our
Christian usage.




II. The Inauguration of Christian Song


In the studies of Christian Hymnody we are now to make, what I have
really at heart are its present-day interests rather than those of
antiquarianism. None the less we shall have to proceed by the historical
method,--a length-wise approach by the way things happened rather than a
cross-country sketch of the way things are. Such is the common lot of all
students of human institutions. For man is an old resident, and all that
he is and has is mediated through the past.

In the study of a church ordinance the historical method is imperative.
We must first seek its roots in New Testament times and trace its
continuity through church history before we can frame a working theory
for its proper administration.

Here and now, for example. Is there a Christian ordinance which we may
call Holy Song, with Christ's authority behind it? And if so, on what
terms did the Apostolic Church receive it and practice it? What features
were present from the beginning, and must therefore be regarded as
essential to its being? And, among the features of its later church
practice, which are to be regarded as developments contributing to its
well-being and which as mere accretions and perhaps hindrances? When we
have answered these questions, and only so, it seems to me, we have our
working theory of church song.


The contribution which even a superficial study of Comparative Hymnology
makes to the study of origins is in relieving us of any necessity to
discuss a theoretical relation of music and religion. It shows us that
relation as already a condition and not a theory in early religions. It
reveals the actual employ of hymns in ritual and life from a time earlier
than all written records. It shows especially a relatively high
development of worship-music and poetry in one of those national
religions, the Hebrew, and how in the divine providence that Jewish
Psalmody became the inheritance of the Christian Church, passing into it
directly and unquestioned.


The actual point of transition is found at the institution of the Lord's
Supper. The simple record in its Englished form, "And when they had sung
an hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives," has always touched the
Christian heart. For our present occasion its significance lies in
revealing Christ as Himself the inaugurator of our church song and in His
connecting it with the most characteristic feature of Christian
worship--the Holy Communion.

This post-Communion hymn was ritual song, and must have been so sensed by
the disciples. Thus it became at once not only the precedent but the
spring of our church song, which in all the main streams that have
started from it continues to be ritual song. But (the occasion being what
it was) the precedent is just as valid, if one were needed, for the
social simplicities of hymnody, the worship-song of a household, the
friendly song of a brotherhood.

If we ask the manner of singing at the Supper, it was common song in the
sense that all joined in, but antiphonal, or more likely responsive, in
actual delivery. Would the disciples wait for the Master to begin? Or was
there some one with special aptness to start the song?

If we put the question of our Western poet, "What song sang the twelve
with the Saviour?"--the rapt and isolated song of spiritual possession
was so soon to interrupt the common song, that I suppose the thought has
come to most of us that in the stress of the occasion the parting song
might have been an inspirational hymn of the Master, with some familiar
response by the disciples. Such a thought came certainly to the author of
the _Acta Johannis_, who pictures the little group standing hand in hand,
and even gives the words of the hymn.[3] He may have crystallized some
rumor or tradition, or may have drawn at first hand upon a seemingly
ample reserve of mendacity.

The record does not identify the hymn and the verb used does not point in
any particular direction. It is a part of the case of our brethren who
would for all time confine church praise to Old Testament Psalms that our
Lord gave out one of them, establishing a precedent and implying a
prescription. If so the Evangelists seem to have been very much at fault
not to have told us.

And yet the company must have sung something familiar, and what so
familiar as the Psalms? And as the Master began by adhering to the
Passover ritual, what so natural as to conclude with the second part of
the Hallel, appointed as a thanksgiving for the fourth cup? Most scholars
agree that He did so.[4] Professor Bickell, who thinks the Hallel was
concluded before the Communion, argues for the fresh selection of some
appropriate Psalm, the 23rd preferably:[5] a suggestion that at all
events makes a sentimental appeal.


The Presbyterian Communion service, when properly set and administered,
is unique in being a dramatic portrayal of the original occasion. Such
was its intent, and so much of the record is quoted as to make it
surprising that the post-Communion hymn was not dealt with more
suggestively. Knox's _Book of Common Order_ provided that "the action
being ended, the people sing the 103rd Psalm, or some other of
thanksgiving"; but the Westminster _Directory for Worship_ omitted this
rubric altogether. Our American Directory, however, provides, a bit
casually: "Now let a psalm or hymn be sung, and the congregation
dismissed."




III. Christian Song in the Jewish-Christian Church


Both precedents, the feast and the Psalm, were followed by the brethren
at Jerusalem; who "breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat
with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God" (Acts ii, 46, 47).
They had been accustomed to use the Psalms devotionally all their lives,
and under the new circumstances would continue to use them with quickened
feelings. St. Peter's sermon shows how the Master had trained them to
read new meanings into the hallowed words.

These first Christians are described as in that state of spiritual
elation out of which song springs as naturally as flowers blossom. And
plainly they felt perfectly free to add new songs to the old, which the
more gifted among them did from the beginning.

St. Luke gathers up three of these Jewish-Christian Psalms into his
gospel of the Infancy, the "Magnificat," the "Benedictus," and the "Nunc
Dimittis." So Jewish that, as Dr. Warfield said,[6] to have met the
Magnificat in the midst of the Psalter would have occasioned no
suspicion: so Christian that they still form a part of the daily office
of the Church. In view of which fact Dean Farrar has ventured to confer
upon the anthologist the fanciful title of "the first hymnologist."[7]

Where did St. Luke get these lyrics? The suggestion that he found them in
the Church's hymn book has nothing against it except a lack of evidence
of any such employment before the fifth century. On the other hand the
suggestion that Jewish Christians did not feel as free to sing as to make
such new songs is against the probabilities of the situation. It is an
intrusion of presumptions to support a theory that the Church inherited
the Psalter as a sealed hymn book under a perpetual Act of Uniformity.

To most students that early atmosphere seems to embody a spirituality of
the creative sort, of expansion rather than compulsory restriction. It
appears to have been a divine providence rather than a divine
prescription that laid the Psalter ready to the Church's hand, and as
though its contents rather than the urgency of its rubrics recommended
its use to the first Christians.

The only example of a Jewish-Christian Psalm in actual employ is in Acts
iv, where the company "lift up their voice to God with one accord" in
words beginning "O Lord, Thou art God, which hast made heaven and earth,
and the sea." It shows a freedom in dealing with ancient formularies of
prayer and praise.

The group in St. Luke more fully illustrates the earliest stage of the
new Psalm making. Its structure closely following the Psalter model; its
substance reminiscent of Psalm and prophecy; its criterion the clear note
of Messianic fulfillment. It was a gospel appendix to the Davidic
Psalter.


The thing most characteristic of this primitive Christian song, so
memorable as to color the record, is the gladness of the singers' hearts,
the predominance of praise. It was natural that both of our poets who
celebrated the hymn at the Last Supper, emphasized its pathos. It was "a
mournful song," John Pierpont says;

    "And sad, I should say, as the winds are,
      That blow by the white gravestones."

adds Joaquin Miller. If this were so it is important to remember that the
sadness belonged to the human as distinguished from the spiritual side of
Christian song as there inaugurated. Nor was it in the words sung. It
came from the foreshadow of the Master's impending absence on human
hearts, their failure of faith to foresee His abiding presence. And when
they came more fully under the influence of His Spirit their song lost
forever its human plaintiveness and bubbled over with joy and gladness,
with "praising God" first of all and with the happiness of fellowship in
and with Christ.

I infer, then, that this note of gladness is the special offering of
Jewish-Christian song toward our theory of hymnody, whether as an
essential thing necessary to its being or as a characteristic thing
necessary to its well-being. I infer that our own hymns, in so far as
they are fully spiritual, are cheerful and not sad, "joyful in the Lord";
that the plaintive and sobbing verse, the complaints and anxieties in
which our hymnals are so rich, and most of all the obsession of so many
of our songs with the foreshadowing of death, are not in reality nearly
so spiritual as we have supposed them to be. They are voices of
questionings and doubts that come from the outward show of things and the
lack of health within combining to obscure from the singers' eyes the
reality and joy of the perpetual Presence.




IV. Christian Song in the Gentile Churches




                  1. _The Liberty of Christian Praise_


So far as we can picture the development of Christian song in the
churches St. Paul founded, it was at first a rivulet flowing in the old
channels of Jewish psalmody; then swelling into a flood that for a while
leaped the banks and hid the original stream, through the outpouring of
heavenly gifts of inspirational song; which, subsiding, left an enriched
but perhaps unquiet stream to flow in the steady course of a recognized
church ordinance.


The Jews scattered through the Empire served as a nucleus for mission
churches. The general familiarity with "common Greek," and the
circulation of the Septuagint with its Psalter, and of any
Jewish-Christian Psalms that were available, furnished an equipment for
common praise of the familiar sort.

So much is obvious. But it omits the Gentile converts. However loyally
they received the Psalter from the hands of their Jewish brethren, can we
doubt that their incoming inevitably led to what the Scots used to call
"Some enlargement of the Psalmody." Allow for the mystical law of human
nature that impels exalted feeling to rhythmical expression, for the
fervor of the Oriental temperament, the joy of the uplift from Pagan
darkness into Christian experience. Remember that the new enthusiasm
centered in Christ's person, involving an advance, from the prophetic
Messiah of the Psalter to the living Christ of experience, in the song as
well as in the heart.

The situation in these primitive little communities doubtless finds an
analogy in the actual planting of Christianity in Oriental mission fields
of to-day. When the question of restricting sacred song to the Psalms was
being fought out in the Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in the
early eighteen seventies, none opposed it more warmly than the
missionaries. One of them, Dr. Wilson, illuminated the situation in
India:

"Any violence done to the liberty of Christian praise would, if absolute,
seriously affect my conscience, having to deal with the incipiency of the
Christian Church among the two hundred millions of the inhabitants of
India. I could not be a party to offending in this matter the little
ones--the converts, who themselves compose and sing their hymns to
Christ, both publicly and privately."[8]

Some such native strains may very well have broken out in the free and
informal assembly in Gentile churches; just as in the equally free and
exalted atmosphere of our own early Western revivals, ejaculations and
snatches of song and rhymed refrains were drawn out in the camp-meetings;
some of the more effective passing into the revival song books, where
they may still be read. In the Gentile churches the emotional and artless
songs would be more ephemeral, overshadowed by the glamor of the
inspirational songs so soon to flood the assemblies.




                       2. _The Inspirational Hymn_


We have been reading between the lines. It so happened that the
development of psalmody St. Paul pictured first was not along normal
channels, but along that of spiritual possession and spiritual gifts,
which started at Pentecost. These, as renewed in some Gentile churches,
produced the exceptional inspirational singing just referred to.

At the date of his description of the agitated assembly at Corinth (I
Cor. xiv) the consciousness of possessing spiritual gifts had spread
widely, and the impulse to express them was compelling.

"What happens, brethren? When ye come together every one of you hath a
psalm, hath a teaching, hath a revelation, hath a tongue, hath an
interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying."

The Apostle does not deny the reality of the gifts. He does not question
the impulse. He is a chairman amid a confusion of voices, calling the
meeting to order. How like he is to Jonathan Edwards trying to regulate
the outbreaks of the Great Awakening! Finding "something very beautiful"
"when many under great religious Affections, are earnestly speaking
together in various Parts of a Company," "provided they don't speak so
many as to drown each other's Voices, that none can hear what any
say."[9]

"Every one of you hath a psalm" (or something other), the Apostle says in
his dismay at the superfluity. The Spirit sowed the seed, and, as the
poet says,

    "Most can raise the flowers now,
      For all have got the seed."

One can see some rapt figure rising to utter a song that stirs every
heart, and then watch the moved hearers hurrying home to try their own
hands at writing psalms for the next meeting; until the assemblies come
to resemble those eighteenth century hymn-competitions in the Welsh
revival.

This charismatic psalmody was sometimes a speaking with tongues and could
never have been congregational song. We get an illustration of its
performance in the extraordinary movement to revive the "gifts" in Edward
Irving's Regent Square congregation in the early eighteen thirties. The
gifted were under some strong compulsion and sincerely believed it to be
that of God's Spirit. In any case the human reaction would be much the
same.

In exercising the gift their voices attained an unnatural intensity and
sweetness, their utterance an extreme rapidity in words often
unintelligible, and the unmusical developed a gift of melody. The whole
personality took on a complete abstraction from time and place. Even an
observer might have felt himself (some did) back in the Corinth of St.
Paul.[10]

I suppose the inspirational song was called a "psalm" because it
suggested an Old Testament Psalm as a model or a source or may be as
emphasizing a community of inspiration. But the logic of the situation as
well as the context itself requires us to hold that the psalm brought to
the Corinthian assembly was not a canonical one, but a fresh composition,
the product in each case of the individual gift of the disciple who made
it. No inspiration of any sort, not even the fine frenzy of a poet, least
of all a miraculous gift, is required to recite a Scripture Psalm at a
religious meeting. The contention that the new gift of psalmody to the
Gentile churches brought no more than that seems, to me at least, like a
failure to interpret a historical occasion.


In the Corinthian assemblies the gift of psalmody was either the best of
the charismatic endowments, or else the most conspicuous, for St. Paul
names it first.

This precedence among God's gifts in times of spiritual revival it has
retained ever since:--in the Lutheran Reformation at Wittenberg and
beyond, in the Calvinistic Reformation in Switzerland and France, in the
Methodist and Evangelical revival in England and Wales, and in the Great
Awakening that swept the American colonies off their feet. At the
beginning of the Awakening it was the outbreak of singing, especially of
processions of young people singing along roads and streets, that drew
out the first reproaches from that eminent moderate, Charles
Chauncey.[11] Jonathan Edwards, so proud of the earlier attainments of
his Northampton flock in psalmody as to print in a book[12] the fact that
the Men carry "regularly and well, _three Parts of Musick_, and the Women
a Part by themselves," mentions that at the inception of the revival
there in 1735, "Our publick _Praises_ were then greatly enliven'd; God
was then served in our _Psalmody_, in some measure, in the Beauty of
Holiness."




                   3. _The Enrichment of the Hymnody_


It is questionable if any spiritual revival ever left the songs of a
church just where it found them.

The Hussite movement left behind it the vernacular hymn and the people's
hymn book; the Lutheran left behind it the German hymnody; the
Calvinistic left behind it the metrical Psalm; the Wesleyan left behind
it the evangelistic hymn, and shared with the Evangelical side of the
revival in creating the hymn of Christian experience; the Great Awakening
overcame the prejudice against human composures and changed the churches
that it affected from being Psalm singers into hymn-singing churches; the
Moody and Sankey campaigns left behind them the "gospel hymn."

What did the early outpouring of heavenly "gifts" leave behind it?

We cannot indicate any actual deposit as we can in the case of later
revivals. But it would be hard to believe that it did not leave behind
some enrichment of the body of the hymnody itself. The high esteem felt
for the gifts make it inconceivable that the favored psalms, those that
touched the heart, were allowed to lapse into neglect. They would be
treasured in the memory of some, and might pass into the common
possession of the Church. I shall deal later with a suggestion that the
spiritual odes St. Paul recommended for singing, a few years afterward,
may refer to the "Spirit-given" psalms surviving from the revival.




V. St. Paul's Theory of Hymnody


The "gifts" were a passing phenomenon. The excitement passed, as it must
if life is to go on. One and another gift failed, until none was
exhibited. Even Corinth was in the same position as those other places in
which the church gatherings had been maintained steadily but without any
consciousness of spiritual endowments.

Psalmody had been a gift. It was now to be established as a permanent
ordinance in the assemblies of the brethren.

St. Paul's casual references suggest that the usual assemblies were of
two sorts:

(1) His "when ye come together ... let all things be done unto edifying"
(the passage we have been studying) implies an open meeting, free and
informal, for the edification of Christians and the instruction of any
brought in from outside. Any one is at liberty to offer his contribution:
even the uninstructed could respond with his "Amen." (2) His "when ye
come together to eat," in I Cor. xi, 33, refers to an assembly for the
common meal followed by the Communion, which must have been restricted to
the brethren.


St. Paul's dealings with the inspirational song had been specific enough.
Did he have views equally definite about the Christian song which is not
a day's wonder but our daily food? Did he have a theory of church song?

These questions are answered in two passages in which, say about A. D.
60, he concerns himself with the subject; Ephesians v, 18-20, and
Colossians iii, 16, 17. They both deal less by way of description of what
was as in anxiety for what might be. And they are thus the Apostolic
ideal, and hence our charter, of Christian song.


Take first the passage in Ephesians.

Were it not for the silence of expositors I should have thought it refers
obviously to the hymnody of the Love-Feast and Communion:

"_So do not show yourselves senseless_ (unsensing the difference between
a pagan and a Christian feast, not discerning the Lord's body), _but
understand what is according to Christ's appointment. And do not get
drunk with the wine_ (as at Corinth). _That is excess. But be filled with
the Spirit, speaking responsively in psalms and hymns and spiritual odes,
singing vocally with music in your hearts to the Lord: giving thanks
throughout in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ_ (as He did at the
Supper) _to God the Father._"

The "submitting yourselves one to another," that follows, is perhaps a
rubric in the interests of decency and order at the feast as a symbol of
the deeper restraints immediately enjoined.


So much for St. Paul's conception of festal and Communion song,--its
source in the Spirit, its enthusiasm also spiritual as against bodily
excitement, its note of thanksgiving "always" as its criterion.

This glad note of thanksgiving rings true to Christ's institution of the
Supper, from the blessing of the bread and the thanks before the cup to
the Great Thanksgiving at the end. It passed into the Communion as
observed in _The Teaching of the Apostles_ and into the early Greek
liturgies, but somehow it dropped out of the Roman Mass. It resounded in
Calvin's _The Manner of the Lord's Supper_, which fairly thrills with
gratitude. The Communion Office of _The Book of Common Prayer_ gives a
post-Communion prayer of thanks and shifts the "Gloria in excelsis" from
its position in earlier liturgies to form a Great Thanksgiving at the
close.

In Knox's Liturgy the intrusion of a long homily and the severe fencing
of the Table perhaps quench the spirit of thanksgiving in tender hearts,
but the service closes with the 103rd or some other Psalm of
thanksgiving. In the Westminster and American Directories for Worship the
order for the Communion is too much given up to rigorous self-examination
and warning that come too late and mar the occasion. Surely we ought to
have examined ourselves before coming there. But at the end the Minister
is "to give solemn thanks to God, for His rich mercy and invaluable
goodness;" a tardy but a very lovely phrase.

Perhaps, if Presbyterians had adopted the designation of "The Eucharist,"
favored by the late Dr. Archibald Hodge, the festival character of the
sacrament and the eucharistic quality of its hymnody would have been made
more prominent. For it is a matter of observation that in Churches long
foregoing the observance of the Christian Year, there develops a tendency
to make the Communion service a surreptitious observance of Good Friday.


We turn to the passage in Colossians:

"_Let the word of Christ dwell in your hearts, enriching you in all
wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and
spiritual odes, singing with grace in your hearts unto_ _God. And
whatever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the Name of the Lord Jesus,
offering thanksgivings to God the Father through Him._"


Here again the eucharistic feature of Christian song is carefully
conserved not only as its essential but as the actual spiritual
atmosphere which envelops it. But the Apostle feels no inconsistency in
urging song as a means of mutual edification. He is of course not
forecasting a service of praise for the stately basilicas of
Constantine's time. He is merely exhorting a little company of people
gathered in a humble home for mutual edification. And yet the sort of
singing here indicated becomes none the less an authorized form of church
song; and every theory of hymnody must wrestle with it or give it
lodgment.

Some of us recall an older type of divine in our pulpits who announced
each hymn with the formula, "Let us now sing to the praise and glory of
Almighty God the --th hymn," and then would perhaps go on to read
"Hasten, sinner, to be wise." The Apostle is more candid: "Let us
admonish one another with the hymn,

    "'Waken, thou that sleepest,
      Arouse thee from the dead:'"

that is to say he gives full approval to the Hymn of Edification as a
form of Christian song.

Its characteristics are clearly indicated. It is a gospel song. A melody
first of all in hearts in which the word of Christ dwells richly, and
then a lyrical expression of that inward experience, fitted to be a
messenger of grace from heart to heart. Its two special functions singled
out, teaching and admonition, are the two happening to be
appropriate,--its teaching power in view of the Colossian heresy, its
admonitory power in view of the ethical situation.


But the feature of Christian song that stands out most vividly in this
passage is its essential individualism. We talk of social singing and
community singing in terms of our collective impression. St. Paul seems
to see each singer apart, "teaching and admonishing one another." This is
because Christian song is to him a purely spiritual function, the natural
expression of a heart filled with the Spirit. In his concern that song
should flourish among the Colossians he did not exhort them to form music
classes but to deepen the spiritual life. And if our Christian song is
spiritual, it also must be fundamentally individualistic.

To this conception of it we shall no doubt have to submit our own
theories of church song. It is not an ordinance that resides in the
sanctuary waiting till a congregation gather to exercise it. It is a
spiritual gift which each Christian brings to the sanctuary and
contributes to a common song of spiritual fellowship.




VI. The Materials of the Song




                      1. _The Apostolic Hymn Book_


We have postponed till now any consideration of the poetical materials
the Apostle recommended, "Psalms and hymns and spiritual odes": a phrase
he liked so well that, having used it in one letter, he repeated it in
the other with the precision of a formula.

"We cannot for a moment," Dr. McPherson warns us, "suppose that there is
any suggestion of a collection of pieces for use in the public gatherings
of Christians."[13]

But what could such a collocation of words mean to humble Christians who
were not philologists unless they had at hand something corresponding to
it, something by way of a repertory of psalms, hymns and odes? Moreover
the Epistle to Colossæ was written to undermine the influence of certain
teachers there, once regarded as Gnostics, but whom the latest
scholarship supposes to be Judaizers. The Apostle proposes supplementary
songs because of their teaching and admonitory power to meet the
situation. But what songs? Songs are quite as effective to incite
immorality as high living; and good carriers of heresy as well as
orthodoxy. Had this urgent protagonist of singing really neglected to
provide these ignorant people with hymns of the right sort?

What would a repertory of such contain? A variety, evidently--psalms,
hymns and spiritual odes. Psalms from the Septuagint, one would say,
although on the only other occasion on which St. Paul mentioned "a
psalm," it was one of the new compositions brought into the assembly at
Corinth. Some of these must have survived. Then there were
Jewish-Christian psalms, if only the three preserved yet by St. Luke. As
for hymns,--in so far as St. Paul thought in Greek, he would have in mind
songs of direct praise to a God or hero, and would refer here to such
"hymns offered to Christ as unto a God" as Pliny's witness heard in
Bithynia somewhat later. What the Apostle meant by Spiritual odes we know
well enough. And it matters little whether we translate his phrase as
Spirit-given songs, or songs composed by Spiritual men, or songs of the
Spiritual life, so long as we capitalize the "S."

There was thus a situation that clearly called for a collection of
authorized songs, and already a wide range and a considerable variety in
the available materials.


It has not been so long since the suggestion of an apostolic hymn book
seemed to Dr. McPherson an idle hypothesis, and to others a fabrication
to support some theory of liturgical progress in the first century. But
we know now that the production and circulation of documents was more
facile than we had supposed.

An unforeseen turn to the question was given in 1909 when Dr. Rendel
Harris announced the discovery of "An early Christian hymn book." It is a
collection of "private psalms," originally Greek, contained in a
fifteenth or sixteenth century Syriac MS., bound in with the
pre-Christian _Psalms of Solomon_ and entitled _The Odes of Solomon_. In
this connection our prepossessions count for no more than in the case of
the _Didache_, whose discovery proved vexing to many liturgical
theorists. And most of us are in the hands of the few specialists
accustomed to handle similar documents and who have proved their right to
draw conclusions from them.

Mrs. Gibson, who has proved hers so abundantly, ventures a hypothesis
that makes the _Odes_ earlier than _Ephesians_, and might imply their
actual identity with the "odes" of that epistle.[14] Dr. Harris himself
had dated them as of the last quarter of the first century; and, after
all criticisms are in, maintains that they fall scarcely, if at all,
outside the limits of New Testament composition.[15] Harnack dates them
at the end of the first century.

That the _Odes_ are Christian, originally or as worked over from a Jewish
text, seems obvious, with so many allusions to articles of the faith and
the clear note of joy in Christ's salvation. But it seems a detached
Christianity, proceeding at a high elevation by the mystic way, yet not
without some relation to the type of thought St. John made apostolic.

The unfailing "Hallelujah!" in every ode connotes a song book. The whole
situation suggests the probability, or, if preferred, the possibility,
that we are at last in actual possession of a hymn book of apostolic
times. It seems like a materialization in our hands of the stuff that
dreams were made on.

As to what phase of Christianity the _Odes_ represent, by what party
within the Church or at its borders the hymns were used, there is not now
and perhaps never will be full agreement. To the mystically inclined they
will seem Catholic, and to the sacramentally inclined as sadly lacking in
the rudiments. What St. Paul would think of them we can only imagine. We
have no warrant certainly to assume that these mystical hymns represent
the normal content of an apostolic hymn book, or that they fulfill the
type of psalm and ode with whose power to teach the truth and confirm the
right St. Paul was so deeply impressed.




                  2. _The Hymns Quoted in the Epistles_


In that respect we can find firmer ground in his own letters.

Narrowing our survey at first to poetical quotations whose source is
unnamed, three especially sound as if they might have come from the
apostolic hymn book.

(a) In Ephesians v, 14, there is a quotation whose very _locus_ is
suggestive, for it immediately precedes the injunction to sing hymns and
odes.

"Wherefore one says:

        "'Thou that sleepest, waken!
        Rouse thee out of death,
          That Christ may be thy Light!'"

The context, the words and the best opinion, at least as far back as
Origen, favor regarding this as a quotation of a current hymn; part of a
baptismal hymn, it may be.

(b) In I Timothy iii, 16:

    [Who was] "Manifest in flesh,
              Justified in spirit,
                Visible to angels;
              Preached among the nations,
              Believed on in the world,
                Taken up to glory."

A quotation whose context would supply the grammatical subject.
Manifestly poetry, with its parallelism of six balanced clauses, of which
each triplet forms a climax; and if a quotation of Christian verse, what
indeed, if not a hymn?

(c) In II Timothy ii, 11-13: "Faithful is the saying,

    "'If we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him;
    If we endure with Him, we shall also reign with Him;
        If we deny Him, He too will deny us;
        If we are faithless, He abideth faithful;
            Since He cannot deny Himself.'"

Here we have the same parallelism, an arrangement in couplet and refrain,
and an introduction suggesting a familiar quotation.




                     3. _St. Paul as a Hymn Writer_


But I think we may go further. We have not made enough of St. Paul's
declaration, "I will sing praise with the Spirit and with the
understanding also" (I Cor. xiv, 15), as expressing what it must mean in
its immediate context, his consciousness of possessing a gift for hymn
writing and his intention to exercise it.

And I venture to give my personal reaction to the Pauline letters,
accompanied by the confession that it is not evidence.

They leave an impression of one whose high-strung temperament and exalted
mood dwelt habitually in that atmosphere of light and color with which a
spiritual imagination clothes experience. And of one also whose turn for
rhetorical expression, half-unconsciously even, transmuted his thoughts
and feelings into rhythmical phrases and nicely balanced formularies;
staying with him, as such things will, the familiar possession of his
mind, pulses of melody in his heart. We see just the same thing in
Horatius Bonar, except that Bonar's obsession with the Church as the
widowed bride of an absent Christ makes his hymns pathetic while the
apostle's joy in the Church as the body of an indwelling Christ makes his
eucharistic.

And I think that is why St. Paul's letters break forth so frequently yet
so unexpectedly, so liturgically and yet so spontaneously, into
rhythmical ascriptions and doxologies. They contain also more extended
passages whose exalted rhetoric has a songlike effect that may well be an
echo of his own hymns. Who will say that the opening of _Ephesians_
itself, "Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," with
its careful craftsmanship and its thrice-sounded refrain, "Unto the
praise of His glory," is not an actual transcript of one of his own
hymns?

The so-called Hymn of Love that fills I Corinthians xiii is no hymn in
the congregational sense. It is the more striking for being inserted in
the middle of the discussion of the spiritual gifts. Dean Stanley
pictures the amanuensis pausing to look up at the apostle's face for an
explanation of his sudden change of style as he begins to dictate his
vision of perfection. The lyric personalities with which the passage
opens and closes make it quite as easy to picture the Apostle as having
risen in some assembly with a seer's vision and utterance to speak the
words, here made a part of the record, as an inspirational psalm, in the
Spirit and with the understanding also of heavenly love. In any case it
is evidence enough of St. Paul's gift of psalmody.




                     4. _The Odes of the Apocalypse_


The Apocalypse also contains a considerable number of short odes, some of
which are plainly a part of the definite prophecies they are connected
with.

But there is in the chapters introductory to the vision (iv-x) a group of
songs of a more general character of praise to God and the Lamb.
Weizsächer was, I believe, the first to suggest that these earlier odes
may be no more than transcripts of traditional hymns originally employed
in the current worship of the Church on earth, and has shown impressively
how the brief songs of chapters iv and v fit into one another like
strophes of a complete ode.[16] This view has found so great favor that
it has now reached the encyclopedic stage,--by which I mean that we may
open our cyclopedias at the word "Hymn," expecting to find these odes
recorded among the remains of apostolic hymnody.

Weizsächer's suggestion grew out of his conviction that the delineation
of divine service in heaven followed the actual proceedings in the Church
on earth: by which he means that the actual order of worship in the
assemblies was the framework on which the author of the Apocalypse hung
the rich tapestries depicting the worship of heaven.

It may be so. But as soon as you attempt to work out the details of the
analogy between the heavenly worship and the simple devotions of the
assemblies, as Mr. Lowrie has done,[17] you pass with him into an
atmosphere more liturgically developed than the one portrayed by the
actual records of the first century.

And in the case of the hymns themselves. Our earthly songs do not seem to
fit naturally into the pattern of the tapestry. Would it not have been as
inept then as now to represent the elders and the cherubim gathered at
the throne as singing the strains of our familiar lyrics? It is of course
possible that the Church cherished a group of charismatic songs so high
and so sacrosanct that they would seem at home in heaven. But to my
feeling at least there is some quality or atmosphere about these odes of
the Apocalypse that lifts them above the humanities and suggests a
birthright in the heavenlies. They do not sound like songs of worship
transmitted from an earthly atmosphere so much as like songs of those who
look back or down upon the nations and the Church, and are now enclosed
within the vision of God.

Some such instinctive feeling as that just suggested may account for the
marked hesitancy of the Church through all the centuries to incorporate
these odes of the Apocalypse in her liturgies or to include them among
her congregational songs. She has probably felt that they are songs of
triumph and not visions out of struggle, the triumph of attainment rather
than of faith.

And so, for ourselves also, with no other evidence than the contents of
the apocalyptic odes themselves, it may be prudent to regard them as
idealizations of the Church's praise, or prophetic suggestions of what it
shall be, rather than as transcripts from the apostolic hymn book.




                               LECTURE TWO
               THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO HOLY SCRIPTURE




I. A Question: Around Which the Whole History of Hymnody Turns


In the first lecture I tried to show from the evidence that St. Paul
authorized a freely composed Christian hymnody and encouraged the
churches under his influence to use it as an enlargement of the ordinance
of Psalmody.

To suppose that his proposals were welcomed by the Jewish Christian
church at Jerusalem; to claim that St. James, in prescribing psalmody for
the merry-hearted, included hymns and odes; to deny that St. Paul's views
were fought tooth and nail by the Judaizers in provincial churches; to
claim that before the end of the apostolic epoch the whole Church was
changed from a Psalm-singing to a hymn-singing church: not any one of
these assumptions was a part of our case.

On the contrary the present lecture assumes that St. Paul precipitated an
issue: Psalms vs. Hymns, and that it divided the opinion and practice of
the Church. Has the Church a right to supersede or even enlarge the hymn
book that is of canonical authority? Is it not audacious to supplement
inspired Psalms with hand-made hymns? And even if it be lawful is it
expedient? That is the issue.

To many of us this question of the relation of our Christian song to
Scriptural song has not given much concern, and to others it will seem as
in no sense a modern question.

The purpose of this lecture is to show that through each succeeding
period of the Church's life this question has always remained a modern
question, a case of conscience, a center of agitation; that for centuries
after the Reformation a difference of opinion regarding the answer kept
the Lutheran and Reformed Churches from worshiping together; that in the
early days of American Presbyterianism it led to bitterness and division
that were heart-breaking; and that it is still enough of a modern
question to prevent our divided Presbyterianism not only from corporate
union but from joining together in a hymn to Christ.

The scheme of this lecture is to discover the answers to the question the
Church has given from time to time, or, in other words, to follow the
fortunes of the Christian Hymn; for the two themes are identical.




II. The New Christian Hymns


It is probable that the histories of early Christian worship that are
most technical are least true. In attempting to trace the development of
public ceremonial one so easily loses sight of the primary fact that the
spread of Christianity was the spread of a devotional conception of the
private life, which we have allowed to fade away. The essential thing was
the spirit and exercises of worship in the individual and family life;
and public worship was at heart an extension of these private devotions.

In this devotional life, if anywhere, Christian song, just because of its
spiritual character, must find its springs. And evidently it played a
large part in the personal and family life of second and third century
Christianity.

At Alexandria, where East and West met, Clement, in his second century
_Miscellanies_, pictures vividly the true Gnostic as moving in a very
atmosphere of hymnody: "We cultivate our fields, praising; we sail the
sea, hymning."[1] The Christian's "whole life is a holy festival. His
sacrifices are prayers and praises and Scripture readings before meals,
psalms and hymns during meals and before bed, and prayers again during
night. By these he unites himself to the heavenly choir."[2] As though by
way of example, the famous hymn which Dr. Dexter has made familiar as
"Shepherd of tender youth" was appended to his _Instructor_ by his own or
a later hand.

In North Africa Tertullian makes it an objection to the marriage of a
Christian with an unbeliever that they could not sing together. Whereas,
if both are Christians, "between the two echo psalms and hymns, each
challenging the other which shall better chant to the Lord."[3]

Tertullian was not, like Clement, a writer of hymns. "We have a plenty,"
he told the Christians whom he would entice from the theater. "Plenty of
verses, sentences, songs, proverbs."[4] Some he did not approve of: such
as "the hymns of Valentine," not to be rated "a respectable author."[5]

We know at least the names of other writers. The martyred Ignatius wrote
a hymn to Christ.[6] Another martyr, Athenogenes, left one as "a kind of
farewell gift," that was still circulating in the fourth century.[7]
Hippolytus, who came also to be accorded a martyr's halo, is said to have
composed a whole book of odes.[8] Dionysius of Alexandria speaks
affectionately of "the numerous psalms" of Nepos, an Egyptian bishop, "so
dear to a vast number of the faithful."[9]

The very casualness of these scattered allusions shows how wide and free
was the atmosphere in which the new hymns were composed and received. An
impulse, which canonical Psalms did not satisfy, to render homage to
Christ was behind most of them,--a motive that kept on renewing itself.
So much so that at the end of the second century, an unnamed defender of
the faith against the Arians could point out their unbroken continuity:
"So great a number of Christian psalms and odes, composed by the faithful
from the very beginning, in which they celebrate Christ, the Word of God,
proclaiming Him Very God."[10]


The hymns were in Greek, the language of the Christian community, East
and West, except in a group of Syriac churches centering at Edessa. Even
at Rome till the end of the second century not only the literature but
the ritual was in Greek. The "Kyrie eleison" of the Latin liturgy
survives as a living witness to the fact.

Some were modeled on the Septuagint Psalter, and gained the quaint title
of "private psalms." Some were "odes," like the "Gloria in excelsis,"
based on the angels' song. Or the lovely hymn for the lamp-lighting hour,
which Keble made familiar as "Hail! gladdening Light of His pure glory
poured." It was a relic of household worship that Basil called ancient
even in his time.[11]

But a preference for Greek classical meters arose very early. Clement's
hymn is an example. So is the metrical acrostic now in the Amherst
collection.[12] So, very likely, were "the psalms of a new kind"
Epiphanius ascribed to the Egyptian ascetic Hierakas.[13]


There is no room to question that the new hymns were used in public
worship. Our earliest report happens to be from outside, due to Pliny's
anxiety at the spread of the faith in Bithynia. He describes for the
emperor a night service very early in the second century. His witnesses
affirm "a custom of meeting before dawn on a stated day, and singing by
turn a hymn to Christ as a god."[14] The Bithynians are reported as
gathering for a common meal, and this Love Feast gave no doubt especial
opportunity for Christian song.

In the _Didache_, where feast and sacrament are still connected, no one
could draw the line between them or between prayers, thanksgivings and
songs.

Tertullian, describing the Love Feast in North Africa, after it had been
separated from the Eucharist, tells us that "after hand-washing and
bringing in the lights each is asked to stand forth and sing as he can a
hymn to God, either one from Holy Scripture or one of his own
composing--a proof of the measure of his drinking."[15]

Clement of Alexandria devotes to the music of the Christian feast a whole
chapter of his _Instructor_,[16] which is no more than an amplification
of St. Paul's warning to the Corinthians, and shows pagan revelry and
spiritual emotion, pagan song and Christian hymnody, still contending
unseemly at the gate of an observance ideally so beautiful.

In respect of the Communion itself, Justin Martyr's account of it (in
Antioch perhaps at the middle of the second century) says nothing of
psalm or hymn, unless such were included in the prayers and thanksgivings
offered by the President and responded to by the people. But he had just
mentioned the custom in their worship of offering thanks in hymns.[17]
Probably the Communion was preceded by a course of psalmody as in the
fourth century liturgies. To what extent private psalms entered in we
cannot tell.

In Greek, as in Jewish and apostolic worship, there was no clear
discrimination of praise and prayer or even singing and reading. Very
likely what we call the prayers of fourth century liturgies are
transcripts or compilations of earlier Christian psalms. In the
_Testament of our Lord_ the prayers which offer praise are throughout
designated as "Hymns."




III. The Greek Settlement of the Question


Private psalms and Christian odes never won a parity with canonical
Psalms, the Church's cherished inheritance of praise. This difference of
level was used subtly in proceedings to depose Paul of Samosata, an
adventurer who became Bishop of Antioch for a decade from 260. The charge
was that he suppressed "the Psalms chanted there in honor of our Lord."
His plea was one of confession and avoidance. The psalms he had
suppressed "were not the ancient Psalms of David: they were new and the
work of new men."[18]

There was indeed growing up in "Catholic" circles a suspicion of the hymn
of human composure. It was due in part to jealousy for the supremacy of
Scripture, but yet more to the activity of heretical parties, Gnostics
especially, in using hymns as propaganda.

In Edessa, as early as 200, the accomplished Bardesanes had actually
composed a rival psalter of 150 psalms; "deserting David's truth and
preserving David's numbers," as Ephraim put it.[19] It seems to have been
sung in Syriac churches for more than a century. And in that trial of
Paul of Samosata it came out that in setting aside the psalms sung in
Christ's honor he had not hesitated to substitute a new series sung by
female choirs, "composed in his own honor"; whatever that evil-sounding
phrase may mean.

Of the hymns of Valentine, a Gnostic who came to Rome in the middle
second century, we have already heard Tertullian's opinion. Marcion also
came to Rome about the same time to foster his special type of
Gnosticism, and it is likely that his "new book of psalms" swelled the
number of his followers.[20]

By the fourth century the hymn had become the favorite common carrier of
Arian heresy; not only among congregations, but by special "songs for
sailors" and "songs for travelers," which "insinuated their pernicious
teachings into simple hearts through the charm of their music."[21]

The Church was witnessing an effective demonstration of the teaching
power of hymns. It could hardly fail to arouse in the "Catholic" type of
mind a conviction that the freely-composed hymn had become a menace.


That conviction throws some light upon the action of the Synod that met
at Laodicæa about 363. Its 59th canon, or the undisputed section of it,
reads:

"Psalms composed by private men must not be read in the church nor
uncanonical books, but only the canonical of the New and Old Testament."

"Read" covers the psalmody as well as the lectionary, since the
contemporaneous usage was to recite the psalm by a Reader in sing-song.
The congregational participation consisted of responses or a chant-wise
recitation of verses somewhat in the manner of the antiphons of the Roman
Office.

It was these responses apparently, and anything else in the way of hymns
the people were accustomed to sing, that were dealt with in another
canon, the 15th, providing that "beside the psalm singers appointed
thereto, who mount the ambo and sing out of the book, no others shall
sing in church."

Neander[22] and those who follow his lead make this to mean no more than
that a member of the congregation is no longer free to start the hymn, as
we would say of a prayer-meeting. But there was undoubtedly a movement to
get every part of the worship out of the people's hands into those of
officiants. The day of church-building had come and the call for a form
of service corresponding to the architecture. With trained choristers in
the lead the ruder outpourings of an illiterate people would become
indecorous. This canon looks like an official approval of the movement to
silence the people. And in view of the fact that their part in church
song was taken away from them and was put into the hands of the choir, in
whose exclusive possession it remains until the present day in the Greek
church, it does not seem unreasonable to interpret the canon as meaning
just what it says.


And so we get the FIRST, a GREEK CHURCH SETTLEMENT of the question that
had been vexing it, the relation of its church song to Scripture;
deciding the same by exalting the canonical Psalms to an exclusive place
in honor and in use, and explicitly forbidding the introduction of psalms
of human composition into church worship; and prohibiting the people from
taking any part in the church song except as listeners to those appointed
to render it.

Both the scope and the effectiveness of this ban put upon "private
psalms" are debatable. Certainly it did not hinder the development of an
extensive Greek hymnody. And it is hard to see how a small local synod
could have done more than establish a precedent. Dr. Batiffol, the
accomplished historian of the _Roman Breviary_, regards its action as
final: "private psalms were banished from Catholic liturgical use."[23]
He is perhaps thinking only of such as had wormed their way into the
prescribed course of Psalmody proper that paralleled the Lectionary. At
most the canon appears to deal only with the sanctities of worship within
church walls, and not with popular song or the singing of hymns in
gatherings and festivals not covered by the liturgy.

Chrysostom must have thought so. When he came to Constantinople in 398 he
did not hesitate to meet the Arians with their own weapons and to imitate
their processions of singers by organizing rival processions trained to
sing orthodox hymns specially composed for them. He must have felt that
the springs of sacred song were not choked, and that there were channels
through which it might still flow.[24]




IV. The Latin Settlement


The Greek hymn passes out of the hands of the people, and so beyond the
scope of these lectures. We turn now to the Latin hymn.


Dr. Warfield used to say that there is a real sense in which North Africa
is the mother of us all.[25] She was certainly the mother of the Western
Church. And the Romanizing process that changed her language from Greek
to Latin made Latin the mother tongue of that Church.[26] It was at
Carthage, not Rome, that the Psalms were first chanted in Latin, as they
are still throughout the Roman communion. The Septuagint had been roughly
translated, and the roll containing the Psalter furnished the text.

The great Tertullian had ceased to write in Greek by 213.[27] That
passionate heart did not turn to hymn writing, which was as well, in view
of the virtuosity of his style. There is no tradition of Latin hymns as
yet at Carthage.


Their _writing_ began in the fourth century with Hilary in his remote
Gallic diocese. He made a book of them for his people. Jerome tells us
how he complained of finding the Gauls unteachable in sacred song.[28] He
was a theologian, and it may be overstrained its teaching office.

Their _singing_ waited upon Ambrose of Milan, whose effective hymns were
practically a new creation. They make him the father of Latin hymnody and
the real inaugurator of modern hymnody in every tongue.

St. Augustine's _Confessions_ have made familiar to us all the first
hearing of Ambrose's hymns, in defending the faith against an Arian
court. In 385 he had refused to yield the new basilica at Milan to the
dowager empress Justina. She renewed her demand a year later, when the
alarm spread that not only the church but Ambrose's person were to be
seized. Taking refuge in the basilica, he was surrounded by a concourse
of the faithful, who for some days and nights guarded both church and
bishop against the imperial troops. Ambrose organized his affectionate
flock into a band of constant worshipers, preaching and arranging a
course of devotions, and training them to sing his hymns, "lest the
people wax faint through the tediousness of sorrow."

What an opportunity to try out his ideals of Christian song! He so used
it as to make Milan a focal point in the history of the hymn. It gathers
up the lines of development we have been studying, on the one side, and
on the other the lines on which modern hymnody still proceeds.

What was new at Milan, apart from the antiphonal singing Ambrose brought
over from the East, was the hymns themselves. The assembly, the fervor,
the hymnody of edification, were apostolic,--the hymns were Ambrosian.

Their characteristic was in being composed in Latin meter, but so were
Hilary's. Their distinction was in using the metrical form so
successfully as to make it inevitable. Even to-day in our remote American
Protestantism, when we use the word "hymn" in common speech we are
thinking of the Ambrosian hymn.

Ambrose's difficulty lay in the artificiality of classical meters as a
mold in which to pour Christian emotion. He chose the simplest of lyric
meters, a strophe of four iambic dimeters,--a stanza of four
eight-syllabled lines. So wisely that allowing for the gradual change
from metrical to word accent, his chosen meter was almost invariably used
in Latin hymns till the eleventh century, and is the familiar Long Meter
of our present-day books.

St. Augustine's references to Ambrose's hymns show how they struck a
contemporary. They won also the sincerest flattery of imitation, becoming
the nucleus of a body of "Ambrosiani," which still keeps its place in the
_Roman Breviary_.


The popular hymn singing itself Ambrose set up at Milan spread rather
quickly through Italy and even Gaul, and gave some promise of
establishing itself as a permanent ordinance. Unfortunately it was fated
to contract from the volume of congregational song to the narrowness of
monastic devotion and of priestly soliloquy.

This is what happened.

The special chance to introduce popular hymn singing came when the
morning and evening "hours of prayer" were turning into a church service.
Two such "hours" had been observed privately by Christians from the
first,--at the breaking of dawn and at lighting the household lamps.
These are the primitive "Canonical Hours," matins and vespers. In
addition Daniel's "three times a day" influenced the devout, and the
three hours as indicated in _Acts_, happening to coincide with the
divisions of the civil day, were also consecrated by prayer.[29] This was
still in private. But by the middle of the fourth century the churches
were being opened for saying these daily offices under direction of the
clergy. Why should the new basilicas stand empty while prayers and Psalms
were recited outside? And then there was the urge of the devotional
intensity marking the groups of ascetics formed in the congregations.
They were not yet set apart from common life, but already their specialty
lay in emphasizing the "hours" set apart from common day.

These had become so many, it seemed expedient to assign to each one its
special Psalms, to avoid repetition and monotony. An _Ordo Psallendi_
thus developed. But the multiplication of services that made the _Ordo_
necessary also made it impossible for most people to attend them. They
were left to ascetics and the clergy.

When somewhat later the ascetics deserted the congregations for a life of
prayer in the wilderness, they took with them the _Ordo Psallendi_ and
such Ambrosian hymnody as was included, and left behind nothing more than
the obligation of the clergy to read the Daily Office which still
edifies, or it may be burdens, the Roman Catholic priesthood.[30]

And so it happened that the Ambrosian hymns themselves, and the singing
of hymns Ambrose had set up at Milan, passed out of the people's lives,
and became the exclusive possession of the clergy. They were sung only by
the monks in their communities or the choirs of monastic churches:
outside they were read in private by secular priests.


In both community and church the staple of the monastic Office was the
orderly cantillation of the canonical Psalms. Whether they might be
supplemented by metrical hymns, more suggestive of the hour or day or
season being observed, was a question that would not be stilled, a case
of conscience,--the old question of the supremacy of Scripture in praise:
and behind it the ascetic spirit that glories in the clean hearth and the
rigor of the game.

The decision lay with the monks as most concerned. It was practically
settled when early in the sixth century Benedict of Nursia issued his
famous "Rule," reducing a monk's life to clocklike regularity. He made
hymn singing a part of it, adopted the _Ambrosiani_ and distributed them
among the various Hours.[31] His example was followed by Aurelian, Bishop
of Arles. And in 567 a Council at Tours went further, saying, "There are
writers beside St. Ambrose whose hymns are beautiful enough to deserve
singing, and should be received"; provided the author's name is set forth
in each case.

But there was strong opposition. The Ambrosian hymns were not received at
Rome, and her influence was against them for centuries. In Spain a small
council at Braga in 563 had forbidden the singing in church of anything
"poetical" except Scripture songs. This hostility must have lingered long
in Spain, for in 633 the Council of Toledo found it necessary to show
cause why hymns should be allowed.

It is impossible to read its findings without a smile at the circles in
which progress moves; for a thousand and more years afterward in far-off
England young Isaac Watts was to confront just the same situation, to
meet it with the same impatience with the Psalm singers and just the same
arguments for human hymns as were exhibited at Toledo.

"We possess," it was there declared, "some hymns composed to the praise
of God, the Apostles and the martyrs, such as those of the Blessed
Doctors Hilary and Ambrose. And these are rejected by certain people on
the pretext that nothing should be received into the liturgy except the
text of Holy Scripture only. What do these people say of 'Gloria Patri'?
And what of 'Gloria in excelsis'? And what of the lessons read in the
Office? And of the prayers? There is then no more ground for condemning
the hymns than the prayers, and in this matter Gaul and Spain ought to
observe the same custom."


And so, by the seventh century, in Spain as well as in Gaul the Ambrosian
hymn had won its way into the Daily Office; and in Ireland also, as a
surviving copy of the _Bangor Antiphonary_ (now appropriately kept at
Milan) testifies. To us, who associate them especially with the _Roman
Breviary_, it is hard to realize the five centuries that elapsed during
which Rome stood firm for the exclusive use of "the Bible only" as church
song. It thus anticipated the position which some of us may have imagined
was first taken by John Calvin. Not until the end of the twelfth century
were hymns of human composure admitted into the Office as sung at
Rome,[32] and only then was their victory complete.

But what a victory! The introduction of hymns at Rome probably involved
little more than their singing by the monks attached to the basilicas.
How far a remove from Ambrose's project of an evening and morning prayer
at which the plain people could do their own singing!


Thus we have the SECOND, the LATIN CHURCH SETTLEMENT of the vexed
question of the relation of hymns to Holy Scripture.

The canonical Psalms are the source of the subject-matter of praise both
in the Daily Office and the Mass. Scriptural canticles and a few ancient
prose hymns from the Greek are also used in the liturgy. But the Rule of
Benedict, providing for the chanting of the entire Psalter from beginning
to end within each week of the year, makes the Psalms supreme if only for
the overshadowing of their preponderating bulk, to say nothing of the
loyalty to Scripture which such a Rule attests. In this daily diet of
psalmody a limited number of approved metrical hymns of human composure
are inserted at fixed points of the Office; serving to connect the Psalms
with the hour, the day, or the season of the Christian Year.[33] After
the ninth century the provision was somewhat enlarged by admitting some
hymns of freer meter, called Sequences,[34] into the Mass, which had
become the principal service of parish churches.

The actual singing in churches, whether monastic or parochial, was to be
done by officiants in the choir. For participation by the congregation in
the nave there was no provision whatever and no opportunity.




V. The Lutheran Settlement


Such was substantially the situation as the Reformation dawned in
Germany.

No one was more familiar with it than Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk.
No one was better equipped to sponsor a Protestant movement to restore
the hymn to the people: to restore it to its right place in worship by
first making it a messenger of the gospel to men's hearts. And he had the
precedent and encouragement of the successful rise of a popular hymnody
in the Hussite revival.

Luther brought away from the convent a real love for the hymns and plain
song of the Daily Office. So real that he lacked heart to "banish the
Latin language from divine service" altogether, for the sake of "so much
fine music and hymnody the Latin has."[35] Nevertheless his great work
lay in freeing the hymn from its shackling Latinity, and developing a
vernacular hymnody more on the lines of German folk song.

He had first to find the hymns or make them. "We lack poets, or else they
are not known, who can write for us godly spiritual songs, as Paul calls
them. Should there be any German poets, I say this to stimulate
them."[36] Luther thus made himself responsible for the copious
production of German hymns. Perhaps his choice of "spiritual songs" from
St. Paul's trio helped to fix upon them their characteristic concern with
inward experience.

The best he could do at the moment was to point out two or three of the
rather rude and not always decorous current songs as "grave enough."[37]
His little booklet of 1524 had only eight hymns: his last hymn book of
1545 had 101, 35 by himself.

Luther's hymns, so long disregarded in Reformed Churches, are
nevertheless the foundation of Protestant song. They are as plain as
Ambrose's, with more metrical variety but hardly poetic. With him the
hymn becomes evangelical, and it is cheerful by intention. "When we
sing," he said with customary good sense, "both heart and mind should be
cheerful and merry."[38] His hymns belong mostly to St. Paul's hymnody of
edification.[39]


From the hymn book prefaces and the discursive but very edifying
liturgical writings, we can shape without difficulty the THIRD, the
LUTHERAN SETTLEMENT of the relation of hymns to Scripture.

It retained canonical Psalmody as a distinctive ordinance, as in the
Latin Church. "Let the entire Psalter, distributed into parts, remain in
use at the morning and evening service."[40] He of course relieved the
congregation of the obligation to go through the Psalter in a week in the
immensely protracted lengths of the "parts" of the Daily Office; which
had rested on the Roman clergy. This obligation, in his plain way, Luther
called "a donkey's burden." He expected the Psalms to be _sung_ where
practicable, and was quite willing they be sung in the customary Latin.
In the schools the boys are "to sing some Psalms in Latin every
morning."[41]

The Lutheran settlement appropriated the metrical hymn side by side with
the Psalm, as found in the Latin Office. The inventor of our metrical
hymn was Ambrose, not Luther. But he took it away from the closed hands
of clergy and choristers and put it into the hands of the people. He
translated it into their tongue and freed it from all the rubrical
restrictions of office books. Not by comparing Roman and Lutheran
liturgies do we come upon Luther's dealings with the hymn. He took it out
of liturgies and put it into people's hearts and homes, that when they
had learned it and loved it they might bring it to the church and sing it
together. He revived, that is to say, St. Paul's conception of hymnody as
a spiritual function.


It is important to understand how these dealings with the hymn, so
directly opposite to those of later reformers, were nevertheless made to
accord in Luther's own thinking with his governing liturgical canon,--the
supremacy of the Scriptures in church worship.

(a) He found his authority for composing and using spiritual songs in St.
Paul's coupling them with Psalms and in the practice of the Apostolic
Church:[42] the stand-point incidentally of our first lecture.

(b) He acknowledged that such authority and precedent may be rightly
claimed "in an especial manner in respect of Psalms," and therefore (note
the logic) he favored "the attempt to transform a Psalm into a hymn,"
retaining its sense but passing by "certain forms of expression and
employing other suitable ones."[43] Thus he anticipated Dr. Watts' _The
Psalms of David imitated_.

(c) The thought that had troubled the early Church and was to divide the
Protestant, that the provision of an inspired book of song precluded the
intrusion of human composures, found no lodgment in Luther's mind. To
prevent its lodging in any other's he calls "the songs of holy writ to
witness that patriarchs and prophets composed original hymns," and
therefore a modern reformer and his friends who do likewise should "not
be looked upon as innovators" but as following in the train of these
ancient worthies.

(d) But the vital connection of the Lutheran hymn with the Bible is
through its theme and subject-matter. The evangelical content of the hymn
meant everything to Luther. "What I wish," he wrote his friend Spalatin,
"is to make German hymns for the people, that the Word of God may dwell
in their hearts by means of song also." Upon that ideal the whole edifice
of the new hymnody rested. Like everything in Lutheran worship it
illustrated the conviction of its great founder that the supremacy of
Scripture in Christian worship means that the worship must be a setting
forth of Christ's gospel.


From this we are now to turn to the fathers of the Reformed Churches,
whose reverence for the same Bible led them not only to reject the
Lutheran hymnody but to banish the hymn of human composure from the whole
breadth of the Reformed world.




VI. The Calvinistic Settlement


We think of Zwingli and Calvin as taking Luther's place in the Churches
we have agreed to call "Reformed." The name is unhappy. It was Luther,
with his love of the Latin Church, who contemplated reforming it. Whereas
Zwingli and Calvin had the vision of a primitive Church restored rather
than an existing Church reformed.

But in discussing Calvin's settlement of church praise we must remember
that his work at Geneva belongs to the second period of the Swiss
Reformation, and was constructive, not iconoclastic.

When he comes on the scene a model of worship had been set up by Zwingli
for the German-speaking cantons. In his church at Zurich, stripped and
white-washed, the worshipers were auditors, except for a few responses,
the Creed, Gloria, and a recited Psalm. These "ceremonies" were his
concession to human weakness, but singing was not among them. Did Zwingli
contemplate the anomaly of a religion without music? His most competent
biographer thinks not.[44] The facts are against him. There was no music
at Zurich for seventy years. And it is the facts that are Calvin's
background.

At Geneva before Calvin came in July, 1536, they were using an order of
worship made by Farel, an evangelist from German-speaking Berne to
French-speaking cantons. Here, too, there was no singing, probably out of
deference to Berne. But there was indeed nothing in French to sing.

After a survey of the situation Calvin drew up his "Essentials of a
well-ordered Church," giving prominence to the Psalms "we desire to be
sung in church," for these three reasons:

1. The example of the ancient Church and St. Paul's testimony.

2. The warmth and uplift they would bring to our prayers, now so cold.

3. The discovery of what benefit and consolation the pope and his
partisans have deprived the Church, by appropriating the Psalms to be
mumbled between them without understanding.[45]

Calvin's thought was to begin by training the children to sing prose
Psalms to some sober ecclesiastical chant; the people listening till they
could grow accustomed to use their own voices in church. The scheme was
rather in the air; Calvin's influence was waning and political
considerations induced the Council to adhere to the church usages Berne
was pressing upon Geneva. This to Calvin meant the supremacy of State
over Church. Rather than yield he suffered banishment.

It is well to note that in his humiliation and his appreciation of the
need of complaisance, Calvin none the less made it the _sine qua non_ of
his return to Geneva that the singing of Psalms be made a part of public
worship.[46] This purpose, indomitable and perhaps not without a touch of
the heroic, is the historical basis on which the whole structure of
Metrical Psalmody rests.

Calvin's banishment brought him at Strasburg the opportunity of hearing
the Germans sing Luther's hymns; and convinced him that French Psalms
could just as well be turned into modern meters and set to congregational
tunes. He soon had his little flock of French refugees there singing
after some fashion and in 1539 printed a little psalm book for them. In
direct contrast with Luther's first booklet, its contents, excepting the
Creed, were entirely Biblical: 17 Psalms in meter and one in prose, "Nunc
dimittis" and the Commandments versified.

Calvin was back in Geneva by 1541, and could have anything he wanted,
even Psalm singing. He proceeded to enlarge and improve his little
Strasburg book. But his standard was so high that twenty-one years passed
before he fulfilled his purpose to provide his people with a complete
metrical version of the Scripture Psalms.[47]


We have then the FOURTH, the CALVINISTIC SETTLEMENT of the relation of
the hymn to Scripture: as conservative as the Judaizers in the Apostolic
Church could have wished for, or as was laid down by the Council of Braga
in the sixth century.

The hymn of human composure that had been sung so freely in the early
Church, that had won so hardly a restricted place in the liturgy of the
Latin Church, that had developed so phenomenally in the German
Reformation, is now excluded from Reformed worship. The inspired songs of
Scripture, substantially the Old Testament Psalter, furnish the exclusive
subject-matter of praise. Translated into the vernacular, versified in
modern meters, set to congregational tunes, they become the hymns of the
Church.


The first question to emerge is whether Calvin aimed to lay down a hard
and fast rule binding the Reformed Church for all time?

Undoubtedly all his arrangements at Geneva were by way of exemplifying "a
well-ordered Church," and among its essentials, he said, was "the singing
of the Psalms" in worship. Just as he insisted on singing against
Zwingli's silence, so he emphasized psalmody against Luther's hymnody.

Calvin of course was dealing with a situation rather than the future.
Like Luther before him, and practically all the Psalm versifiers after
him who disclosed their motives in prefaces, he was nauseated by the
unseemly and amorous songs that were corrupting the youth of his country.
He was offended just as much by the Latin hymns of the Church, because by
his time they had become vehicles of Mariolatry, saint worship and other
things he abominated. Obviously then songs of human composure, to say the
best of them, were subject to the contagion of levity and heresy.

"What is to be done?" Calvin asks in his preface of 1543.[48] It is, he
says:

First: To find songs not only pure but holy.

Second: But none can write them save he who has received the power from
God Himself.

Third: "When we have searched all around, here and there, we shall find
no songs better or more suitable than the Psalms of David which the Holy
Spirit dictated and gave to him."

Fourth: "And therefore, when we sing _them_, we are as sure that God hath
put words into our mouths as if He Himself sang with us to exalt His
glory."

Expressions so cautious and considerate make us wonder if there were
advocates of Lutheran hymnody at Geneva, whom it was prudent to placate.

In any event if Calvin felt more than he expressed, he kept it to
himself. No one has produced any assertion that the canonical Psalter was
the divinely prescribed hymn book for all time. On the contrary his
_Commentary on Colossians_ admits that St. Paul's "Psalms and hymns and
spiritual odes" covers "all kinds of song," except that "spiritual"
excludes "frivolities and trifles." Calvin rested his cause (and won it)
not on any divine prescription of the Psalter but on its inspiration.
There is no evidence that he had scruples of conscience against the use
of human songs. If he had he preferred to propose a counsel of prudence
and not a case of conscience.


Most of us are likely to feel now that Calvin's settlement of the matter
lacks the finality that comes through comprehensiveness. But now is not
then. As a handling of the situation it was masterly. In an emergency it
is often the single-track mind that discerns the path ahead and commands
the following. Calvin must have read deeply into the French character,
and with some foresight of what French Protestants were to go through. If
not, he was the unconscious instrument of a clear Providence.

In the Metrical Psalms he gave the people an appealing part of the Bible
in their own tongue; which accounts for the thrill of Huguenot psalmody.
In the little psalm books he gave it into their own personal possession.
The humblest of them might have a copy of his very own: the symbol and
vehicle of his personal communion with God.

Some sixty-four editions within four years, supplying Switzerland and
peddled through France, show how wide that sense of ownership became, and
explain how psalmody became a part of personal life. The metrical Psalter
made the Huguenot character. No doubt a character nourished on Old
Testament ideals will lack the full symmetry of the gospel. But the
Huguenot was a warrior first, called to fight and suffer for his faith.
And in singing Psalms he found his confidence and strength. Now that we
have seen an idealized pugnacity and a stolid endurance combined in the
French soldiery in their war against Germany, we can understand how the
Huguenot found no Psalm too militant, no imprecation too severe, against
his Lord's enemies.

In the wars of religion the Psalms in meter were the songs of camp and
march, the war-cry on the field, the swan song at the martyr's stake.[49]


There was naturally no question of the proper subject-matter of praise
when "the Reformed Churches of France" met in Synod in 1559. The
Calvinistic settlement was read into the constitution. The bringing of
his own psalm book to church by every worshiper was made a part of the
discipline.[50] It was a token of the believer's personal share in church
song. The injunction to uncover his head while he sang was a token of the
dignity of God's Word in song.




VII. Doctor Watts' Settlement


Calvin's standard, "the Bible only" in praise, became a precedent for the
Reformed Churches on the continent and in Scotland. Even the Church of
England had to give the people a metrical Psalter to bind up with the
Prayer Book. Naturally, as is the way of religious precedents, it
hardened into a church principle. I have suggested that to us it may not
seem a final settlement of the matter. But it was final to those who
carried on the Calvinistic Reformation and to generations succeeding them
through two centuries.

It was still regarded as final by the immigrants from various shores
(except Germany) who laid the foundations of American Protestantism, and
until the gospel fervor of the Great Awakening put the matter to question
once more. In the Presbyterian Church, most conscious of its Calvinistic
inheritance, the issue thus raised passed from the debate on an academic
question into a living flame of controversy that scorched kind hearts,
broke up parishes, and convulsed the Church. It was only after years of
bitterness and disruption that Calvin's settlement of praise was
overthrown, and the right to sing hymns of human composure was
vindicated.

It ought to enhance our sense of privilege in singing them to remember
how hardly that privilege was won. It ought to make us more tolerant
toward others to realize that we can only exercise that privilege by
turning our own backs on the most distinctive tradition of Reformed
worship.


There is no reason for assuming that the body of Reformed Churches
actually framed a theory that the inspired Book of Psalms was the
divinely prescribed hymn book, or that they ever banned New Testament
canticles. But, as things worked out, their practice did confine them to
an Old Testament psalmody as rigidly as though prescribed.

And this was to prove the weakness of Psalm singing, the little rift
within the lute. For it shut out the church's song from the light of the
gospel the pulpit was preaching. It barred even its mention of that Name
in which the congregation was praying.

However long delayed, the break with the old Psalmody was bound to come
in the interests of spiritual reality. A New Testament Church was bound
to resume the new song.


Our immediate concern is with English-speaking Churches.[51] The low
estate into which their psalmody had fallen by the end of the seventeenth
century, its spiritual indifference, the shocking dilapidation of its
music, fairly cried out for a change. What was waited for was a leader
willing to incur the reproach of change and capable of furnishing the
materials for an evangelical hymnody.

He appeared in the person of Isaac Watts, a minister among the
Independents, of marked gifts, who wore the self-confidence of youth like
a panoply, and advanced into what he knew would be a fray with full
intent of being the aggressor.

And now as to his tactics. He first (1707) showed the feasibility of the
new song in a volume of original hymns adapted to the Psalm meters. As an
appendix he printed an _Essay towards the Improvement of Christian
Psalmody_, proposing a new "System of Praise" that included Psalms, hymns
and spiritual songs.


This, in view of the novelty of its terms and of the general adoption of
its proposals, must be reckoned the FIFTH, an EVANGELICAL SETTLEMENT of
the relation of our hymns to the Bible.

In all fairness it should bear the name of Watts. In the light of its
immediate surroundings it was so glaringly original. But, as we discuss
it, I think we shall come to feel more and more that to a larger view, it
was hardly more than a dislodgment of the Calvinistic settlement in favor
of a reaffirmation of Luther's, which was the original evangelical
settlement of hymnody.

(a) Watts denied in general that we are under the call, either of God or
of Christian prudence, to sing the Bible. Quite the contrary. The Bible
is God's word to us. It is to be received as such and personally
appropriated. That being done, our hymns represent, not our repetition of
God's word, but our response to it, our word to God. And our word to God
can be expressed in the letter of the Bible only in so far as its
language can properly be made our own. And thus he laid the ground for
the free hymn of human composure, especially evangelical hymns responding
to the fullness of God's revelation of Himself in Christ.

(b) In particular Watts denied that the Book of Psalms was either a
canonical hymn book for the Christian Church or adapted to its use. It
was a Jewish not a Christian book. In a Christian praise book the
supremacy must be given to the gospel, not to the Psalms. "Some of 'em
are almost opposite to the Spirit of the Gospel; many of them foreign to
the State of the New Testament, and widely different to the present
Circumstances of Christians." This thought he proceeded to elucidate by
exegesis and illustration with a frankness no doubt trying to the lovers
of the Psalms. All this was leading up to his conclusion that if we are
to make Christian hymns of the Psalms we must first translate them anew;
that is to say, rewrite them in the way David would have written them if
he had been a Christian and not a Jew, and were a loyal citizen of
eighteenth century England.

This he proceeded to do, on his own account, furnishing the churches with
his famous _The Psalms of_ _David imitated_ in 1719. I am looking while I
write at a presentation copy of that book to his "Hond. Uncle," and
wondering if any other has been so momentous in the later history of
Reformed Churches. It was the bridge across which many of them, including
our own, forced their way, half unconsciously, from the restrictions of
an imposed Psalmody to the more open country of which Christ is the Light
and the Song.

(c) Further, Watts denied the claim of the Metrical Psalm to be the pure
word of God. If it be our duty to sing only in the words of Scripture,
metrical versions do not fulfill the requirement. The exigencies of
rhythm and rhyme make a really faithful rendering of the Hebrew into
English verse an impossible thing. Those who wish nothing but the pure
word must resort to prose, and must learn the Hebrew music or at least
employ the method of chanting practiced in Church of England cathedrals.

The point was a neat one from the contemporaneous point of view. Watts'
criticism of the Metrical Psalm is equally valid from the standpoint of
modern culture. The English ballad meter, which was the favorite of the
old psalm books, was an inadequate medium for transmitting either the
form or spirit of Hebrew poetry. If the Psalms are to be read in English,
prose couplets are best, and if they are to be sung the method of
chanting "practiced in English cathedrals" is the most available.

It was no part of Watts' proposal to give up either the form or substance
of metrical psalmody. He would carry it on not as inspired Scripture but
as a department of Christian song whose "sense and materials" were taken
from the Bible. And when to this evangelized and modernized Psalter was
added a body of hymns of purely human composure, representing our
appropriation of the gospel through Christian experience, we get the full
terms of Watts' settlement of the relation of Christian song to the
Bible.


It worked. Among the humblest Independents first of all; more gradually
throughout the Churches that had hitherto stood for "the Bible only." The
accommodated Psalms became the recognized standard of Calvinistic
orthodoxy. The hymn of human composure won the place alongside from which
it has never been dislodged. The twin volumes of "Watts' Psalms and
Hymns" made themselves at home in the pews, and represented respectively
the Old and New Testaments in praise.




VIII. The Modern Disposition of the Question


The present-day attitude of the Church has not come about in the terms of
another formal settlement of the matter but as a natural result of its
own experimenting with the double standard of "Psalms and Hymns" set up
by Dr. Watts.

When once the divide had been reached, those on whom the obligation or
the custom of singing canonical Psalms still pressed were neither fooled
nor conciliated by his _Psalms of David imitated_. They stayed, as
considerable numbers of them stay apart yet, to praise God according to
their conscience. It has been claimed recently that not less than
thirteen Reformed communions adhere to the principle of an inspired
psalmody. Presumably the Synodical action of 1925 by the United
Presbyterians must be regarded as a defection.

But the congregations and communions that admitted human hymns to a
parity with divine Psalms did so because the impulse to sing the gospel
was more pressing than any duty they felt of singing Psalms. And in
practice the evangelical hymns turned out to be more appealing than
evangelized Psalms. The new psalmody was a little heavy with its
adjustments of prophecy and gospel, its replacements of Israel by Great
Britain or "the States." And then it was static, while the hymnody was
constantly being freshened with new composures and adjusted to changes in
Christian feeling. And so the use of Psalms tended to diminish.

The era of "Psalms and Hymns" gradually merged into an era of "Hymns." As
the books labeled on their backs, "Psalms and Hymns" had replaced the
_Psalms in meter_, so the "Hymnal" came to replace the "Psalms and
Hymns." Some still surviving can remember when the Old School
Presbyterian _Psalms and Hymns_ was replaced by the _Hymnal_ of 1866; a
book futile enough, but a landmark still as the first to ignore the old
division into Psalms and hymns.

In modern hymnals such Psalm versions as are retained are kept there
generally for their intrinsic worth as hymns, or possibly for some
association's sake; but in either case without regard to their fidelity
as translations. The fetters, whether of obligation, or of prudence, or
of use and wont, that held the Church's songs so close to the letter of
Scripture, were in the minds and habits of English-speaking Christians
finally severed by Dr. Watts.

Some of the eighteenth century writers seem to have had a feeling that it
was proper to relate their hymns to particular passages of Scripture,
either as a Psalm-version relates itself to a canonical Psalm, or at
least as a sermon relates itself to a text. Of the three "books" of
Watts' _Hymns_ the first bears the title, "Collected from the
Scriptures." The first book of Newton and Cowper's _Olney Hymns_ is "On
select Texts of Scripture." Even Charles Wesley printed two volumes of
_Short Hymns on select passages of Scripture_. But probably this practice
was largely occasioned by the general desire of evangelical preachers to
find hymns on the text or passage from which they preached, to use as
illustrations or enforcements of their sermon.

The Church of Scotland, where the tradition of a Scriptural psalmody was
especially tenacious, did endeavor, between the years 1743 and 1781, to
cover the new hymnody with the old sanction by applying to it the method
of Scripture paraphrasing. After much travail the General Assembly set
forth in the latter year its _Translations and Paraphrases, in verse, of
several passages of Sacred Scripture_. The hope was of finding common
ground where the upholder of Scripture song and the clamorous advocate of
the new hymns might dwell together in peace and sing in harmony. It was a
vain hope and a poor expedient--largely camouflage. A few of the
Paraphrases are still familiar, notably "O God of Bethel, by whose hand"
and "Come, let us to the Lord our God." But they abide because good
hymns, and few of those who sing them think of relating them to the
Scripture they paraphrase.

The modern feeling in these matters involves no special distaste for the
practice of paraphrasing a Scripture passage in order to make a hymn,
provided the paraphraser can make something that approaches poetry and
stimulates devotion. Most congregations enjoy the simplicity of the Tate
and Brady "While shepherds watched their flocks by night"; but I dare say
they prefer Phillips Brooks' contemplation of the "little town of
Bethlehem" from a human point of view. The Communion paraphrase, "'Twas
on that night when doomed to know" is still dear to many Scottish hearts.
But a wider public prefers Montgomery's "According to Thy gracious word,"
in which the singer does not recite but does appropriate the Words of
Institution.


The fact is simply that, as this whole matter of the relation of our
praise to Scripture stands to-day in the minds and hearts of most of us,
the conviction abides that the Christian hymn has by a process of
development disassociated itself from that inevitably close connection
with the letter of Scripture which it took on at the Calvinistic
Reformation. There has been indeed not so much a process of development
as a reversion. To most of us the good Dr. Watts' conception of the Hymn
as the singer's devotional response to God's revelation of Himself--in
Scripture indeed, and also beyond Scripture, through a living Christ and
a personal experience, dominates the situation completely. And it seems
to us to reveal and to deepen the true relation of our hymns to
Scripture, because it is so obviously a reversion to the Pauline ideal of
Christian song and so faithful to the spirit and the letter of such of
the primitive hymns as have survived.




                              LECTURE THREE
                 THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO LITERATURE




I. Leo X's Scheme of a Classical Hymnody


The relation of the hymn to Scripture was presented in the last lecture
as a phase of the subject that has been in the mind of the Church from
the beginning, often pressing heavily upon its conscience also.

The same thing cannot be said of the relation of the hymn to literature.
The great poetry of the Psalms was the specific inheritance of the
Christian Church; so also was that Hebraic tone of mind Matthew Arnold so
greatly deplores as an impediment to true culture. And that mind was more
alert to what the Psalmist called the beauty of holiness than what a
modern poet has called the religiousness of beauty. That some of the
early fathers were deeply conscious of the poetic elevation of the Psalms
hardly needs saying.

It is likely that the church hymns, as distinguished from the Psalter,
were not very definitely subjected to what we would mean by literary
criticism until after the spirit of humanism had taken possession of
Papal Rome. When the classical Revival was at its height Leo X (1513-21)
was minded that the daily offices of the Church should find a new
expression in a "Latin more pure, more spirited, more elegant." He began
the revision of the Breviary by committing its hymns to an accomplished
Latinist, Zacharias Ferreri, for rewriting. And he in 1525 printed his
new and classical hymnal with the approbation of Leo's successor, Clement
VII.

I cherish a copy of Ferreri's hymnal,[1] sumptuously bound as befits so
elegant a specimen of typography, as an engaging and now innocuous
memorial of the first concerted movement to ally church hymnody with
literature. An intrusion of pagan mythology gave already a wrong turn to
the movement, and yet the classical hymnal was not without its own
felicities; as in this verse of the hymn on St. Francis:

    "Far in the greenwood's shadow and its silence
    Lonely he walked, while Heaven itself grew nearer;
    Pure were the thoughts that in his gentle bosom
      Rose and were cherished."




II. Calvin's Poetical Standard of Psalmody


Calvin's distaste for the elaborated art of the Roman ritual has hidden
from friend and critic alike his zeal for such beauty as was compatible
with his simpler standards of worship.

Excepting Leo, he is the first church leader who deliberately set up a
literary standard for his church song and called a poet to his service.
But the Pope kept within church circles and committed his project to one
of his bishops. Calvin went farther afield. In a time of bitter
controversy he ignored all party affiliations and chose as the poet of
Reformed Psalmody Clement Marot, a reformer only to the extent of
favoring a house cleaning, and with whose manner of life Calvin could
have no sympathy. But a poet,--a maker of ballads, rondeaux, love songs,
society verse and court poetry; graceful, debonair, light-hearted,
sometimes hiding real feeling beneath trifling, sometimes revealing it in
serious verse that charmed his generation. The last man in France, one
would say, to attract Calvin, yet to his mind the only man in France to
clothe his new psalmody with the grace he craved.

It is easy to say that Calvin's scheme of a version of the Psalms put
into current French meters, that people might sing them, was in itself a
sin against literature. And that may be true. But it was Marot the poet,
not Calvin the reformer, who first conceived the scheme. Fluttering
around the court, ambitious to be court-poet, Marot began versifying
Psalms in the meters of popular songs, handed them around among the
ladies and gentlemen of the court, and with the Dauphin's aid got them
sung.

When Calvin made his little psalm book of 1539 at Strasburg, twelve of
these court-songs had come into his hands. He appropriated them all, and
added a few of his own making. Marot's work became his standard, his own
a temporary makeshift; discarded as Marot began to print more versions.

Marot's Psalms got him into trouble. The Sorbonne thought they infringed
the Theological Faculty's monopoly in interpreting Scripture. And under
the leadings of providence, as strange as it is kind, Marot came to
Calvin's very side at Geneva as an exile.

The sight of the great congregation in the cathedral and the volume of
united voices praising God in their own tongue seem to have moved many
travelers. It was all a novelty. It moved Marot most of all, for the
French Psalms they were singing were his own.

He was easily persuaded to go ahead with his versifying, and Calvin was
keen for a complete Psalter. I like to think of the ardent reformer and
the debonair poet side by side in Genevan streets.

Marot added twenty Psalms to the poetic stock. Calvin urged the Council
to make a grant that would induce the poet to carry on. They declined,
whether from parsimony or from annoyance at the poet's refusal to wear
the yoke of Genevan discipline. Calvin did nothing toward completing his
Psalter as long as hope remained of completing it on Marot's level. It
was not till after Marot's death that he entrusted it to Theodore Beza.




III. English Psalmody Apart From Literature


The Psalms of Marot crossed the Channel in the active give and take
between the courts of Francis I and Henry VIII. And one might say that
they crossed in two separate parcels.

To the rising school of poets at the English court they represented the
work of a distinguished writer and a new sort of court poetry. They
suggested the Psalms as a mine of poetic material. They started a fashion
of versifying them. The Psalms of Surrey and Wyatt were literary
exercises of this sort. They had no bearing upon an English ordinance of
Psalmody.

There was, however, at Henry's court, a groom of the chambers, Thomas
Sternhold, to whom the French Psalms represented a Reformation movement
to provide the people with religious songs in their own tongue. He felt a
call to emulate Marot by turning some Psalms into the English ballad
meter, in the hope of replacing the amorous songs popular at court.

These simple versions of Sternhold, as the Reformation gathered way,
proved to be the nucleus of the metrical Psalter which in Elizabeth's
time became the congregational praise book of the English Church.[2]

Its Psalms throughout follow Sternhold's model. They are mechanical
verse; sometimes doggerel bearing the same relation to literature that
the lines above Shakespeare's bones bear to Shakespeare's plays. Only one
exceptional passage survives in the poetic anthologies:

    "The Lord descended from above,
      and bowed the heavens hie:
    And underneath his fete he cast,
      the darkness of the skye.
    On Cherubs and on Cherubins,
      full royally he rode:
    And on the wings of all the windes
    came fliying all abrode."

These _Sternhold and Hopkins_ Psalms played a brave part while the
Reformation glow lasted; and well into the nineteenth century they
continued dear to the rustic mind, which likes its poetry plain. They
never could have satisfied a sensitive taste, and, as their use lingered,
they caused chagrin and aroused ineffective hopes for something better.

In that light we are to set the seventeenth-century Psalm versions of
such writers as Bacon and Milton. They were not offered as poems but as
samples of a betterment of the current psalmody on lines that might prove
feasible. You could hardly expect a generation brought up on Martin
Tupper to pass at once to Robert Browning. It was so, I fancy, that these
proponents of new versions argued. None certainly, unless the Sidneys and
Sandys, achieved anything resembling a poetic Psalter.

Nor could that be claimed for Tate and Brady's _New Version_,[3] which at
the beginning of the eighteenth century won its way into London and
beyond, and in time became the classic psalm book of Massachusetts
Arianism. Unjustly ridiculed, it was a great advance over the _Old
Version_, in the flowing rhythms that make for singing and the happy
phrasing that makes for poetry even though falling short of it. How many
hymns have a better opening than "As pants the hart for cooling streams"
and "With glory clad, with strength arrayed"?

There is less to be said for the new _Psalms in meeter_[4] adopted by the
Scottish Church in Westminster Assembly days. The manner of its
rescension, line by line, in open meeting, the sacrifice of all beside to
"purity," remove it altogether from the sphere of letters; just as the
inweaving of its strains into the fabric of Scottish piety remove it from
the sphere of mere criticism. It was the romance of these tender
associations, no doubt, that made Sir Walter Scott so hostile to any
improvement of Scottish psalmody.

But indeed the whole vast body of English Psalm versions hardly relates
itself to literature at all, as we define literature now. It is a
transcription of Hebrew poetry on a great scale, in which conscience
rather than taste presided over the long process of journey-work.




IV. Religious Lyrics and the First English Hymn Book


As long as Psalm singing was the established order in every English
parish church, there was no motive for writing congregational hymns. But
not even proscription can quite seal the fountains of holy-song. As early
as the times of Elizabeth and James, when the practice of music was
common, there were sacred lyrics, adapted for part singing to the
accompaniment of lute or viol.

Of Thomas Campion's _Two Bookes of Ayres_ (c. 1613) the first is given
over to "Pure Hymnes such as the Seventh Day loves": spiritual and poetic
enough to tantalize the editors of modern hymnals. Josiah Conder adopted
"Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore." If we need more
hymns of the heavenly homesickness none is lovelier. More lately _The
Oxford Hymn Book_ has included his "View me, Lord, a work of Thine."
These bring Campion into an actual connection with the origins of our
English hymnody as unique as it is unrecognized.

Campion was not consciously composing congregational hymns. There was
just one way of getting such into parochial worship at that date, and
that was the application of force. It was soon applied by an ambitious
poet, George Wither, in one of those eruptions from beneath the
commonplace surface of things that upset the natural order of events.

After some years of quiet preparation Wither amazed the Church and
challenged the book interests by printing in 1623 his _Hymnes and Songs
of the Church_, fortified by an order from King James that the Company of
Stationers should bind it in with every copy they issued of the Metrical
Psalter. The English Church, that is to say, was to start singing hymns
under civil compulsion, and the hymns to be sung were Wither's. His
personal poverty afforded the occasion; his high appreciation of his own
work was his apology.

But his work is as hard to account for as his temerity. The only trace of
his earlier lyrical charm is in some unwanted love-songs from _The Song
of Solomon_:

    "Come, kiss me with those lips of thine;
    For better are thy loves than wine;
      And as thy powered ointments be,
    Such is the savour of thy name.
    And for the sweetness of the same,
      The virgins are in love with thee."

The body of the book is hardly more than doggerel, dull with platitude
and piosity.

The hymns in his _Hallelujah_ were written after he had given up his
hopes of enriching church worship, and were designed to hallow private
life. Aiming to cover every act and occasion, they burden each one by
appending a string of moralizings. "A Hymn whilst we are washing" forbids
us to regard even so simple a duty as its own reward. Two or three of
better type have been revived lately,--"Come, oh come, with pious lays,"
and "Behold the sun that seem'd but now." There is no doubt that Wither
aimed at allying hymnody and _poetry_; for in the preface he calls
himself a successor of George Herbert in "turning his muse to divine
strains."

The _Hymnes and Songs of the Church_ still holds our interest; because if
the Company of Stationers had not gone to law, it would have been the
first hymn book of Protestant England.


It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened if Wither's
zeal had been less egotistical; if he had sought to enlist the services
of the remarkable group of devotional poets who illuminated the evil
times of Charles I. Supplying the motive, what a hymn book they could
have made--Quarles, Herrick, Herbert, Crashaw, Traherne, and, later,
Vaughan!

Only Quarles had the public ear. Herrick's litany shows that he could
write hymns. George Herbert's lyrics of pure devotion, which he loved to
sing alone, would have been less eccentric in form if many other voices
were waiting to join in them. Crashaw's emotion and lyrical gift needed
the restraint that hymnody imposes. Traherne tried an apprentice's hand
at hymn making. And Vaughan really worked out alone the conception and
form of congregational song in such lyrics as:

    "My soul, there is a countrie:"
    "Up to those bright and glorious hills."

They are beautiful and still available. With little relation to the
church hymnody that was to be, they are very suggestive of the church
hymnody that might have been.

As things were, the figure of George Wither stands alone, three-quarters
of a century ahead of his time; an interesting and pathetic adventurer,
an ineffective leader.

Even so we must grant him the third place in the succession of those who
have striven for a poetical hymnody: Leo, Calvin, Wither.




V. The Poetic Hymnody of the Restoration


During the Puritan ascendancy, which Wither lived to see, all the zeal
was for psalmody; and Parliament mingled piety and politics in futile
debatings whether Rous' or Barton's version was "purer."

Not till after the Restoration of 1660 the wind began to change; and it
brought a feeling of hymns in the air. In Jeremy Taylor, inside the
Church, and John Austin, who had left it, the feeling took shape in an
effort to revive the Office hymnody. There were also a number (hardly a
group) of men who felt more freshness in the air and the prophecy of a
more modern hymnody.

Bishop Ken's morning, noon and evening hymns also carry a reminiscence of
the daily Office, but humanize it with a vitality that has defied
criticism. The melodious hymns of Samuel Crossman, "My song is love
unknown," "My life's a Shade, my daies," are inventoried by Matthew
Arnold among his "awful examples." His objection is to the choppy
"Hallelujah meter." But, when a writer turns a trying meter into melody,
the criticism seems invalid. Richard Baxter's "Lord, it belongs not to my
care" is included in Palgrave's _Treasury of Sacred Song_. As are four of
John Austin's and three of John Mason's. There is the witchery of
competent verse in Mason's:

    "My Lord, my Love, was crucified;
      He all the pains did bear;
    But in the sweetness of His rest
      He makes His servants share."

So gather at our call a number of writers of the late seventeenth
century, the predecessors of Isaac Watts. By no means the equals of the
Caroline group, yet their work responds to the reasonable demands of
Christian culture, and at its best rises into poetry. It was, however,
destined to be overlooked in a movement for a more popular type of hymn
about to begin.




VI. Watts' Divorce of Hymnody from Literature


These Restoration singers had neither the muscles nor the tools to make a
breach in the solid bulk of the old psalmody. They left it to Isaac Watts
to say what English hymns ought to be and to furnish them. We have
studied his performance in its relation to the Scriptures, and must now
put it into relation with literature.

For a century and more Watts held a supreme place in the worship and the
imaginations of Nonconformists. They cherished a conception of his place
among poets possible only to a very provincial point of view. Or one
would think so. But one's eyes open to find so late as September, 1858,
_The Christian Examiner_, representative of Boston culture, gravely
affirming that "Watts falls below Shakespeare and Milton in sublimity of
thought."

In recent criticism Watts hardly figures at all. Dr. Schelling brushes
him aside from the path of _The English Lyric_. He finds no place in
Palgrave's _Golden Treasury_, but elsewhere its editor counts him "one of
those whose sacrifice of Art to direct usefulness have probably lost them
those honors in literature to which they were entitled."

That is very much Watts' judgment of himself. He thought himself a poet,
and the reception accorded his _Horæ Lyricæ_ (1705) confirmed his
judgment. In later life he came to feel that his _Psalms and Hymns_ were
the greatest things he had done. He did not regard them as poetry but as
the evidence of his renunciation of poetry for edification's sake.

To explain Watts and to justify his method we must recall the audience he
addressed. Independency had only lately won through persecution and
suffering and had not yet attained social respectability. The people who
held on were mostly humble souls of dogged loyalty and narrow
convictions. And for them Watts wrote his hymns. He kept his eye, while
writing, not on the exceptions or even the average level, but rather on
what we might call the underworld of Nonconformity,--"vulgar Christians"
he called them, and "the meanest of 'em."

Dean Farrar, once asked how he managed to preach at Windsor to a
congregation ranging from the royal family to the scullery maids,
replied, "I prepare my sermon for the scullery maids, so that I can be
sure the Queen will understand it." Watts prepared his hymns for "the
scullery maids," but with even less thoughts for a Sir John Hartopp or
Lady Abney of dissent.

These are phrases from the original preface:

[I have] "endeavored to make the sense plain and obvious."

"The metaphors are generally sunk to the level of vulgar capacities."

"Some of the beauties of Poesy are neglected, and some willfully
defaced."

"I have cut out the lines that are too sonorous ... lest a more exalted
Turn of Thought or Language should darken or disturb the Devotion of the
plainest Souls."

He goes on to explain that he had excluded such hymns as were more
figurative or more ambitious, and would reserve them for the next edition
of his "Poems."


The sum of it all is that the man who stood at the fountain-head of
English hymnody chose to open a spring outside the area which we call
literature, and arranged a water-course for its outflow in the direction
in which the two streams, poetry and hymnody, were least likely to meet
and coalesce.

His motive (covering both his "Psalms" and hymns) was to furnish an
evangelical church song. His method was to find the quickest available
descent to the level of the humblest Christian.

One poetical result that method did achieve, however unintended. It
relieved the hymns of a great deal of poetical baggage: those high-flying
rockets of imagery, that opulence of artificial adornments, which were at
that time regarded as essential to poetry, but which are so repulsive to
us. Apart from that Watts' method produced a body of virile verse that
stated and applied the gospel to the various experiences of life very
lucidly and so sympathetically that myriads of people learned to use his
hymns as the natural expression of their own religious feelings.

In that fact lies the justification of Watts' method; and it brought
about the complete and final vindication of the hymn of human composure
in English-speaking lands. And thus the whole body of Watts' work earns a
place in the literature of power; the literature that leaves esthetic
critics cold while it moves men.

The body of his work now lies far behind, and there is none to suggest
its revival. But however hardly Watts tried to suppress his poetic
feeling, it was _a priori_ unlikely that his work should never rise above
the level of his accommodated verse. In some hymns the poet seems to
throw aside the preacher's gown, to become unaware of the meanest
Christian, to walk with God on higher ground. And these, unless we care
to pose as meanest Christians still, are the songs by which Watts should
be remembered, and which we may be glad to sing:

    "When I survey the wondrous cross:"
    "Our God, our Help in ages past:"
    "There is a land of pure delight:"
    "My God, how endless is Thy love:"
    "Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber."

It is the fate of a man who succeeds conspicuously, especially of a
pioneer, to set a fashion and furnish a model. Watts made the model for
English hymns just as Ambrose did for Latin. And as Ambrose's were
succeeded by the "Ambrosiani," so Watts founded a "school" of writers,
procreated by his vitality and inspired by his facility. Dr. Doddridge
was head scholar and Anne Steele a good second. Indeed her truly feminine
emotionalism for a time deceived the elect into believing she was
founding a school of her own.

A long train of writers followed, happily for us not needing to be
catalogued in a survey of the relation of hymns to letters. You cannot
get a sense of their number, and of their skill in reproducing Watts'
faults, from any book on Hymnology. You have to be a grim collector of
their eighteenth century hymn books to understand how diligently they
debased the current coinage of the kingdom with alloy much less costly to
the coiner than poetry is, though of course without any thought of
counterfeiting.




VII. The Wesleyan Hymns as Poetry


The Wesleys were the first to contest the unliterary standard of the hymn
Watts had set up.

The brothers had been reared in the very atmosphere of poetry. The love
of it and the divine afflatus itself moved a number of Samuel Wesley's
household; surely the most interesting family of modern England, till we
come to the Rossettis and Archbishop Benson's.

Charles Wesley began writing hymns at once upon his conversion, and, one
may say, wrote them spontaneously until his death. We have John's
assurance that his own part in the vast bulk of the Wesleyan hymnody was
small. The translations from the German are certainly his, and remain the
best ever made. They are so little appreciated that it is pleasant to
remember that his "Thou hidden love of God, whose height" was the prime
favorite of so high a soul as Emerson: to hear that gentle voice chiding
Moncure Conway, after service in his London chapel, for omitting even one
verse of it.

But the whole body of the Wesleyan hymnody may fairly be regarded as a
joint enterprise. It was John who conceived the ideal of a Methodist
poetry, who appointed his brother poet laureate of the Movement; who
stood behind him as patron and beside him as redactor, and who
superintended the printing.

The hymns were a part of Wesley's scheme of education. Behind the long
succession of "Hymns and Sacred Poems," hymn books, and the cheaper
hymn-tracts that followed almost with the regularity of a
periodical,--behind them all was the single purpose of elevating the
humble minds of his followers by the inspirations of poetry, and the
unfailing conviction that in his brother's verse he had found the medium.
The fullest expression of that purpose and conviction is the preface of
the final Methodist Hymn Book of 1780; the largest collection he made of
his brother's hymns:

"May I be permitted to add a few words with regard to the poetry? Then I
will speak to those who are judges thereof, with all freedom and
unreserve. To these I may say, without offense. 1. In these Hymns there
is no doggerel, no botches, nothing put in to patch up the rhyme, no
feeble expletives. 2. Here is nothing turgid or bombast, on the one hand,
nor low and creeping on the other.... 4. Here are (allow me to say) both
the purity, the strength and the elegance of the ENGLISH language: and at
the same time the utmost simplicity and plainness, suited to every
capacity. Lastly, I desire men of taste to judge (these are the only
competent judges) whether there is not in some of the following verses,
the true Spirit of Poetry; such as cannot be acquired by art and labour;
but must be the gift of nature. By labour a man may become a tolerable
imitator of Spenser, Shakespear, or Milton, and may heap together pretty
compound epithets, as pale-eyed, weak-eyed, and the like. But unless he
is born a Poet, he will never attain the genuine spirit of poetry....

"When poetry thus keeps its place, as the handmaid of piety, it shall
attain not a poor perishable wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away."

This is John Wesley's characteristically complacent stand in the matter
of the relation of the hymn to literature. He takes his place as fourth
in the line of church leaders who have sought to ally hymnody with
poetry: Leo X, Calvin, Wither, Wesley.


Was Wesley justified in regarding his brother's hymns as poetry?

There is nothing conclusive in a suggestion that his judgment of poetry
was capable of being warped by the pull of affection; as illustrated by
his tribute to John Byrom's verse. It is more to the point to ask if his
judgment of his brother's work did not in fact show a rather keen
appreciation of just where the springs of poetry are to be found and as
to what effects in us it is fitted to produce.

If we apply to Charles Wesley's hymns the tests of poetry in Mr. John
Drinkwater's sane and pleasant book, _The Muse in Council_,[5] we can
hardly fail to become aware of an unanticipated area of coincidence.

The essential thing behind poetry, Mr. Drinkwater tells us, its occasion
as well as its spring, is "a most vital and personal experience." The
things "characteristic of fine poetry can be achieved by intense
individual experience and from no other source whatever." So far
certainly Charles Wesley does not fail us. He had within him the springs
of poetry in experiences as deep, as vital, as overwhelming, as man's can
be. His hymns spring from discoveries of great truths passionately
appropriated through a great experience working through feeling and
passing into the imagination.

Now "it is of the necessity that such experience finds, when it is most
profound, to state itself in perfectly selected and ordered words," that
poetry comes into being. And its second test lies in the power of the
poet's "pregnant and living words" "to compel in us an ecstasy which is
exactly a response to that ecstasy of his own." It is questionable if any
body of English verse ever met that test so fully as Wesley's did. It was
the hymns of Charles and not the sermons of John that reproduced in
thousands of lives the deep experiences of the poet. They created a new
type of spiritual experience (and we still call it Wesleyan) that clothed
the whole man with a mental and emotional mood, exalted, affectionate,
ecstatic, tinged by mystical suggestion, lit by an aroused imagination.
They imparted the touch of poetry to humble experiences.


I am far from accusing Mr. Drinkwater of saying that Charles Wesley was a
true poet. I am only applying or perhaps misapplying his canons of poetry
to a candidate of my own selection. In any case they can apply only to a
small proportion of the vast production (some 6,000 hymns). That is all
his brother claims for the selections he made,--that the body of it is
good verse and that some of it exhibits "the true Spirit of Poetry." That
fatal gift of facility led our poet precisely where it has led his
betters in the poetic world, into a low country. And yet the surplusage
conveys to me at least an implication of being written by a poet. Here is
a copy of the 1780 hymn book. I open it at random at page 146, to an
unregarded hymn (No. 143). And this is what catches my eye first:

    "Give me to bow with Thee my head,
      And sink into Thy silent grave;
    To rest among Thy quiet dead:
      'Till Thou display Thy power to save:
    Thy resurrection's power exert,
    And rise triumphant in my heart."

Was it not written by an artist's hand?


The time-spirit is dealing more kindly with the Wesleyan hymns than with
Watts? The Church at large cherishes a considerable group of them among
her spiritual resources:

    "Hark! how all the welkin rings:"
    "Love Divine, all loves excelling:"
    "Christ, whose glory fills the sky:"
    "Come, let us join our friends above:"
    "Come, Thou long-expected Jesus:"
    "All praise to Him who dwells in bliss:"
    "Christ the Lord is risen to-day."

Any one might serve to justify Wesley's estimate of his brother's gift.
But the fact that all of them are still acceptable in use does more. It
contributes something toward testing the permanent value of his proposed
alliance of hymnody with poetry.


But I should like to test Wesley's ideal by a single example he would
regard as too extreme; by a lyric of his brother's he would not admit
into his hymn book. His reason is not far to seek. It lies exposed in the
opening lines:

    "Jesu, Lover of my soul,
      Let me to Thy bosom fly."

Wesley's early experiences among Moravians, whose hymnody fell into a
fleshliness altogether abhorrent, left a great repugnance to anything
like fleshly imagery or terms of human endearment in prayer or song. The
feeling is perfectly sound, and I share it to the full whenever I hear
the popular "Safe in the arms of Jesus." But what Wesley perhaps failed
to consider is that the fleshly image and the endearment are perfectly
permissible in _poetry_; which, as Milton put it, should be not only
"simple" (single in conception) and "passionate," but also "sensuous"
(sensible) in its imagery. And that is precisely what happened in "Jesu,
Lover of my soul."

It envelops us at once in the high atmosphere and transfiguring light of
poetry, so that instinctively we lift the image and endearment to the
height of spiritual exaltation, where the earthly love becomes the
express image of the heavenly.

"Simple, sensuous, passionate." And what artistry! "The mere word-music,"
as Professor Saintsbury has said,[6] "is fingered throughout in the most
absolutely adequate manner." The very opening word, "Jesu," is not
"churchly," but marks a shrinking lest the hissing "s" mar the music.

Now we are dealing with the best-loved hymn in the language; the favorite
of learned and illiterate, high and humble. And why is it so? No critic
urged its acceptance. Average Christians could not analyze its appeal.
Its tenderness is a part of that, but hundreds of the Wesleyan hymns are
equally tender. Its spiritual reality is a partial explanation, but the
hymns in general have as much. And after due tribute to these qualities
the suspicion remains that the secret of its appeal lies in a poetic
beauty that the average man feels without analyzing it, and in a
perfection of craftsmanship that makes him want to _sing_ it simply
because it awakens the spirit of song in him rather than a mood of
reflection.


From this single instance of an actual coincidence of poetry and
popularity, there are no doubt a number of conclusions we might draw
without straining ourselves.

There are two we have to draw:

1st. That poetic beauty in a hymn is not necessarily a bar to spiritual
edification, even among humble people.

2nd. That the particular type of poetic beauty exhibited by the best
loved hymn in the language is the lyrical type. The hymn is lyrical in
the primary sense. It is a song and it evokes singing.




VIII. The Unpoetic Evangelical Hymnody


Charles Wesley's great lyric passed over to the Evangelical side of the
Revival in Whitefield's hymn book, and also, strangely enough, in
Toplady's. Toplady's book was a sincere effort to embody his prefatory
statement that anything designed for worship should keep in view that God
is not only "the God of _Truth_" but also "of _Elegance_." He had some
gift and practice of poetry, and his "Rock of Ages" is the one hymn on
the Evangelical side worthy to parallel "Jesu, Lover of my soul."
"Elegance" was not the divine attribute that especially appealed to the
Evangelical Revival or the Evangelical Movement that grew out of it.

The deep experiences and spiritual yearnings fostered by the Revival
might very well have proved to be springs of poetry and were inevitably
the occasion of much verse. Newton, Fawcett, Berridge, Cennick, Hart,
Williams, Haweis, Peronnet,--these are some of the familiar names, not of
poets but of authors of useful hymns fostered by the Revival. They were
mostly humble people who wrote for their kind, occasionally rising to a
height of emotional eloquence not untouched by imagination, as in
Cennick's "Children of the heavenly King" and Williams' "Guide me, O Thou
Great Jehovah."

Cowper was the poet of the Revival, but his share in its hymnody was
accidental, a tribute to his friendship with John Newton. Many of his
hymns are journey-work, produced at Newton's request, to follow his
sermons. "Oh, for a closer walk with God" is a genuine lyric, because
born of an intense experience and wrought into melody. It was the
singular virility of Newton's contributions rather than the delicacy of
Cowper's that made their _Olney Hymns_ a classic manual of the
Evangelical discipline.

There is, to say the least, a general feeling that the Evangelical point
of view and the Evangelical handling of life tended to ignore
"_Elegance_," to divorce rather than to cement culture and religion. The
Wesleyan and Evangelical view-points met together in the spiritual
intensity they invoked, but in their bearing upon the cultural aspects of
life the advantage lay with the Wesleyan.

It was of course the Evangelical side of the Revival, rather than the
Wesleyan, that became the great influence in determining the hymnody of
Evangelical communions in America; both in forecasting its cultural
relations and in furnishing its actual relations. It fixed, for instance,
the basis of Presbyterian hymnody, when the extreme devotion to Watts had
given away; a basis solid in piety rather than molded by art. If this
Evangelical hymnody was not poetic, it did sound that note of holiness
which Oliver Wendell Holmes, a liberal even among Unitarians, caught and
which he missed from so many later productions.


The growth of general culture is now militating against the continued use
of some of these eighteenth century hymns, precisely as in that century
it militated against the continued use of the rude metrical Psalms. The
progress of culture in the mass of the people is extremely slow, and is
now in a backwater: but viewing humanity long-wise it is perceptible. And
any movement to keep our hymnody abreast of it may be viewed
complacently, for it is inevitable.

And thus the ground is laid for considering the last movement toward
securing an alliance of hymnody with poetry.




IX. Montgomery's Critique of Current Hymnody (1823)


The accumulation of hymns, Wattsian, Wesleyan, Evangelical, awaited until
1823 the careful stock-taking by the poet James Montgomery in an essay
prefixed to his _Christian Psalmist_.

"We have," he says, "hymns without number," but few "that lay claim to
great literary merit."

Dr. Watts he characterizes as "one of the least of the poets of our
country" but "the greatest name among hymn-writers," since "it pleased
God to make his 'Divine Songs' a more abundant and universal blessing
than the verses of any uninspired penman that ever lived." But the critic
lamented much prosaic phrasing and those "rhymes worse than none" that
encouraged the incompetent to imitate his faults.

Montgomery put Charles Wesley next to Watts; a man of genius with an
affluence of diction and splendor of coloring rarely surpassed in
treating Christian experience. His limitation is a "predilection to
certain views of the gospel" that narrows his range. Addison's four hymns
are "pleasing." But they neglect that celebration of God's grace which
constitutes the glory of Doddridge, deficient as he often was in poetry
and eloquence. Toplady "kindled his poetic torch at that of Wesley," but
showed "a peculiarly ethereal spirit" of his own.

The school of Watts does not interest our critic. He praises Cowper's
poetry and Newton's virility. Among the outpourings of the general choir
he finds not a few which "refute the slander that hymns are necessarily
the least intellectual or poetical specimens of literature." "The God of
Abram praise" is a noble ode. The short rescension of "Jerusalem, my
happy home," "by an unknown hand" (often since attributed to the critic
himself) is "delightful."

Montgomery was a facile poet in the narrative and descriptive manner, and
was, Allibone tells us, "a favored guest at every fireside, and the
companion alike of childhood and old age." These words grew pathetic to
me as I threaded the thousand pages of his "Poems" to find a passage or a
lyric worthy a place in even a liberal-hearted anthology. But by some
instinct Montgomery understood the hymn better than most. Two or three of
his own would be his best contribution to a poetic anthology:

    "Forever with the Lord:"
    "Prayer is the soul's sincere desire."

His estimate of what was then in stock was a fair appraisal. He finds a
standing place for the hymn; that sometimes has been watered from the
spring overflow of the stream of poetry on the one side, and never
swamped by the wide waters of commonplace on the other.




X. The Lyrical Movement in Hymnody


This _Christian Psalmist_ of Montgomery was an attempt to gather the best
that had been done. Four years later, in 1827, two books appeared which
looked forward rather than back, and caught the light of the newest
movement in poetry which we are agreed to call the Romantic Revival.
These were _The Christian Year_ of John Keble and the _Hymns_ of Bishop
Heber.

_The Christian Year_, in its meditative way, brings the feasts, fasts and
offices of the Church of England within the transfigured world of nature
and life created by Wordsworth and Shelley and Keats; and views them
through an atmosphere of romance. Keble was not thinking of church hymns.
Those for morning and evening we have taken from his book, however
effective, are merely extracts from his poems. But he furnished the point
of view, the atmosphere, the manner, that make for poetry in many an
English hymn.

The other book, the _Hymns_ of Reginald Heber, still stands four-square
against the background sketched by Montgomery. It was the memorial of an
effort thwarted and yet so effective as to entitle Heber to a fifth place
in the succession of church leaders who have sought to ally hymnody with
poetry.

Early in life he had formed an estimate of the current hymns less
favorable than Montgomery's. He then conceived the bold scheme of
preparing a Church of England hymnal in which every number should be a
lyrical poem. He sought his models and helpers in the current school of
romantic poets. His affiliations were not with Wordsworth's
philosophizing. They were with the group led by Walter Scott; with his
sense of the picturesqueness of olden times, with the romance of
adventure in Southey, with the ringing melodies of Campbell and Byron and
Moore. He appealed to Scott, Southey, Milman, and other friends for
contributions to his book, and to the bishops for its authorization. Most
of the poets failed him and the bishops hesitated. The book was never
printed by him.

After Heber's death John Murray brought out his _Hymns_ in the
wide-margined octavo bound in gray boards that was the recognized format
of Byron and Murray's other poets. Inwardly its distinction lay in the
fifty-seven contributions of Heber, already a venerated figure, and
twelve of Henry Hart Milman, then at the height of his fame as a writer
of poetic drama.

Everything about the manner of publication was intended to suggest
poetry. It was a recommendation of hymnody to high and dry churchmen
disposed to decry it and a challenge to London literary circles. It was a
hymnody with the spirit, the free rhythms and ringing melodies of the new
romantic poetry.

There were no precedents for such picturesque hymns as:

    "Hosanna to the living Lord!"
    "From Greenland's icy mountains:"
    "The Son of God goes forth to war:"
    "Brightest and best of the sons of the morning:"
    "By cool Siloam's shady rill:"
    "When through the torn sail the wild tempest is streaming."

Some of Milman's might have been songs from his dramas:

    "The chariot! The chariot! its wheels roll on fire:"
    "Ride on! ride on in majesty!"
    "Bound upon the accursèd tree:"
    "When our heads are bowed with woe."

The point is not that these lyrics were more poetic than the Wesleyan but
that they were more aggressively so: as if Wesley had aimed to bring the
hymn into the domain of poetry, and Heber had aimed to bring current
ideals of poetry into the domain of hymnody.

He effected no revolution in sacred song as Watts had done, but rather
injected his ideals to work as leaven. What his book accomplished was
through the incorporation of every one of his own and several of Milman's
lyrics into current books of various communions. Once there their
contrast with their more drab surroundings could hardly fail to raise the
question whether it might not be well that this remainder of the hymnody
should likewise be lyrical.

Heber's hymns acted as a precedent, an encouragement toward a change in
the literary standard pretty generally. I think it is fair to say that
they are back of the very recent movement appropriating lyric poems even
when it involves more or less of departure from the traditional
hymn-pattern. Thus the Scottish Presbyterians led the way in adopting
Tennyson's "Sunset and evening star": the American Methodists in adopting
Lanier's "Into the woods my Master went": the Students' Christian
Movement in adopting William Blake's

    "And did those feet in ancient time
      Walk upon England's mountains green?"

Such widely separated instances of what is coming to look like a common
lyrical impulse are the more interesting because not concerted. Probably
they suggest the direction in which our rapidly changing hymnody is
pointed. But even so it would be premature, certainly, to claim at the
present time that the English hymn is literature. There are in fact
several interests which are not concerned that it should be or are
actively in opposition to literary ideals.

There are, first of all, the strong pull of use and wont in the case of
an inherited hymnody which was not framed by literary motives, and the
more tender appeals of personal associations with familiar words. It is,
however, also true that those who gauge hymns by old associations are
continuously passing away. I recall the venerable senior of those engaged
with _The Hymnal_ of 1895 pleading with tears for the retention of
certain hymns that the immense majority of the present-day generation
never heard of.

A second disturbing force is the downward pull of a Sunday school hymnody
not brought under educational ideals and discipline. It is left very
largely under the leadership that can be procured most cheaply. As things
stand the songs taught through the most impressible years not only fail
to familiarize our children with great hymns, but actually cultivate a
taste for things that are unworthy. As the children take their places in
the church the tastes and habits that have really been thrust upon them
protest against acquiring a different and more elevated standard of
praise.

The undeniable liking of the American people for light and catchy music
readily coöperates with these graduates of the Sunday school in bringing
into the church the kindred examples of what are called evangelistic
songs. It is quite true that the words set to these melodies are seldom
more than a verbal accompaniment to the tunes themselves. Only for some
special ineptitude or on some special occasion does anybody give much
thought to them.

There was such an occasion when "Beautiful Isle of Somewhere" was
announced as part of the official program for the funeral of a President
of the United States. The same song was included in the order of
exercises at a vast rally of Sunday school forces at Trenton in 1911. The
then Governor of New Jersey, who was to occupy President McKinley's
chair, interrupted the harmony of that occasion by calling attention to
the extreme silliness of the words, and uttering an indignant protest
against the whole method of the Sunday school interests which made such
inane sentimentalities not only possible but officially appointed.

This occasion was exceptional in the prominence it gave to the words of
one of the current songs. But the words are fairly representative of the
only hymnody in use among considerable sections of church people, and
whose popularity makes it a disturbing force. Only those engaged in the
practical work of making hymn books are in a position to know the
pressure brought to bear upon them to lower the cultural standard of
church song.




XI. The Hymn as Related To Poetry


Every man of letters loves _The Book of Psalms_: not one praises the
Metrical Psalter: all view the modern hymnal in a spirit of criticism.


The precedent was set, when hymns as distinguished from Psalms were new,
by the great Dr. Johnson; who viewed them with an extreme aversion,
partly because they were new and partly because they were loved by
dissenters.

The famous passage from his _Life of Waller_ is too long to quote. Its
substance is that every attempt to animate devotion by poetry has failed.
We get nothing but "pious verse," useful only to assist the memory and
please the ear. This failure is inevitable because intercourse between
the soul and God is in a region beyond the scope of poetry, which loses
its luster and power when it tries to decorate something more excellent
than itself. Experiences of repentance, faith, supplication,
thanksgiving, demand an expression the simplest and most unadorned.

All this seems rather empty of meaning till it dawns on us that Johnson
shared with his time a definition of poetry long since outgrown. He
thinks of art as opposed to simplicity. He thinks of poetry as the art of
treating a theme by way of amplifying it, of hanging decorations on it,
of recommending it by pleasing figures. So long as that definition
persisted, Dr. Johnson's huge shadow lay heavy on the hymns he detested
and extended over the whole area of religious verse. To our modern
notions the criticism has no value. As Dr. Schelling puts it,[7] "The
lyrist may sing the raptures of a pure soul in communion with God, or the
apples of Sodom that turn to dust and bitterness between the teeth of the
lost sinner.... There can be no limits set to art."


The prevalent modern criticism is headed by the great name of Matthew
Arnold. As an apostle of culture the subject was much in his mind. His
feeling is expressed as definitely as anywhere in his _Literature and
Dogma_:

"Hymns, such as I know them, are a sort of composition which I do not at
all admire.... I regret their prevalence and popularity among us. Taking
man in his totality and in the long run, bad music and bad poetry, to
whatever good and useful purpose a man may often manage to turn them, are
in themselves mischievous and deteriorating to him. Somewhere and
somehow, and at some time or other, he has to pay a penalty and to suffer
a loss for taking a delight in them."

Before brushing this aside why not note that Arnold is merely applying to
the main body of our hymns very much the same words that most refined and
thoughtful Christians are applying to current "evangelistic" songs.[8]

May we not go a little farther with our critic? Is it not true of some of
our church hymns that they fail to fulfill their high mission simply
because they are not "good poetry"? Poetry has a singular property not
only to arouse our dull feelings but actually to reproduce in us
something of the high experience of the poet himself. Are we not prudent
in coveting such a creative gift for our hymns?

Why is it lacking so often, even from those written by poets? Coleridge
said of some of his own work that it was not poetry but thoughts
expressed in verse. Apply that distinction to our hymns: for example to
those of William Cullen Bryant. Every conscientious editor of an American
hymnal must have scanned the hymns which the first of our poets to win
distinction thought it worth while to gather into a volume, printed
twice. But he scans them to little purpose. Bryant himself has explained
their motive and origin. The earlier were written at the solicitation of
Miss Sedgwick, who wished the rising poet represented in a new hymn book.
The later were furnished at the request of some friend or committee to
give distinction to a corner-stone laying or ordination or installation
or what not. They have no poetic experience behind them. They are simply
"thoughts for the occasion" expressed in verse. And that is why they fail
us.

The case is not very different with the hymns prepared with the express
purpose of edifying us: with the homiletical verse of Watts or Davies,
that in the end remains not poetry but sermons; or the hymns leading up
to a moralizing conclusion, like the Sunday school stories we used to
give the children. It is regrettable that pastors continue to make such
large use of them, doubtless as mere "fillers" or to illustrate a
sermon-theme. For these uninspired verses have hardly retained their old
capacity for teaching and admonition. They do not penetrate the crust of
spiritual apathy that is part of the price the average Christian pays for
sharing the complications of modern life. They do not arouse the
congregation to spiritual idealism and holy imaginings. They do not light
a candle in the modern heart.

Now, if these things are true:

(a) If Johnson's dictum that hymns are _theoretically_ outside the sphere
of poetry is unwarranted;

(b) If Arnold's criticism that our hymns are _in fact_ outside the sphere
of poetry is wholly justified in respect of the "evangelistic" hymnody
and to a certain extent in the church hymnody;

(c) If there are certain properties of poetry that make it capable of
adding something to spiritual beauty and encouraging spiritual vigor;

(d) If the Wesleyan hymns have demonstrated that the lyrical type of
poetic beauty has the particular appeal to Christian feeling that awakens
the spirit of song;

Then we seem to find solid ground for a conviction that the present-day
lyrical impulse that is affecting our church hymnody is turned at all
events in the right direction; that in following it we are really seeking
the old trail which Calvin opened and which the Wesleys extended.


The lyrical movement no doubt has its own hazard, and it has two very
definite limitations.

The hazard is implicit in the very motive of hymn singing; the
heightening of religious emotion. The danger is of mistaking sugary
sentiment for true feeling and its rhetorical expression in "soft
luxurious flow" for true poetry.

The limitations of the movement are those suggested once for all by St.
Paul, the first critic of Christian hymns and obviously the patron saint
of this lectureship. "I will sing," he says, "with the Spirit": thus
defining hymnody for always as a spiritual function. The Christian hymn,
that is to say, even though it force a passage through the needle's eye
of literary criticism, must always stand apart from the poetry that is
dominated by purely esthetic ideals. It must compass spiritual beauty
first of all: happy if, seeking the Kingdom of God first, His gift of
poetry shall be added to it.

The other limitation St. Paul expressed by saying, "I will sing with the
understanding also." For, if the spiritual function of hymnody is to
extend into a social function, the hymns must be kept within the
understanding of those who do the singing. Simplicity is not only a
tradition but a principle of congregational hymnody. It does not follow
that church songs should be so commonplace and obvious that the
inattentive man, though a fool, need not err therein. It is better if
they teach something we had not thought about or admonish us of something
we had forgotten in life's rush.

At the worst St. Paul offers the alternate of "an interpretation." It is
enough if there be an interpreter in the pulpit, ready and patient to
disclose deeper meanings and hidden beauties beneath words that however
simple are never as transparent as we suppose to an average Christian.

    "A primrose by a river's brim
    A yellow primrose [is] to him."

At the same time there is no place in popular hymnody for verse
overweighted by philosophical thought, flamboyant with decoration,
complicated by self-conscious ingenuity, or soaring to mystic heights
that present no foothold for companionship. When such hymns occur in our
books they are to be regarded as the indiscretions of an editor.


These two properties of the Christian lyric, spirituality and simplicity,
are differential. They hedge the hymn not only from verse as a whole but
even from the main body of religious verse. Each limitation will perhaps
continue to act upon many of our poets as a deterrent and upon many of
our critics as a taboo.

There is, however, no valid reason why poetry should not concern itself
with the deepest feelings and highest aspirations of the spirit of man.
There is no reason why hymn writing should not be recognized as a
legitimate type of lyrical art. There is no reason why the poet's
imagination and the poet's craftsmanship should not bring fresh offerings
of strength and beauty into the sanctuary of God through the medium of
the modern hymn as well as through the ancient Psalm.




                              LECTURE FOUR
                        THE CONTENTS OF THE HYMN


The themes proper for a hymn, and the things it should contain or omit,
depend altogether upon the theory we happen to hold of its function. And
from the viewpoint of the various theories that have obtained our subject
is best approached.




I. A Hymnody of Praise


And first the theory that _the hymn's special function is the praise of
God_.

This was St. Augustine's, expressed in the first formal definition
already quoted: 'Praise of God in song is called a hymn. It must be
praise.'

The definition is still classical. Its echo is heard most clearly, oddly
enough, in communions that are least liturgical. In them the hymnody is
still "the service of praise." The long Psalmody Controversy was
designated then and since as dealing with "the subject-matter of praise."

The practice of the Church never tallied with the theory. It accepted the
Psalter, which contains much more than the praise-songs of Israel, but
also enlarged it with songs of spiritual experience. The metrical hymns
of Ambrose are more than praise.[1] Those who introduced varying "human
composures" in the eighteenth century retained the Psalter for praise and
appropriated the hymn to express evangelical convictions. The modern
hymnal covers every type of religious expression, even the sigh of
religious despondency, just as the Psalter did.

Nevertheless it remains true that reverence is the beginning of religion
and gratitude the fount of Christian song; that St. Paul enclosed his
"spiritual odes" in an atmosphere of thanksgiving; and that the hymn of
praise is still the highest type of our church song.

Some recent hymnals, cumbered with many themes, tend to diminish songs of
praise. The trend of their thought is away from a God above the world to
a God immanent in the world and closer to life than breathing. The
historic hymns that celebrate His infinite majesty lose spiritual reality
to minds that pass through phases of mystical communion with God to what
seems like coalescence.

Probably if all church song were praise, the praise would grow fulsome;
certainly it would grow repetitious. Yet it has a high office all its
own. Its loss would silence the leading note in the chord of devotion.
Nothing but a "Sanctus" fitly anticipates those songs of the ransomed
Church in _Revelation_. I have sometimes wondered whether it was his
feeling for pure religion or his feeling for poetry that led Tennyson to
regard Heber's "Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty" as the greatest of
English hymns.




II. A Hymnody of Edification


A second theory is that _the hymn's special function is the edification
of the singers_. And so far as praise has a reaction of uplift the song
of praise retains a place.

It is a theory that particularly commends itself to a generation much
more keen for efficiency than worship. And it is quite certainly within
the limits of St. Paul's charter. From this point of view the content of
the hymn is:

1. An embodiment of some Christian truth; and hence the Doctrinal Hymn
with its teaching power;

2. An embodiment of the spiritual interpretation of life; with its office
of arousing spiritual feeling.




                         1. _The Doctrinal Hymn_


(a) The Doctrinal Mnemonic. In dealing with the disturbance at Colossæ,
St. Paul put first the power of song to teach Christian truths. It would
be hard to believe him so short-sighted as to neglect furnishing the
Colossians with rhythmical formulas of things a Christian must know for
his soul's health that could be set to familiar cantillations.

That is the doctrinal hymn in crudest form, the doctrinal mnemonic. When
the Reformation came all the leaders except Zwingli put formulas of the
faith into simple metrical forms. The once familiar tune "Commandments"
is the melody to which Calvin set the Ten Commandments in his Genevan
Psalter. And truly a wonderful thing is verse in its appeal to human
instincts, in the power of its rhythmic march, its cadences and rhymes,
to grip our minds and possess our memory.

We think of mnemonic hymns as bygone or as milk for babes. But there is
no more perfect specimen than one in Cardinal Newman's _Dream of
Gerontius_, which Dr. Sanday has included among the hymns for the
University of Oxford. It begins:

    "Firmly I believe and truly
      God is Three and God is One;
    And I next acknowledge duly
      Manhood taken by the Son."

(b) The Didactic Hymn. It is a step upward from the mnemonic to the hymn
that aims to convey doctrine didactically.

The most conspicuous modern advocate and producer of didactic hymns is
Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, in his _The Holy Year_, 1862.
We have still with us several survivals of his "vehicles of sound
doctrine";

"O day of rest and gladness;" tracing the origins and functions of the
Christian Sunday:

"Holy, Holy, Holy Lord!"; a justification of the "Sanctus" and catalogue
of the various groups of singers who employ it:

"O Lord of heaven and earth and sea;" which in its full form enumerates
the differing types of the divine gifts as the rationale and measure of
our own.

None of these greatly warms the heart, but they are exceptional in being
frankly didactic without quenching the spirit of song. For the weakness
of didactic hymns is their didacticism. Our very nerves protest when we
are asked to _sing_, and then rising find ourselves back in the
school-room with a lesson in sound doctrine to be recited.

The success of _The Holy Year_, most likely, encouraged Samuel J. Stone,
four years later, to undertake an explanation of the Apostles' Creed to
the poor of his flock at Windsor in a series of hymns. The one now most
familiar, "The Church's One Foundation," explains the article on "The
Holy Catholic Church," and in method is rigidly didactic. Each line is a
statement from the Bible, accumulated with an aim of justifying from
Scripture the high Anglican doctrine of the Church; its divine authority,
its sacraments, its essential unity, its communion of saints, etc. If
this didactic method is what makes the hymn so effective among Christians
of all types, then it is not only the peak of didactic hymnody, but
distinctly a recommendation of didacticism.

My own impression would be that the hymn owes its power neither to its
method nor its manner, but to an intense conviction and passionate
loyalty written between the lines. As if a teacher were describing the
features of his country to a class that were learning most of their
geography from the thrill in their teacher's voice.


(c) The Doctrinal Lyric. And this forecasts the only type of doctrinal
hymn which fully attains spiritual reality and whose teaching power far
surpasses the formally didactic,--the hymn, that is to say, which
presents doctrine lyrically, as mediated (I was about to say, filtered)
through personal experience.

The special sphere of hymnody lies of course in the feelings rather than
the understanding. The distinction between a catechism and a doctrinal
hymnody is (or ought to be) that the first states doctrine with
precision, the other in terms of feeling. The true hymn is conceived in
feeling and aims to evoke it.

But then feeling, other than mere excitement, has its root in
understanding. The hymn that cometh up like a flower and whose fragrance
fills the sanctuary is always rooted in some doctrine; first apprehended
and then transmuted through personal experience into a personal
conviction. I believe, therefore have I spoken: but it is the feelings of
the heart that make my words melodious.

A great hymn, I venture to think, is the fullest embodiment of Christian
doctrine. For a great hymn is "the echo of a great soul"[2] giving
lyrical expression to truth apprehended through a high experience, in
words that both use the common speech and transcend it.


This view would be confirmed, I am sure, by a review in chronological
sequence of the hymn books of our English-speaking Protestantism. It was
at the close of some such conspectus in a former Stone Lecture that the
late Professor John De Witt wrote me:

"Really it awakens in me the suspicion that there is no better point of
view from which to study the development and the reaches of Christian
belief than that offered by hymnody. This is not strange, for after all
beliefs of the first rate in influence receive, and, I have the
impression, always have received their best and final embodiment in
poetry, and especially in lyric poetry."

Poetry is not of course a suitable medium for the precise definitions
that find place in a Confession. There is an illustration in Heber's
great hymn. The opening, "Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty" gives
perfect poetical expression to the doctrine of the Trinity. The closing
line, "God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity," instead of attaining a
poetic climax, is not poetry at all but simply a reversion to Nicene
definition. What poetry can do for doctrine is to humanize it, to set it
in the light of imagination and to clothe it with feeling. And it is this
handling of doctrine that has made the church hymn book the actual creed
of countless thousands of Christians who have never so much as had the
historic church confessions in their hands. I think this is still
measurably true, though probably our hymns have never been sung so
thoughtlessly as now, owing to that singular but prevalent gift of
inattention so conspicuous just now in public worship.[3]

This gift of inattention, so far as hymnody is concerned, has been
greatly fostered, no doubt, by the quick and rattling melodies and the
rapid verse which the young people are trained to sing. In the meantime
the teaching power of great hymns remains, an asset of the Church hardly
included in the inventory of her educational resources, and in her
educational practice generally disregarded. We ought, I think, to feel
that the subordination of the hymn book to the catechism as a means of
instruction is a Scottish inheritance rather than a counsel of prudence.
Certainly it is opposed to the best pedagogy, and to a reasonable
psychology.


In this place, at least, it ought to be sufficient to quote from the
preface of Dr. Archibald Alexander's long-forgotten hymn book:[4]

"Evangelical hymns are peculiarly suited to be the vehicle of gospel
truth to the young and ignorant. It is a fact that unlettered Christians
retain in their minds more of the gospel in the words of the spiritual
songs which they are accustomed to sing than in any other form, and
children can perhaps be taught the truths of religion in this way, more
effectually than in any other ... the understanding is reached with most
certainty through the feelings of the heart."

Dr. Alexander's words were printed a century ago, and it is quite
possible that the Church's failure to act on them may bear some part in
the net results of a Christian education that at a century's end has left
the body of young people in what the chaplains of the Great War and the
instructors in our colleges are agreed to call an astonishing ignorance
of the very rudiments of Christian doctrine. I do not envy the man who
may feel the call to conduct the rising generation through a course of
systematic theology, addressed to minds so hostile to authority and so
careless of discipline. But I do cherish a hope of reaching them, more
insidiously, through the avenue of great Christian song that lifts us up
from the levels of materialism almost in spite of ourselves to an
atmosphere of spiritual feeling in which truth may be discerned.




                   2. _The Hymn of the Spiritual Life_


Christian doctrine lays the ground for a spiritual conception of life.
And so the teaching hymn of St. Paul's injunction is coupled with the
hymn of the spiritual life wherewith we "admonish one another." Those who
interpret the phrase as "rebuking one another" travesty the whole subject
and turn the fellowship of song into a scolding-bee. If we take the
literal meaning of the Greek verb, "to put in mind of," then it
complements "teaching" and fills out the twofold function of the Hymn of
Edification:

1. To instruct us in the things we need to learn;

2. To bring to our remembrance the things that get crowded out of life:
its atmosphere of grace, the heavenly call, the Christian ideals and
sanctions, the incentives to brotherly service, the beauty of holiness,
the hope of heaven,--in short, the spiritual conception of life.

These hymns of life fill the larger part in many of our hymnals. An
editor's custom is to group them by subject, repentance, faith, love,
hope, etc. But there are no partitions in the soul, where faith and love
flow mingled through. The partitions of the hymn book are only a rough
and ready attempt to classify by hand.[5]

We shall get at the contents of the hymns of life a bit more
scientifically if we group them by their method.


(a) The Sermonic Hymn, whose method is homiletical. Very likely it
includes doctrinal matter and almost certainly some exegesis, but it is
sermonic because the value of its observations lies in the application of
them. It is a sermonette in verse.

In the history of English hymnody the sermonic hymn was the first comer,
the prototype. The large majority of Dr. Watts' hymns (I should think)
are sermonic. Each carries its text as well as its theme at its head, and
most of them proceed in the homiletic manner:

    "Behold what wondrous grace!"
    "Mistaken souls that dream of heaven:"
    "Who hath believed Thy word:"
    "Why should the children of a king:"
    "How sad our state by nature is."

Homilies all, from text to application! Naturally so, because among the
dissenters, for whom Watts wrote them, the homiletical ideal of worship
dominated everything.

Inevitably so with the followers of Watts, who wrote their hymns under
the sway of feeling aroused in composing a sermon; turning its points
into verse for the very purpose of getting it sung at the sermon's close
by the congregation who had heard it. The manuscript draft sufficed for
the purpose, because the singing proceeded line by line as the precentor
read it out.

All the hymns of Doddridge and President Davies of Princeton were made
and used after this fashion, and not printed during their lives, unless
the sermon itself happened to appear in pamphlet form.

The contents of the sermonic hymn are as wide as life:

    _The gospel hymn_, "Not all the blood of beasts:"
    _The hymn of invitation_, "Return, O wanderer, return:"
    _The call to repentance_, "Deep in the dust before Thy throne:"
    _The hymn of confession_, "Sin, like a venomous disease:"
    _The hymn of faith_, "Faith is the brightest evidence:"
    _The hymn of consolation_, "Why do we mourn departing friends:"
    _The call to battle_, "Am I a soldier of the cross:"
    _The warning_, "How short and hasty is our life:"
    _The last call_, "Death! 'tis a melancholy day."

The sermonic hymn had a great day and to some extent survives. It is
curious to note the revival of a rather pronounced homiletical method in
the hymns of what is called the new social gospel. Our friends outside
have caught not only the pulpit graces but even the pulpit twang.


(b) The Hymn of Personal Experience, which substitutes example for
precept. The singer tells his own inward experience, his spiritual mood,
his actual discoveries, his personal privileges. And these range all the
way from the first joy at finding Christ in Bonar's exquisite "I heard
the voice of Jesus say," through Charles Wesley's experience of
temptation in "Jesu, Lover of my soul," to the heights of consecration in
Matheson's "O Love that wilt not let me go."

These are known as the "I and my" hymns, in which the singer speaks for
himself as against the "We" hymns, in which he strives to express the
mind of the collective Church.

The particular object of marking this distinction is to clear the ground
for a motion to exclude the "I" hymns from public worship altogether. And
the original proposer, or at least the first one with influence enough to
make his motion heard, was Bishop Wordsworth in his _The Holy Year_ we
have already looked into. He supports it by two propositions:

(i) The impropriety, the egotism, the impertinence of any one person
obtruding his personal feelings and experiences, and worst of all, his
boast of special privileges, as a medium for the public prayer and praise
of God's people.

I tried to show in the first lecture that St. Paul made individuality of
the very essence of hymnody because it is a spiritual function, and only
by singing one to another made into common song. If songs of the
spiritual life are to have any part in our hymnody, what can they be
except songs of some soul who wrote of what life meant to him? There is
no other spiritual experience than individual experience; no songs that
enshrine it that do not really begin with "I." It is personality, here as
generally, that makes a lyric inspiring.

When the long-awaited _Presbyterian Hymnal_ appeared in 1874, the editor
had transposed Mrs. Steele's "Father, whate'er of earthly bliss" into a
"We" hymn: "Give us a calm and thankful heart," and so on. The hymn was a
favorite then, and the protest so immediate and so general that the
publishers felt compelled to alter the stereotype plate.

(ii) The bishop's other ground for suppressing "I and my" hymns was their
contrast to those of the early Church:--

"One of the most striking differences between Ancient and Modern Hymns is
this,--that the former are always _objective_, the latter are very often
_subjective_. The former are distinguished by self-forgetfulness, the
latter by self-consciousness." And so on at some length; illustrating the
offensive hymns not only by Watts' "When I can read my title clear," but
by Wesley's "Jesu, Lover of my soul."

How often, one wonders, have the above words been quoted? In how many
books incorporated? They lie before me, as I write, in the current number
of a periodical cited by a Presbyterian clergyman as final evidence of
the decadence of our hymnody.

But what ground of fact have they to stand on? The Psalms were the first
hymns of the Church: the evangelical canticles perhaps next. Is the 51st
Psalm purely objective? And would "The Lord is my Shepherd" be improved
by remodeling into a "We" hymn? But, the bishop says, the "I" and "my" of
the Psalms are "words of the Holy Spirit Himself speaking by a Prophet
and King" collectively for the whole body of the faithful. If so, what
the Spirit actually did was to inspire an individual to voice his
personal trust, and then to set a precedent for the collective use of his
"I and my" hymn. And the same thing must be said of Simeon's canticle,
"Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," which is not
notably objective.

In the later hymns of the Latin Church,

    "Jesu, dulcis memoria,"
    "O Deus, ego amo Te,"
    "Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas,"

the bishop sees a decline from Catholicity, a tendency to individualism,
an idiosyncrasy of Medievalism "anticipating the peculiar characteristics
of Methodism."


The mere fact that such objections have been proposed and are somewhat
widely held ought to serve not so much by putting the Church into an
attitude of defense as by reminding her that the only way she can justify
the admission of these lyrics of individual experience into her public
song is by a somewhat anxious scrutiny of the lyrics themselves in the
special interests of popular edification. Of any given hymn of Christian
experience in public use it is not enough to say that the author was a
saint, his experience a real one and his lyric a sincere record. It
remains to inquire if his experience was edifying:--

(i) _There is the test of spiritual wholesomeness._ A study of the
spiritual diaries of good people, such as Mrs. Burr has made,[6] reveals
a morbid strain veining the experiences of elect souls, occasioned
sometimes by bad health, sometimes by inherent weakness of the spiritual
condition as revealed by contact with life. Such tendencies came to the
surface certainly in the exciting atmosphere of the great Evangelical
Revival of the eighteenth century, whose hymnody, so abundant and so
spiritual, happens to be a main source of our own.

The spiritual writhings, the blackness of despair, the unfitness for
life, which so many of the converts were called to pass through are
somewhat appalling even in the reading. In the case of John Cennick it is
only "delicacy" that forbears from regarding his state of mind as
deranged. Happily this does not color his cheerful hymn, "Children of the
heavenly King." But it does suggest a scrutiny of the large body of his
hymnody. The poet Cowper, another convert, is the typical case of a
beautiful soul struggling with congenital melancholia, spurred by the
revival excitements at Olney into violent insanity. In reading his most
touching hymn, "Oh, for a closer walk with God," I do not need to inquire
how much is of grace and how much of melancholia, but I wonder sometimes
if the promiscuous use of such tender regrets does really minister to the
public health or only encourage private moods of spiritual depression.

We will all agree, I suppose, that the undoubted power these lyrics of
personal experience have over us comes from their gift of suggestion,
greatly augmented as it is by the witchery of rhythm and often by
hallowed associations.

This being acknowledged, the Christian Church ought to be willing to
listen at least to what the new Psychology has to say of this potent gift
that lies in her hands to use to the best effect; and so far as she finds
the ground firm and the air clear, she ought to apply its teachings to
her own hymnody of edification.

I venture therefore to quote from Evelyn Underhill's _The Life of the
Spirit and the Life of To-day_:

"This tendency of the received suggestion to work its whole content for
good or evil within the subconscious mind, shows the importance which we
ought to attach to the tone of a religious service, and how close too
many of our popular hymns are to what one might call psychological sin;
stressing as they do a childish weakness and love of shelter and petting,
a neurotic shrinking from full human life, a morbid preoccupation with
failure and guilt. Such hymns make devitalizing suggestions, adverse to
the health and energy of the spiritual life; and are all the more
powerful because they are sung collectively and in rhythm, and are cast
in an emotional mold."

Miss Underhill in a footnote goes on to apply her teachings to what she
is unkind enough to call "Hymns of the Weary Willie type"; hymns of an
experience that has grown tired and is disillusioned:

    "O Paradise! O Paradise!
      Who doth not crave for rest?"

(ii) _There is even a test of cheerfulness_ by which our hymns may well
be tried, notably the hymns of that Great Revival, but also, as a recent
rereading convinces me, the evening hymns we sing as those shadows deepen
that are so suggestive of the shadow of death.

The shadow of death lies very heavily on the hymnody of the Evangelical
Revival. There hangs in my study an embroidered sampler dated 1788, in
which "Ann Smith, aged 11," has lettered in various silks the text of Dr.
Watts' "Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound." The piety that set such a
task for childhood was an inheritance from the Revival in which Charles
Wesley did not hesitate to offer the Methodists a hymn addressed to a
corpse, "Ah! lovely appearance of death;" and a great number of
Evangelical hymn writers felt called to follow up their themes until in
the final verse they could consign them to the grave. There grew up a
habit and then a tradition of thus shadowing the themes of life with
life's inevitable goal. It is a tradition the Church has grown out of,
and much of this depressing hymnody has disappeared in successive
winnowings. But one is surprised, in examining our current hymn books,
with the extent of the traces that remain; mostly, I suppose, because
woven in with materials really edifying.

But the habit of living in the presence of impending death, so
detrimental to bodily health, cannot be edifying to the spirit. As one
matures in experience he realizes that the cheerfulness he always
recognized as winsome is one of God's greatest spiritual gifts. Blest is
any ministry which, to use Lord Balfour's words, "serves the great cause
of cheering up." What ministry better adapted to that end than a cheerful
Christian song?[7]

"Is any merry? let him sing Psalms" is St. James' little contribution to
the apostolical ideal of Christian song; the wholesome Luther transposed,
bidding us cultivate a merry mood while we are singing. Even yet the
modern Church carries on the good tradition, as she recovers her spirits
at Christmas time, and sings:

    "God rest you merry, gentlemen,
      Let nothing you dismay."

(iii) Of course _the supreme test of the fitness of a lyric of personal
experience for congregational use is that of spiritual reality._
Eccentric experiences are entertaining but not edifying. Super-mystical
flights perplex God's little ones. Temperamental attitudes are not
imitable. Even the spiritual aspirations of a hymn must be kept at least
within telescopic sight of the congregation.

We are not called upon to sympathize with a scrupulosity that demands
from every one who joins in a common song the literal appropriation of
its every phrase. That would make the singing of a hymn equivalent to
signing an affidavit that all the facts and aspirations therein set forth
have been verified in the singer's experience. But poetry does not come
home to us in just that way. It helps us to reproduce the poet's
experience by heightening our own. A lyrical hymn expresses a poet's
experience higher than our own, let us say. He clothes it in words of
beauty so that we may like it, and through liking may gain a longing for
the heights. We may sing the hymn often before we learn to like it, and
may like it long before we win the heights. But if it encourages a step
upward it is a hymn of edification.

There are no doubt hymns which do formulate that affidavit for our use.
Notably Dr. Watts' "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed," with its climax:

    "Here, Lord, I give myself away,
      'Tis all that I can do."

But surely no prudent pastor would invite a promiscuous congregation thus
to play the part of Ananias.

A congregation should be protected also, in the interests of spiritual
reality, from an over-sentimentality in lyrics of personal feeling.
Difficult as it may prove to draw the line, there is a real distinction
between hymns that heighten religious emotion to good purpose and those
that merely play upon undisciplined susceptibilities to the weakening
rather than the strengthening of the will. For reasons that are well
understood a too emotional devotion is apt to tend to an undue
familiarity with the person of our Lord. A hymn whose words aim to
transmute His spiritual presence into flesh and blood is certainly no
nearer reality than the words of the priest performing the same function
in the sacrifice of the Mass. The peculiarly feminine emotions of some of
our hymns must seem very unreal to valiant souls.


There is even greater difficulty in applying the test of reality to the
congregational use of the hymn of penitence. The outgoing Moderator of a
recent General Assembly remarked in his sermon that "we have deleted sin
from our hymn books."[8] Certainly any books to which the remark may
apply have passed out of spiritual realities. The fact of sin is
fundamental and is bound to color the songs of the Church till time ends.
The question remains, how is our sense of individual sin best related to
our hymnody?

In early New England it was regarded as sufficient punishment for the
worst offense that it be confessed publicly before the Church. We will
all agree, that if expediency demands that a great sinner "tell it to the
Church," such public confession must be made in very plain prose. If no
such expediency exists, I am disposed to feel that the cry of the soul
from sin's depths may best be kept where none but God can hear. Or, if
the need of confession be urgent, that it be made in confidence to one of
God's ministers.

Reality demands of each one of us that we bring to God's house the burden
of sinfulness. But that sense of sin creates no impulse whatever to sing.
It is only the sense of sin forgiven that wakens the spirit of song. And
I should say that our hymns should be confined to that phase of
repentance which turns away from sin to behold the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sins of the world. Is not that indicated by the fact that
Monsell's "My sins, my sins, my Saviour" is so ineffectual in
congregational use, while Miss Elliott's "Just as I am, without one plea"
touches the common heart?

The menace of a public hymn of confession is the practical certainty that
it will be taken upon many lips lightly. I have noticed that some who
most favor their congregational employ are equally critical of "The
General Confession" in the Prayer Book, on the ground that used
promiscuously it is used with a thoughtlessness that breeds insincerity.
But nothing applies to a formula of confession in very rhythmical prose
that does not apply to a hymn of like content.


(c) The Hymn of Prayer. In this third group of Hymns of Life, possibly
only four familiar ones take prayer as a theme to be developed:

    "My God, is any hour so sweet:"
    "From every stormy wind that blows:"
    "There is an eye that never sleeps:"
    "Prayer is the soul's sincere desire."

The Hymn of Prayer is rather one in the form of prayer, with its
petitions versified. Its contents cover life. No one can limit them
except by abridging our desires. All we can demand is that the
subject-matter be submitted to the same tests that determine edification
in the hymns of experience.

The reason prayer occupies so small a place in a classified hymnal is
because the whole book is so permeated by its spirit that segregation is
impracticable. The doctrinal lyric, "Rock of Ages" is a prayer; so is the
lyric of experience, "Jesu, Lover of my soul."

This preponderance of prayers is surprising only from the point of view
claiming praise as the hymn's special function. For the "psalms" of the
early Church were largely prayers, and in non-liturgical churches the
hymn book has always been the people's prayer book. Its importance as
such is greatly enhanced by the failure of our pulpit prayers to function
as they once did. The ominous rubric, now so familiar in our orders of
service, "_The congregation will remain seated during the prayers_,"
violates the law of probability. The probability being that a seated
congregation is not praying, though possibly listening to the minister.
As the 1787 draft of the Presbyterian _Directory for Worship_ put it,
"There cannot be devotion without the appearance of devotion." (This is
not one of Chesterton's paradoxes, but a bit of sound psychology.)

Our hymns of prayer at all events are sung in an attitude of devotion and
have the felicity of direct address to God. The rhythm of the verse that
makes common utterance practicable, the glow of poetic feeling that
reaches the heart, the medium of the music that helps to express the
inexpressible,--all these features of the hymn of prayer enhance the
opportunity it offers of real communion with God. And if it does no more
than diffuse an atmosphere of reverence it has already brought an answer
to its petitions.

The Metrical Litany is a special type of the Hymn of Prayer now familiar.
Sometimes too much in the inventory manner, it is everywhere effective in
"Father, hear Thy children's call," sung to Dr. Gower's music. By
intention, no doubt, the metrical litany is a liturgical hymn, as in
Pollock's sevenfold "Jesus, in Thy dying woes," designed to punctuate the
seven-hour devotions of Good Friday. But "Just as I am" is also a litany,
composed by a lady whose detestation of high church lacked nothing in
emphasis.

Miss Elliott's hymn is in itself an ample vindication of the metrical
litany. I have sometimes felt, as the address before the Communion closed
with the words, "Let us therefore so come that we may find refreshing and
rest unto our souls," and the congregation rises together to sing as an
introit set to Barnby's music, that litany with its recurring refrain, "O
Lamb of God, I come,"--I have sometimes felt that it was as perfect an
expression of devotion as one is likely to come upon in this world.




III. A Churchly Hymnody


The third theory is that _the special function of the hymn is churchly_.
It is distinctively church song, as being the authorized medium through
which the congregation, as representing the corporate Church, can offer
its praise in a way consistent with its unity and the appointed ordering
of its worship.

That hymnody exists to supply the Church with hymns was obvious even to
old-fashioned Presbyterians, as appears from the title of Dr. Charles S.
Robinson's first book, _Songs of the Church_. And that the hymn fulfilled
its function by contributing to public worship is implied in the title of
his second, _Songs of the Sanctuary_. The theory that the hymn is church
song in the sense of uttering the Church's voice is something quite
different, and if applied to the contents of Dr. Robinson's books would
much reduce their bulk.

The theory, as it affects English hymnody, is a product of the Oxford
Revival of the eighteen thirties. It rests upon three foundations: a
heightened conception of the Church, an ideal of worship as its corporate
offering to God, and a new emphasis on the Church Year as the framework
and calendar of that worship.

On these foundations the Oxford reformers proceeded to reconstruct
English hymnody, partly by writing it anew, partly by shifting to the new
basis so much of the old as it retained.




                  1. _The Hymn of the Church Militant_


The ideal of a corporate worship gives us first the Hymn of the Church,
with its new note of self-consciousness, possibly of spiritual pride. The
Church, as seen from Oxford, is portrayed, as we have discovered already,
in a doctrinal hymn, "The Church's one Foundation." Quaintly enough the
one that seems nearest to being its precursor did not come out of the
Wesleys' high church period, but out of the heart of Connecticut
Congregationalism,--President Dwight's "I love Thy kingdom, Lord." The
only hymn on the Church that came out of the Evangelical Revival was
Newton's "Glorious things of thee are spoken," with its Old Testament
flavor and culmination of pure edification. Stone's typically Oxford
hymn, "Round the sacred city gather," is also for edification, but how
different the criteria of the Church:

    "God the Spirit dwells within thee,
      His Society divine,
    His the living word thou keepest,
      His thy Apostolic line.

    "Ancient prayer and song liturgic,
      Creeds that change not to the end,
    As His gifts we have received them,
      As His charge we will defend."

Such is the Church within the ramparts, and such when marching forth in
Baring-Gould's "Onward, Christian soldiers" in martial parade, with the
processional cross "going on before": like an army because
corporate,--"All one body we."


The Oxford conception of churchliness, covering all life and endeavor,
gives a new basis for the Hymn of Service also; making it distinctively a
hymn of the Church militant; singing, while working the parish, of the
Church's functions; singing, while working abroad, of the Church's
commission.

And here, it seems to me, the sense of the Church's solidarity, the
conviction that the call to personal service is within the one
commission, the assurance that our work is included in the anticipation
of the Church's victory,--these things make the hymn of service a new
song by making it church song. The Christian who goes forth alone to
solve the gigantic problems that face us, the evangelization of a
reluctant world, the infusion of a spiritual conception of life into the
social order, may steel his heart with the song of duty as he dips up the
seas of human trouble with his little bucket, but I do not see how he can
encourage his heart with the song of hope. It is the multitude of
laborers that brings promise, the organization of labor that brings
effectiveness. And if that be so the church song is the most inspiring
hymn of service.

I am not sure that Oxford ideals have produced any very notable
work-song, unless it be Bishop Coxe's "Lord, her watch Thy Church is
keeping." What it has really done is expressed symbolically by the very
simple act of gathering up all these hymns of varied service under the
common heading of "Church Work."


At this point the Oxford Movement, which was ecclesiastical, is
confronted by the recent Social Movement, which is secular. This makes a
practical appeal to many of the least ecclesiastically-minded within the
churches, who prefer to replace "the Songs of the Church" by "Hymns of
the Kingdom," and who are no doubt one with us in heart and hope while
they remind us that churchianity is hardly Christianity. They would
generously coöperate with the great company of outside workers who turn
their backs to the Church and sing ethical songs to church tunes. But it
is a question how far there can be common song between church workers and
those outside so long as the kingdom remains a spiritual kingdom, and its
King is proclaimed Head of the Church. For how can two sing together
unless they are agreed upon the key?




                 2. _The Hymn of the Church Triumphant_


The Oxford conception of the Church's continuity and solidarity did not
fall short of heaven. It culminated there, and effected marked change in
the contents of the songs of the heavenly home.

John Mason Neale's researches in medieval poetry and his brilliant
renderings of some passages into English hymns grew out of a consuming
desire to emphasize the historic continuity between the Latin and English
churches. At the time the otherworldly type of religion inherited from
the Evangelical Revival still obtained, and no part of his work appealed
more than his group of New Jerusalem hymns:

    "Oh, what their joy and their glory must be:"
    "Light's abode, celestial Salem:"

But more especially the three caught up so quickly from his version of
the Rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix:

    "The world is very evil:"
    "Jerusalem the golden:"
    "For thee, O dear, dear country."

The "Jerusalem" motive was of course taken from Scriptures; but it was
Scripture mediated through the Medieval Church. There was the same
disillusionment in the then recent "I'm but a stranger here," as in "For
thee, O dear, dear country." But the one was just a human sob: the other
a voice from the cloister, shrining the monastic conception of life, the
monk's rapt vision, his longing for release from this vile flesh; and so
a part of the Church's unending song.

Even more expressive of Oxford ideals are the hymns that clothe heaven
itself with a churchly fulfillment. They make us feel that the whole
company of the faithful who have entered in are churchmen still:

    "For all the saints who from their labors rest:"
    "Hark! the sound of holy voices:"
    "Sing Alleluia forth in duteous praise:"
    "Let our choir new anthems raise."

In these hymns "our departed friends" have merged into the "All-saints"
of the liturgy. It is more than a change of manner, it is a sea-change,
from Dr. Watts' vision of the individuality of "the saints above" in
"Give me the wings of faith to rise" to these songs of the continuity and
solidarity of a corporate Church whose unity is being fulfilled in
heaven.

None the less not even the urge of an Oxford Movement can eliminate the
personal equation. The stiffest churchman is only a vested man. And the
editor of _Hymns ancient and modern_ included his own "There is a blessed
home." The contents of these personal hymns of heaven need as careful
scrutiny as the more churchly. The complacent selfishness of Watts' "When
I can read my title clear" has driven it from the hymnals. The unreality
of the popular "Glory Song" ought to keep it from entering in. It blushes
when it encounters Miss Rossetti's "Give me the lowest place."




                        3. _The Liturgical Hymn_


(a) The Hymnody of the Church Year (_Hymni per totius anni_). Alongside
of the Church Hymn the Oxford men established the Liturgical Hymn: one
whose contents are determined by the particular occasion of worship for
which it is provided, and which occupies a definite place in the order of
worship prescribed for that occasion.

It finds no special support, apart from his insistence upon eucharistic
song, in St. Paul's injunctions, and does not need to. The Hallel of the
Last Supper was a liturgical hymn in every sense and is a sufficient
precedent. St. Paul was dealing with simple people gathered most
unconventionally. Apart from some order for the Communion, a fixed ritual
would have been as uncomfortable as we should find it at a cottage prayer
meeting. Liturgies wait on architecture. In the course of time the
stately basilica would no doubt suggest some reversion to old Temple
ideals of worship. And so a liturgical hymnody is a development and not
an inheritance from apostolic tradition or practice.

To our liturgiologists the pattern shown on the mount is not the worship
of the Temple but that of the Latin Church as embodied mainly in the
Missal or Mass-book and the Breviary or Daily Office book. Now in that
model, the function of the hymn is purely liturgical; which is to say
that each prescribed hymn is irremovably imbedded in some special Office
appointed for some "Hour" of the day, some day of the week, or some
season of the Church Year. No hymn but the one appointed can be sung at
Prime and the one appointed for Prime cannot be sung at Matins, nor
Tuesday's hymn on Sunday; and so on through the year. And of course the
content of the hymn is determined by the nature of the Office enclosing
it.

In the English Reformation the Breviary was allowed to influence Morning
and Evening Prayer, and the Missal to influence the Communion Office; but
the Breviary hymns and the Sequences of the Mass dropped out altogether.
When hymn singing was resumed in the Church of England it entered under
the impulsion of the Evangelical Revival: it was distinctively an
evangelical rather than a liturgical hymnody. The early Anglican hymn
books made very little more recognition of the Church Year than did our
Presbyterian _Psalms and Hymns_ of the eighteen thirties and forties.

Gradually the feeling grew that the hymn book ought to be a companion to
the Prayer Book, matching every date and occasion of the church offices
with the "proper hymn." To accomplish this required a rearrangement of
the church hymnal in which the main body of its contents would group
themselves around the framework of the Church Year and offices of the
Church. And this led naturally to the subordination or suppression of
much familiar material not germane to the purpose, especially the
evangelical hymn and the hymn of individual experience. In a spirit of
conciliation rather than logically room was made in a sort of supplement
for more or fewer favorite or desirable pieces under the heading of
"General."

The filling out of this scheme called for much fresh material. There were
no sacramental hymns in English charged with the high doctrine of the
Oxford Revival; there was an insufficiency of materials for the greater
festivals having just the right tone, and for many of the lesser
occasions of the Prayer Book there were no hymns at all. The Latin hymns
of the old Church, overlooked at the English Reformation and neglected
since, now for the first time shone forth in their liturgical fitness and
were translated by many hands. John Mason Neale even adapted some of the
Greek Church hymns, and a growing company of writers produced fresh
contributions to fill out the tale of a liturgical hymnody.

The new interest in Latin hymns, after encountering reproach, was to
spread through Protestantism, and many of Neale's versions proved a
permanent enrichment. As for more original contributions we must not
forget that "Sun of my soul," "There is a green hill far away," "Art thou
weary, art thou languid," "Lead, Kindly Light" (to name only a few), are
as much a product of the Oxford Movement as are _Tracts for the Times_
themselves.

And yet, what seems to an outsider an excessive devotion to liturgical
ideals has diluted English hymnody, has weakened its hold on _men_, by
introducing much material that illustrates the theory at the expense of
the singers. _Hymns ancient and modern_ was and is the prominent exemplar
of high Anglican ideals. But what a superfluity of Latin hymns rendered
in pedestrian verse! What forced tributes to an occasion or a saint! How
can a sympathetic pastor give out such first lines as:

    "Sweet flow'rets of the martyr band:"
    "Why doth that impious Herod fear:"
    "O sinner, for a little space:"
    "Blessèd feasts of blessèd martyrs:"
    "O Jesu, Thou the Virgin's crown:"
    "Shall we not love Thee, Mother dear:"
    "He sat to watch o'er customs paid."

One wonders how many of the incredible number of millions into whose
hands _Hymns ancient and modern_ has been put by their clergy join in
rendering such strains, or whether a silent majority has not learned to
take refuge behind the corporate theory of church song. And in gauging
the contents of these new contributions we must think not only of what
they offer but what they replace. For church hymnals have gained such
proportions that room can be found for the new only by discarding so much
of the old.

(b) The Hymnody of the Church Year in Non-Liturgical Churches. They have
been very slow to recognize even its greater days. The generation before
mine could remember when New England Congregationalism frowned on any
celebration of Christmas; when kindly parents wrestled with the spreading
Santa Claus superstition by leaving quite empty the little stockings
trustingly hung before the hearth. My own generation can recall when in
Presbyterian churches Easter was recognized only by the absence on that
day of many of the young people, seeking good cheer elsewhere.

The Westminster _Directory for the Publique Worship of God_ had provided
that "Festivall daies, vulgarly called Holy daies, having no warrant in
the word of God, are not to be continued." The puritan tradition is what
was to be continued. The fathers of American Presbyterianism struck out
this taboo from their new _Directory for Worship_, leaving its pastors
and parishes quite free in this matter, as they still are. The clergy
were to prove much slower than the laity in exercising this freedom.

In the absence of leadership by the clergy, it has really been the laity,
acting on sentiment, who have dealt with the Church Year in
non-liturgical communions. The rigidity of the liturgical system and the
filling up of the calendar with numerous occasions has not appealed to
them. The saints' days, unless it be the touching All-Saints' Day, are
likely to remain in sole possession of those with Roman or Anglican
traditions. The typical American will leave his business to celebrate
Washington's Birthday (regretting it does not fall within the football
season), but he will not leave it for a service commemorating any of the
saints.

The only parts of the Church Year that touch the common heart are its
recognition of Sunday as the day of Christian worship and the days or
seasons that commemorate the outstanding events of our Lord's life. To
that extent the Oxford influence has affected the church worship. And
most of the hymnals of non-liturgical churches open with an adequate
provision conveniently arranged, whether its sections bear such labels as
"Nativity" and "Resurrection" or as "Christmas" and "Easter"; their
intent being so obviously liturgical.


Of such a service-book the _Hymns for the Day_ are the natural opening.

_The Morning Hymn_, to be effectual, should catch the sunlight on the
world, and waken our better part to dedicate a new day:

    "Awake, my soul, and with the sun:"
    "As the sun doth daily rise:"
    "New every morning is the love:"
    "O Father, hear my morning prayer."

Just as the morning hymn should have something of the thrill of spiritual
adventure, so _The Evening Hymn_ should have something of spiritual
peace: the restfulness of the dark, but certainly not its suggestion of
the shadow of death. "Now the day is over" and "Sun of my soul" bring
comfort. Bishop Wordsworth's "The day is gently sinking to a close"
brings distress with its "The weary world is mouldering to decay" and
"Onward to darkness and to death we tend": partial truths sentimentally
draped, whose reiteration can bring help or health to no human soul. Our
evening hymns need a drastic revision.

_The Sunday Hymn_ used to vibrate between a seventh day of rest and a
first day of resurrection. That is why, I suppose, Bishop Wordsworth's
didactic "O day of rest and gladness" strives to explain the chronology.
In a not especially rich department it is still perhaps, barring a
depressing line or two, our best hymn.

_The Hymn at the Opening of Service_ deserves more attention than it gets
from pastors. It is psychologically important. The custom of opening with
the L. M. doxology came down from New England, whence I fear the custom
of sitting at prayer also came. In its own way it is equally inept. The
doxology used to be the Te Deum of the unliturgical; reserved for
occasion, sung with feeling. What has cheapened it and taken the heart
out of it is the simple psychological truth that the late breakfast and
scanning of the Sunday newspaper and the rush to be in time for church do
not lay an adequate foundation for so lofty a burst of praise. When the
doxology is so used I feel that the service never quite recovers from the
_faux pas_. An opening hymn should take a lower level, that the service
may ascend and not descend:

    "The earth is hushed in silence:"
    "This is the day of light:"
    "Lord, when we bend before Thy throne."
    "Spirit Divine, attend our prayer."

_The Hymn at the Close of Service_ may be regarded liturgically as
dismission or homiletically as the hymn after sermon. From the first
point of view Ellerton's "Saviour, again to Thy dear Name we raise" is a
most interesting blend of the corporate conception of worship with our
human individuality. The congregation first sounds its corporate note of
praise, and then on their "homeward way" severally ask God's blessing on
their lives. It has been spoiled in the new Episcopal hymnal, but as
given in the Presbyterian seems perfection.

Only a severe liturgiologist would refuse to yield the closing hymn to
the preacher of the day who understands how to make use of it. It is an
opportunity but a delicate task. He does not need a hymn on the same
theme as his sermon, but kindred in tone and atmosphere, that shall seem
like a melody the sermon evoked. As if, for instance, the sermon should
argue for survival after death, and the congregation should respond not
with a song of immortality but with a prayer that the Kindly Light may
lead us in the dark:

    Till "with the morn those angel faces smile
    Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

_Advent_, which begins the Church Year, finds little recognition in
non-liturgical communions, as a preparation for Christmas. _The Second
Advent Hymn_ seems likely to become the peculiar property of
Premillenarians. No one can foretell whether they will go forward to
establish the Advent season, or, like Horatius Bonar, aim to bathe the
whole year in the light of expectation. Bonar's hymns alone furnish an
ample Advent hymnody:

    "Come, Lord, and tarry not:"
    "Is the Bridegroom absent still:"
    "Hark! 'tis the watchman's cry."

_The Christmas Hymn_ came first into the home, then into the Sunday
school, later into the church. In the index of subjects in the
Presbyterian _Psalms and Hymns_ of 1831 three Psalms are mentioned under
"Incarnation," three hymns under "Nativity." In the 1843 book
"Incarnation" heads a section of eleven more attractive hymns. Christmas
hymnody has gradually assumed very full proportions. Influenced by a
growing love of old carols it tends to reproduce the simplicities of
their handling of the gospel of the Infancy rather than the splendor of
the angels' song. It is represented by Phillips Brooks' "O little town of
Bethlehem" rather than by Wesley's "Hark! the herald angels sing."

_The Epiphany Hymn_ finds a use by merging it with Christmas carols;
sometimes, I am afraid, from an unawareness of the difference in date and
significance of the two occasions. Better so perhaps than that the coming
of the Gentiles and all that it means should be overlooked. But the
Epiphany surely is the great missionary occasion of the year.

_The Palm Sunday Hymn_ is finding increasing use, and Holy week is
gradually usurping the place of the old time Week of Prayer, set for the
most inconvenient week of the year; very probably to avoid a seeming
participation in Advent or Lent.

_The Passion Hymn_ has fallen into considerable neglect,--an anomaly in
communions that make much of the Atonement. It is regrettable that they
have adopted Easter so much more enthusiastically and generally than Good
Friday. Is a parish congregation that passes by the green hill without
the city wall spiritually fitted to find the empty tomb? At a time when
so many parishes made each Communion season something of a Good Friday
celebration, the question was less pertinent than now. It has become
rather critical in States that have, imprudently I think, made the day a
legal holiday. In such case the Church's option is to encourage the
people in the public sports that now mark an American holiday, or to call
them to remember the passion of our Lord.

It may of course be argued that hymns that vividly renew the humiliations
and sufferings of the Passion are more likely to call forth "tears, idle
tears" from the sentimental than to stimulate the resolves that lie too
deep for tears. Certainly they are not wholesome "for human nature's
daily food." Perhaps such as merely harrow the feelings should not be
used at all, and such as are helpful be reserved for a fit occasion when
they express rather than depress the feelings. Presbyterian congregations
at least should be given opportunity to sing Dr. Alexander's version of
the great Good Friday hymn, "O sacred Head, now wounded" to the even
greater "Passion Chorale," for there is none other that so reveals the
sanctity of life.

_The Easter Hymn_ came into our churches by way of the Sunday school.
There are no liturgical Churches that make more of the Easter festival
than do many of the congregations once trained to regard all Sundays as
equally the day of our Lord's rising. The test of an Easter song is its
ability to reproduce something of the wonder, first of all, and then the
assurance that filled the disciples' hearts. Its appeal is to the
feelings. And our one peerless Easter song is still the one whose
literary claims are humble and whose music transcends the rules of ritual
song:

    "Jesus Christ is risen to-day,
    Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!"

Our Easter hymns demand a careful scrutiny lest they degenerate into
noise and an effort to work up an artificial hysteria. For they have put
into the hands of a witnessing Church a means of bearing that witness
which for some reason is singularly effective. People from the Church's
borders and beyond heed the call to her Easter services as to none other,
and join heartily in the Easter hymns. I am disposed to think they have
done more to keep the reality of Christ's resurrection alive to the class
we designate as "the man in the street" than any other agency. Our
apologetic discourses are not convincing; our "Christian Evidences" get
no closer to everyday people than a treatise on trigonometry. But our
Easter visitors are very susceptible to the heightened feeling of the
congregation, the suggestion of confidence that rings in the poetry and
music.

_The Ascension Day Hymn_ suffers from the feeling that favors the use of
such as are appropriate to the season, since Ascension Day, coming during
the week, has found no place in the Church Year of non-liturgical
communions. But it is quite available for the "Sunday after Ascension
Day," and should be revived, "lest we forget."

_The Whitsunday Hymn_ and _The Trinity Hymn_, on the other hand, have not
suffered at all from the failure to observe Whitsunday and Trinity
Sunday. Even the liturgical mind and temper would probably feel that
Heber's "Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty" and Miss Auber's "Our blest
Redeemer, ere He breathed" may be encouraged to girdle the whole of the
revolving church year.


In any communion or parish in which you or I are likely to serve we must
accept the observance of church days as a fact accomplished. The
observance has not come by inheritance or authority; and certainly not as
a result of fruitful studies on the part of the clergy in liturgies, the
most neglected amongst us of all theological disciplines. Nor is it a
natural evolution or even a logical development. It is a partial
reversion to the ideals and practices of other communions that have
adhered to the liturgical conception of worship, and has been brought
about by sentiment; responding in feeling to those influences, partly
spiritual, partly esthetic, that started from the Oxford Revival.

Whether these influences will carry the liturgical movement to a complete
adoption of the Church Year as the most seemly and convenient framework
of worship and edification, or whether they will be counteracted by the
informal spirit of evangelism or the free ways of modern life, who can
predict of a movement so unguided and so immune from official
interference?

For my own part I have been led to believe that the liturgical conception
of hymnody is useful within its limits, and that the personal adoption by
a pastor of a part of the Church Year, say from Advent to Whitsunday, is
the most helpful guide in the important matter of his choice of hymns for
his people. It centers church song around the various aspects of the
person of Christ instead of the personality of the pastor, his whims and
limitations or his indifference. It tends to widen the congregational
repertoire, and to furnish an occasion and a setting, week by week, for
the great hymns of the Church. But this end, and not the particular
method of securing it, is the main thing.

For thirty years I have occupied a quasi-official relation to the hymnody
of one communion, and am in a position to know how widespread the
complaint, how deep the indignation at the manner in which so many of our
pastors are using the hymnal. I may quote a communication (from an
esteemed elder) that comes to me in the very act of this writing. "It is
shocking," he says, "how our best ministers simply go around in a circle,
picking out a few of the more familiar hymns that will fit the sermon
they have just prepared." The administering of such a shock once or twice
a week does seem an odd method of teaching and admonishing one another
with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs in such a way as will make
melody in their hearts.


But the liturgical hymn exemplifies only one side of the churchly theory
of hymnody we have been considering. The other and, I think, more helpful
side, is in infusing our hymnody with a new sense of the solidarity of
the Church: in setting beside the hymn of individual experience and duty
the Church Hymn, which finds its inspiration in common membership of the
Body of Christ, and answers His common call with common song.

This churchly conception has not made and cannot make the hymn to be
simply the voice of the corporate Church, nor made it other than St. Paul
made it, the spiritual song of a Christian heart. But it has made the
common road of life and service resound with millions of voices joined in
the marching song of a Catholic Church:

    "We are not divided,
      All one body we."

It has left a sectarian hymnody far behind. Toplady's polemic verses on
Election would be no more welcome to a Presbyterian congregation than
Wesley's on "The horrible decree" would be to a Methodist congregation.
The modern hymnal is the nearest approach yet made to the unity of
Christ's Church.




                              LECTURE FIVE
                          THE TEXT OF THE HYMNS




I. The Puritan Zeal for "Purity" of Text


The first book printed in this country was a psalm book.

The English Puritans who came to Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth
century brought with them the _Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter_ they had
used in their parish churches at home. Here, in the wilderness, far from
the conventions of civilization, all alone with God, the familiar English
psalm book raised, as most things did in that atmosphere, scruples of
conscience. It dealt too loosely with the inspired Hebrew text. Whether
the men who had made it lacked a sufficient acquaintance with that
language, or felt the strain and shackles of versification, it was not
literal. It lacked "purity."

And so a little group of emigrant scholars, cut off from most of life's
comforts and most scholarly resources by the wide ocean, and threatened
by savage neighbors, set themselves to the task of constructing a purer
version of the Psalms in meter,--if meter it is to be called. Then they
sent to the old home for a press and some fonts of type, and in 1640
printed their now famous _Bay Psalm Book_.

Their enterprise was quixotic, and the few copies of their Psalm Book
that survive are the most appealing memorial of what we now call the New
England conscience. And it was all, we are tempted to say, by way of a
pedantic concern for the text of their songs, a matter of the right word
and the turn of a phrase.

That would be to overlook the fact that to the seventeenth century
Puritan the text of their church-songs had come to mean everything. The
metrical Psalm was to them not a hymn based on Scripture: it was a
revised version of Scripture. Granting that principle of an inspired song
discussed in a former lecture, were not the Church authorities bound
first to provide and then safeguard a literal version of the Psalms that
could be sung? The remote and romantic surroundings of the _Bay Psalm
Book_ make it an isolated cairn showing the extreme lengths to which a
Puritan Church would go in this pursuit. But so far as the actual
proceedings of the Bay divines are concerned, they were doing just what
the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland did a very few years later
in their protracted revision of "Rous' Version" of the Psalms before
allowing the Scottish kirks to introduce it into public worship.


When the eighteenth century revival awakened New England, both the Psalms
and hymns of Watts were in many hands and hearts already. The evangelical
enthusiasm aroused by Whitefield's preaching cleared the hearers' minds
of the earlier scruples and agitations concerning psalmody. The whole
structure of Puritan psalmody gave way under evangelical pressure, and
the singing of hymns started almost spontaneously.

It was now the Presbyterian churches that held on to Puritan traditions
of psalmody, and even those who yielded to revival influences asked no
more than permission to introduce Watts' version of the Psalms. The
desolating Psalmody Controversy that ensued was, on the face of it,
nothing more than a controversy concerning the text of Psalms. The
practical issue was whether the parishes be restricted to the "Rous"
version of the Scottish Assembly, just referred to, or might substitute
Watts' free renderings of the substance of the Psalms, with their
evangelical implications clearly expressed, and their text otherwise
adapted to English feeling. The whole controversy relates itself to the
original situation at Massachusetts Bay. The question raised was simply a
new turn given to the Puritan scruple as to purity of the text.

In the Presbyterian Synod, as we all know, the accommodated Psalm as
against the literal Psalm won through. The free hymn soon followed (as no
doubt both parties had expected that it would) and was given full
recognition in the _Directory for Worship_ of 1788.

The new hymns quite naturally were an object of suspicion to those in any
communion who questioned their use. Laying no claim to "purity" of text,
they had all the more on that account to submit themselves to rigid
scrutiny by responsible representatives of the Churches, and by amateur
theologians, very numerous in those more thoughtful days. Even more they
had to be watched and guarded against error by those who had made
themselves responsible for their admission, and were hoping so much from
their use.

The text of hymns was thus much more of a concern, when the time came to
prepare new hymn books of their own make for the various communions in
this country. And to the average Christian, who cherished the hymn book
in his private devotions and learned many of the hymns by heart, their
text meant a great deal more than that of such poetry as he read, and
which he could take or leave. It meant more than the text of Shakespeare
means to a scholar, just because it came closer to his life.




II. The Textual Criticism of Our Hymns


In 1860, when hymn books were aplenty, Dr. Park and Dr. Phelps of Andover
Seminary published their _Hymns and Choirs_,[1] a book still instructive,
and retaining the distinction of being the first American attempt at a
systematic hymnology. In view of what has just been said it is not
surprising that a good deal more than a third of the book deals with "The
Text of Hymns." The treatise is really an _apologia_ for _The Sabbath
Hymn Book_ its authors had published two years earlier after more years
of careful preparation, and with a knowledge of the subject that in its
time and place was probably unique. They had sought out many new hymns
and had subjected the familiar ones to close criticism, constructing in
many cases a text of their own, involving omissions, amendments and even
additions.

Their hymn book encountered a storm of criticism, in which the publishers
of Elias Nason's _Congregational Hymn Book_,[2] recently put on the
market, took the part of Æolus. And of course the changes of familiar
texts afforded the most vulnerable point of attack: and it became
incumbent upon the authors of _Hymns and Choirs_ to justify them.

It is possible therefore that the ample space allotted to "The Text of
Hymns" in their treatise does not correspond precisely with their sense
of proportion in constructing a hymnological system. Very likely it
measures the extent of their chagrin at the reception their amended texts
had met. Be that as it may the chapter remains the fullest presentation
of the subject yet given. It is from the hand of Professor Park and is
worked out with the precision and particularity to be expected from that
hand. If one could reduce his many categories to more manageable bounds,
the lines of his thesis would be something like these:

(a) _That the criticism of hymns is as necessary as it is perilous._ [The
peril he had been forcibly made to realize. The necessity he would no
doubt impress upon many whose memory enshrined this or that text of
familiar hymns learned in childhood, and who resented any changes of text
without regard to their meritoriousness].

(b) _That an immense number of textual alterations are present in current
hymn books:_ [in all practically, though Dr. Park kept the "Old School
Presbyterian Collection" well to the fore by way of illustration].

(c) _That changes of text are really desirable for various reasons:_
[that range all the way from the sphere of sound doctrine to that of
elementary grammar: and which he proceeds to catalogue and to illustrate
with a wealth of detail].

(d) _That all the omissions and amendments of text in "The Sabbath Hymn
Book" are justified._ This last, the heart of the discussion to Dr. Park
and his colleague, has ceased to beat, now that their book lies buried
beneath the strata of time. You cannot expect a wide public to take an
interest in fossil remains, and yet both fossil and book are links in the
chain of life, and each has a story to tell. If discriminating sermons
were still wanted, a preacher could find many a theme in the alteration
of hymn texts which the Andover Faculty thought necessary or desirable in
1858.




III. The Confusing State of the Text


The only one of Dr. Park's propositions that was incontestable was that
revealing the multitude of divergences in the text of the Psalms and
hymns then in current use. It was not merely that so many differed from
what their authors had written: there was a lack of uniformity in the
text of even the cherished hymns as given in various books and sung in
different congregations. Of most of them there was in fact no standard
text and the clamorous or pathetic appeal against any alteration had
little to rest upon other than prejudice or individual association.

"There is," he says, "a multitude of readers who rely implicitly on the
text of the Presbyterian (Old School) Collection, and regard every
instance of departure from this text as a violation of the rights of
authorship; yet in seven hundred and forty of the more common lyrics in
that Collection, there are thirteen hundred and twenty-seven variations,
exclusive of the frequent omissions. In the preface or advertisement of
that manual it is stated: 'The psalms have been left without alteration;
the Committee believing that it would be extremely difficult to furnish a
more acceptable version than that of Watts....' But in the three hundred
and forty-five versions of psalms contained in the Collection, there are
six hundred and ninety-seven alterations. Indeed there are not one
hundred and ten of these psalms unaltered."[3]

In the New School Presbyterian hymn book, Professor Park found thirteen
hundred and thirty-six variations of the original text in seven hundred
and seventy-four of its most noted hymns. Of books used in
Congregationalist churches he found eleven hundred and twenty-six changes
in eight hundred and ten familiar hymns of the Connecticut Association's
book, and nine hundred changes in five hundred and fifty hymns he
examined in Henry Ward Beecher's _Plymouth Collection_.

These figures are hard to grasp and to retain, but they leave an
impression of the actual state of the hymns then in use. That impression
may perhaps be deepened by selecting the single case of a hymn whose
words lie familiarly in the memory of most of us: Toplady's "Rock of
Ages, cleft for me." So it began in Presbyterian and Congregationalist
churches; but many Baptist congregations, who used Rippon's
_Selection_,[4] were singing "Rock of Ages, shelter me"; and
Episcopalian, Methodist and Lutheran congregations were using a recast of
the four verses into three.

    _Old School Presbyterians_ were singing "From Thy wounded side which
              flowed."
    _New School Presbyterians_ were singing "From Thy riven side which
              flowed."
    _Some Congregationalists_ were singing "From Thy side a healing flood."

    _Old School_--"Cleanse me from its guilt and power."
    _New School_--"Save me, Lord, and make me pure."
    _Some Congregationalists_--"Save from wrath, and make me pure."

    _Old School_--"Could my zeal no respite know."
    _New School_--"Should my zeal no languor know."

    _Old School_--"Nothing in my hand I bring."
    _New School_--"In my hand no price I bring."

    _Old School_--"See Thee on Thy judgment-throne."
    _New School_--"And behold Thee on Thy throne."

These are but some of the variances in the text of a single hymn. They
are brought forward here, if you will remember, simply to illustrate the
fact that in the texts of the body of hymns that grew up here and was
sung in the eighteen sixties, let us say, and which was the inheritance
of my generation, there were countless divergences from the author's text
and variant readings even of the emendations. There was a striking lack
of uniformity. There was no common text, even among Old and New School
Presbyterians, or among Baptists or Congregationalists.

This state of things made itself felt as an annoyance to anybody who
really cared for the hymns and a great embarrassment when different
groups of Christian people tried to sing together. But the actual
situation was little apprehended then by those who blamed it on the
compilers of their hymn books, and is not very generally understood even
now. It is perhaps worthwhile therefore to ask how it happened that the
text of our hymnody fell into such a state.




IV. The Causes of This Confusion


Dr. Watts was not actually the first writer who aimed to ameliorate the
Psalms by injecting evangelical interpretations into their text. But his
_The Psalms of David imitated_ (1719) must be held responsible for the
project of making the whole structure of the Psalter and the substance of
its text a framework on which to weave an evangelical psalmody of mingled
praise and British patriotism; and all in David's name, now, as Watts put
it, converted from a Jew into a Christian. In the face of such proposal
the recent efforts of a Weymouth or a Moffatt to give us a Bible in
modern English impress us by their restraint.

Who would imagine that in the following lines Dr. Watts is giving us the
opening of the 75th Psalm:

    "_Britain_ was doom'd to be a Slave,
    Her Frame dissolv'd; her Fears were great;
    When God a new Supporter gave
    To bear the Pillars of the State."

It is much easier to understand the violent protests of Romaine and
others aroused by such a handling of the sacred text than it is to
explain how these accommodations and modernizations were gravely accepted
by the churches in lieu of more literal versions, yet still "Psalms." But
such was the case.


Watts' _Psalms imitated_ were reprinted in the American colonies up to
the time of the Revolution without change of text. But with the dawn of
the spirit of independence his frequent allusions to Britain and King
George wore out their welcome. I have copies of early American imprints
in which they are erased and more patriotic phrases inserted by the pen
of some one, probably a precentor. After the Revolution the Connecticut
Association employed Joel Barlow to revise Watts' text and to accommodate
it to American worship. After several editions of this, Barlow fell into
such personal disrepute that the Association engaged President Dwight to
make a fresh rescension. The Presbyterian Synod had already adopted
Barlow's revision, and now the General Assembly approved Dr. Dwight's.
Dr. Worcester soon followed with an independent rescension of his own. So
that there were in circulation at once Barlow's revision of Watts'
Psalms, partly superseded in Connecticut, but adhered to by
Presbyterians, almost universally in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; Dr.
Dwight's revision, favored by Connecticut Congregationalists who
distrusted Barlow and by many Presbyterians, especially in New York; and
Dr. Worcester's revision, favored in New England, especially
Massachusetts. The textual confusion was further increased by several
publishers who got out editions of their own, which adopted emendations
from these three revisions, with some further changes, made possibly with
a view of avoiding the infringement of copyrights.[5]


Turning now to Watts' _Hymns_--he had expressed in his preface, and
perhaps felt, a willingness that his words should not be regarded as
sacred. The leader of worship should be at liberty to substitute a better
for an "unpleasing" word: it was the day when hymns were given out line
by line by the precentor. "We are not," he said, "confined to the words
of any one man in our public solemnities."

But he could not have anticipated the drastic changes his texts underwent
at the hands of the English Presbyterians in their progress to declared
Unitarianism. These Arian rescensions were still printed under Watts'
name, and without intimation that they had been changed. The protest this
aroused among orthodox contemporaries was met by the claim that they, the
Unitarians, were doing to Watts just what Watts had done to "David," and
what Watts himself would have done had he rewritten the hymns according
to his changed views in later years. An Arian text of Watts was thus set
up and justified, in time to be a precedent for our Massachusetts
Unitarians.

When there was a prospect of introducing human compositions into Scottish
Presbyterian worship, the successive committees on Hymns and Paraphrases
wrestled with the text of them just as their fathers had with "Rous'
Version," and they produced a Scottish rescension of some of Watts' hymns
that has become more familiar than the original text.

But in a wide circle of Independent and other churches Watts' _Hymns_
were regarded with a reverence that kept their text sacrosanct. They were
accepted not individually but _en masse_, as in themselves a complete
hymnal; their number, their arrangement "in three books" and their text,
all unchanged. It is striking, certainly, that in Boston as late as 1819,
a hundred and twelve years after their publication, Dr. Worcester's
attempt in his _Christian Psalmody_ to present some abridgment and
alteration of the _Hymns_ encountered a resentment so great that his
publishers had to recall the book and insist on restoring "Watts entire,"
as it was then called, without abridgment or alteration of a word.

And yet many of the hymns cried aloud either for exclusion or for some
amendment; there was so much careless composition, so many breaches of
good taste. How could a critical editor be expected, for instance, to
approve an expression of the Christmas situation such as that of the 13th
hymn of the first book:

    "This infant is the mighty God,
      Come to be suckled and adored."

Even this Dr. Worcester was compelled to restore in his later book, known
as _Worcester's Watts_. The committees who compiled the Presbyterian
_Psalms and Hymns_ of 1831 and 1843 handled the hymns of Watts more
selectively and more critically, amending where they could not admire.


John Wesley, a warm admirer of Watts, had from the first felt no more
hesitation in altering his text than in blue-penciling his brother's
hymns or adapting the poems of George Herbert. Not even that deft hand
could make Herbert congregational. But his method vindicated itself
permanently in dealing with Watts' ineffective 100th Psalm, beginning:

    "Sing to the Lord with joyful voice;
      Let every land his Name adore,
    The British isles shall send the noise
      Across the ocean to the shore:"

which he transformed into the fine hymn:

    "Before Jehovah's awful throne,
      Ye nations, bow with sacred joy."

John Wesley desired that the text of his brother's and his own hymns,
furnished in his large _Collection of Hymns for ... Methodists_ (1780)
should be final. As for hymn tinkerers, he said in the preface, "I desire
they would not attempt to mend them; for they really are not able. None
of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse." The reference
here very likely was to Whitefield and Toplady, both of whom had altered
the hymns they appropriated. After Wesley's death his wishes were
disregarded even by the publishers of his own book. Charles Wesley's
hymns suffered long at editorial hands that were all thumbs. His "Jesu,
Lover of my soul," being the most lyrical, suffered most, and only in our
day has been restored to its original beauty.


The poet Montgomery in his anthologies and hymn books covered the whole
range of materials available at the opening of the nineteenth century
with his purpose to elevate the literary standard of praise. With a
self-confidence as great as Wesley's, he was even freer of hand than
Wesley. In editing Cotterill's book of 1819[6] he put into circulation
many modified texts. It was he who changed Cowper's "There is a fountain
filled with blood" to "From Calvary's cross a fountain flows," and who
made the 3-verse rescension of "Rock of Ages" that so long prevailed in
English and American Episcopal Churches. He said that the time and
thought he gave to amending the Moravian hymn book would have sufficed
for the composition of a like quantity of original verse. And he
predicted quite truly that when he was gone his own hymns would be
"altered to suit the taste of appropriators."

With Montgomery we are come down to the nineteenth century and to a
period when hymn books began to multiply on all sides in the effort of
enlarging or freshening the service of song in various communions. And
with this multiplication of books the confusion of text became worse
confounded. Partly because every compiler felt the duty of conforming the
materials at hand to the doctrinal beliefs of his constituency. Partly
also because he felt free to alter any expression not commending itself
to his judgment or his whims.

But the great cause of confusion lay deeper.




V. The First Attempts to Verify the Texts


All these compilers of hymn books were working in the dark, with very
little knowledge of their materials. Apart from reprints of Watts and
_Olney Hymns_ in circulation, the sources were vague, or, if known, quite
inaccessible. A new book was made up from such earlier and current
selections as its compiler had on hand. The guess-work or blunder of one
compiler as to the authorship or text of the hymns became the assurance
of the next. The emendations of one compiler, made freely and
unacknowledged, became the original text to the one copying it into the
later book. And for such an enterprise a pair of shears and a blue pencil
seemed equipment enough. In the complacency behind such a statement as
that of the compilers of the Presbyterian _Psalms and Hymns_ of 1843 that
they had determined to adhere to the text of Watts' revision of the
Psalms, their ignorance, in view of the not remote contests and
excitements within their own communion, can only be described as willful.
Certainly it was abysmal. The thought that the matter of preparing the
Church's songs called for anything in the nature of scholarship was slow
to dawn. The Andover Faculty caught the light, and pursued it. Some hymn
books from Dr. Park's library with his annotations, now in my possession,
show his concern and suggest how limited were his resources.

Strange as it may seem to-day Roundell Palmer's _Book of Praise_,
published at London and New York, in 1862, was the first attempt to
recover and restore the original text of our hymns. Even this could not
have been made without the help of Daniel Sedgwick, a second-hand
bookseller of London. The flotsam of literature drifted his way, and he
thought it worth while (he was the first who did) to collect and collate
the old Psalm and hymn books; until, as Palmer said, "he knew more about
them and their authors than any one else" then living.[7]

_The Book of Praise_ proved an incentive to a wider inquiry into sources
and texts. Sedgwick's little shop became its center, and he the oracle to
whom for many years the more ambitious hymnal editor was accustomed to
resort.

During the next thirty years the study advanced so far that it became
possible for Dr. John Julian, Vicar of Wincobank, to assemble quite a
group of scholars in preparing his _Dictionary of Hymnology_, published
in 1891. This was at once a survey of and a guide to what had been a very
roughly charted territory.

With the _Dictionary_ at hand the least industrious compiler could now
give the authorship and date of a great number of his hymns. But that is
as far as such a book could serve. Except in a few cases of unusual
interest it could not within its limits reproduce the texts of the hymns.
And the sources remain difficult of access. Dr. Julian himself was
obliged to go to press without having seen a copy of the original edition
of either Watts' _Hymns_ or his _Horæ Lyricæ_, and was therefore
unaware of the many variances of text in different issues of these books.
Not even a thesaurus has been made of English hymns, such as Koch and
Wackernagel have made of the German, and Dreves and Blume of the Latin.
Nor is there likely to be. The mass of the materials is so overwhelming,
and much of it so unrewarding from any standpoint.

Editorial work of the right sort had been done before Julian's day by
such men as Charles Rogers, Godfrey Thring and Canon Ellerton, and in
this country notably by Frederic M. Bird, the first extensive collector
here of the sources.

But on the whole it is not unfair to say that the textual confusion and
uncertainty already described at some length was not greatly relieved
when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. gave
to its Board of Publication the instructions which eventuated somewhat
tardily in _The Hymnal_ of 1895.




VI. The Textual Canons of 1895


We are now in a position to discuss intelligently what we may call the
textual canons of our hymnody. Instead of dealing with them in the
abstract I propose now to bring to a focus this whole matter of the
text--its purity, its modifications, its acceptability--by way of
restating the actual principles by which the text of _The Hymnal_ of 1895
was constructed.

Perhaps I ought to begin with an attempt to justify such proposal.

In view of the conditions shown, those to whom the project of the new
hymnal was committed could hardly fail to feel the need of a fresh study
of the text of the whole body of our hymnody in use, and the opportunity
for an attempt to put it on a firmer basis.

Their field was clear. They were neither helped nor hampered by
traditional texts common to all who were likely to make use of the new
church hymnal; many of whom indeed had given up the use of authorized
books in favor of one or another of Dr. Charles S. Robinson's, with whom
textual criticism was not a strong point. They were also confronted by
what may be called "the awful example" of the new Protestant Episcopal
hymnal of 1891, whose textual vagaries are still unexplained. It is
enough to say here that in that book "Nearer, my God, to Thee" was
relieved of all allusion to Jacob's dream: that "My Country, 'tis of
thee" was cut in half, and the half joined on to "God bless our native
land" to make a whole: and that Cowper's "Hark! my soul, it is the Lord,"
was so dealt with that the cultured Dr. Huntington, who had loved it, was
heard to declare he could never give it out again in Grace Church.

Obviously the work on the hymns considered for the new book should begin,
where scholarship of any sort begins, with a first-hand knowledge of the
sources. And so a systematic search began for all the books or
periodicals in which the hymns first appeared and the hymn books whose
rescension of them completed their textual history.

When these had been gathered up in England and this country to the
fullest extent possible to enterprise and patience, the way was opened to
the construction of an acceptable text, whether by restoration or
amendment. And that brings us to the textual principles of 1895.




                1. _The General Principle of Conformity_


The general principle was that the hymns should be printed as their
authors wrote them, so far as practicable. Why otherwise all this trouble
and expense in procuring the originals?

In our modern study of poetry, bibliographical and textual research has
subordinated esthetic study. In the critical editions of the poets
replacing the trade editions one by one, the recovery of what the poet
actually wrote is the common _motif_ and the one achievement. The
comments of Dr. Johnson and his kind are superseded by bibliographical
adjustments and variorum readings, in an attempt to determine the true
text. And this zeal for what the author wrote shines alike on the good
and evil that he did. In Amy Lowell's vast book on John Keats a caustic
estimate of the ineptitude of some passage or line will be followed by a
burst of indignation at some known or unknown hand that has ventured on
some trifling change in it.

Clearly this zeal for what the author wrote is the paramount feeling. And
it is just as reasonable, and just as right, in hymnody as in poetry. The
ethics of quotation support it, and very often the emendations made in
our hymns justify it. Some of these were conscientiously made by way of
diluting poetic expressions to suit the palate of Dr. Watts' "meanest
Christian." Some, as has been said here, represent no more than an
editor's whimsies. "It is astonishing," as Montgomery said, "how really
religious persons will sometimes feel scruples about a turn or a
term."[8] Other of these textual changes are no more than the
inadvertences of frequent reprintings and careless proof-reading.

There is an instance of this in the version of the 100th Psalm which is
the foundation stone of our hymnody:

    "All people that on earth do dwell."

It was first printed in 1560-1, and taken into the English Psalter in
1564. One line had read, "We are his folk, he doth us feed" [his folk,
his _people_; spelt folck]. Within a year the transposing of a single
letter by a type-setter made the word "flock"; and so the text stood for
317 years until the Rev. Godfrey Thring discovered the error.

So Charles Wesley's hymn, which he made to commence,

    "Love Divine, all loves excelling,"

soon began to pass current as "all love excelling," not because anybody
thought God's love excelled love itself, but only because an "s" dropped
out. It happened that the restoration of this one letter drew forth
numerous letters of protest in 1895, but it was right nevertheless.

And this particular instance brings us back to the rightness of the
general principle that what an author wrote is to be preferred as far as
practicable. Especially so if the author was a poet. How intolerable have
been the editorial changes in "Jesu, Lover of my soul" and "Lead, Kindly
Light!"


Nevertheless there is that "as far as practicable," which separates and
always must separate the anthology from the hymn book. In a collection of
poems for poetry's sake the rule of fidelity of text is absolute. In a
collection of hymns for congregational use the fidelity must be tempered
by considerations of practical utility. There is no real use in playing
the part of "superior" in this matter or in increasing the hue and cry
after the fleeing "hymn-tinkerer." When all has been said and the
tinkerer impounded, the regrettable necessity of making certain
adjustments of materials abides.




             2. _The Limits of the Principle of Conformity_


The judicial pronouncements making the rule of conformity absolute come
from those who administer the theory rather than the practice of hymnody.
They would preserve the rights of an author at all hazards. These rights
are certainly sacred. The editor of 1895 tried to verify them by getting
the author's actual text into his own hands, and to preserve them by the
simple expedient of noting beneath each hymn every deviation from the
original; that an author's name should be attached to nothing he did not
write.

The deviations then allowed may conveniently be studied under two heads:
(1) A privilege of abridgment; (2) A necessity of amendments.


(a) Abridgment. The privilege of making omissions from the text is
allowable even in an anthology, and in a hymnal is indispensable.

When Metrical Psalmody was made a church ordinance in France and the
Netherlands, the principle of conformity to Scripture demanded that the
Psalter be sung through in its integrity. It was enough to insert the
word "Pause" into longer Psalms to indicate where practicable divisions
could be made.

No one who knows our modern sources could suggest a similar principle of
inclusiveness. "Sun of my soul" consists of selected verses from one of
the opening poems of Keble's _Christian Year_ which is not a hymn.
"Jerusalem the golden" covers sixteen lines of a satire that runs to
nearly three thousand. Symond's "These things shall be! a loftier race"
begins with the fourth verse of a poem that has seventeen. The best of
Whittier's hymns are likewise extracted from long poems.

Some of our hymns contain in themselves matter that is extraneous or
unwelcome, best disposed of by omission. That is true even of so great a
hymn as "When I survey the wondrous cross": better in four verses than in
five.

More commonly it is simply the undue length of a hymn that demands
curtailment. The longest of all, "Dies irae" escapes, because it remains
in our hymnals as mainly a great historical monument, which must not be
mutilated. The next in length, perhaps, is Byrom's "Christians, awake!
salute the happy morn"; desirable for its out-of-doors flavor and its
fine music,--but what an interminable narrative! Every editor feels
called to attack the problem of curtailment: none feels that he has
solved it.

The proper length of a hymn would seem to be a matter for care and good
judgment. In practice it is too often determined by the amount of space
available in making up the page of the hymnal. The rule adhered to in
1895 was to present each hymn with the brevity of a good lyric and with
the integrity of a good hymn; that is to say, with sufficient fullness to
preserve its message and to complete its development.

The case is simple enough surely. A hymn has to make a quick impression,
to carry it forward, and to heighten it to a spiritual uplift. A good
hymn therefore has these three structural characteristics:

(1) An opening that catches the attention and plays the same part that a
theme does in a piece of music;

(2) A continuous development and unbroken advance in which one verse
rises on the stepping-stones of its predecessors;

(3) A climax in which the theme is triumphant, and the advance has won
its goal.

Now this structure is not academic but experiential. It is based on the
psychology of attention which loses as soon as it begins to ramble. Any
mechanical or ill-judged shortening snaps this thread of continuity, and
so weakens the appeal upon the attention of the verses that remain.

So far as the practice of singing is concerned perhaps the chief thing
for an editor or pastor to remember relative to a hymn's length is that
the quickened pace of modern singing and the cutting out of once
prevalent interludes make practicable a much fuller representation of the
text than was desirable a generation or so ago.


(b) Amendment. A necessity of amendment remains even after selection has
secured the hymns consonant with the beliefs and ideals of those who are
to use the hymnal. It is very limited. The hymns that have touched the
common heart are naturally those that keep to the common ground. The
familiar hymn that caused most concern in 1895 was Draper's "Ye Christian
heralds, go proclaim," with its assurance of the immunity of missionaries
from attack by the forces of nature. A slight modification turned the
verses into a prayer for their protection. Monsell's "On our way
rejoicing" had a line, "Clouds are not from Thee," that seemed an
inadequate interpretation of a cloudy day, recalling the futile debate
roused by Cuthbert Hall's _Does God send Trouble?_, and was made to read,
"There is light in Thee." And the line, "Let us find the second rest," in
Charles Wesley's "Love Divine, all loves excelling" became, more
acceptably, "Let us find the promised rest." It would seem a pity if
hymns so good should be debarred from general use for the sake of
retaining an unguarded phrase.

It is possible to go so far as that with the feeling that the revered
authors are looking down upon us with an understanding smile. But just
how far may we go, say in the name of decency, in altering an author's
personal beliefs by way of adapting his work to our own uses?


The most casuistic answer ever given to that question was that of James
Martineau, who stands high among thinkers and quite supreme as a
practitioner of the gentle art of hymn-tinkering. He expressed his
conviction that the dogmatic content of Christian poetry was an accident
and not an essential of its excellence. He said that in the book he was
preparing he aimed in his alterations of text "to give theologically a
translation but in respect to piety and poetry the precise originals of
the several authors."[9] The English Unitarians had made themselves
somewhat conspicuous in the art of "translation" thus indicated. And if
this be the justification of their practice it is calculated to expand
rather than to mollify the feeling of irritation we must all have
experienced at finding some favorite hymn thus "translated" in some
current Unitarian book.

But if we find Martineau's justification, to speak frankly, a bit
shocking, then in what terms are we to justify our own appropriation of
Father Faber's "Faith of our fathers! living still," and our
"translation" of its doctrine into terms of Protestant polemics?

Faber's verses are a yearning plea for the restoration of the Roman
Catholic faith of the fathers:

    "Faith of our Fathers! Mary's prayers
      Shall win our country back to thee;
    And through the truth that comes from God
      England shall then indeed be free."

The question of adopting the Protestant "translation" was up already in
1895, but rejected, out of self-respect shall I say, or in the interests
of sincerity? In the revision of 1911 the hymn was admitted not from any
change of judgment but in obedience to a demand so general as to leave no
choice in the matter except between that of printing it in _The Hymnal
revised_ or on a separate leaflet that could be bound in with it. And so
in this instance the authorized hymnal of an aggressively Protestant
communion occupies by compulsion of its pastors the position of Dr.
Martineau. The almost simultaneous adoption of the Roman Catholic lyric
by Presbyterians and Unitarians offers an interesting study in
comparative religion.

Faber's verses are not particularly good. They are redeemed poetically by
the passion of his longing for the supremacy of the cult of the Virgin
Mary. Protestantism may still hope for a eulogy on the faith of _its_
fathers that may be sung without appealing to one's sense of humor.


Apart from matters of doctrine there are lines here and there, unhappy or
unmetrical, that have lingered too long. In Watts for instance--the
repeated "What worthless worms are we" in his "Great God, how infinite
art Thou!"; "For such a worm as I" in "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed";
"He shall be damned that won't believe" in his "Go, preach my gospel,
saith the Lord." In such cases the choice practically is between
amendment and discard.

In respect of metrical irregularity, the trouble is not with the
syllabification or what are called peculiar meters. If the rhythm is
clearly marked, these need cause no more trouble in the church than the
irregularities of Mother Goose cause in the nursery. Therefore in 1895 "O
come, all ye faithful" and "One sweetly solemn thought" were released
from the strait-jackets into which they had been compressed, and "Thou
didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown," with Tennyson's "Sunset and
evening star" were admitted; the latter for the first time in an American
book. The altered form of the first line of Neale's "The day of
resurrection" was left standing because grown familiar, but the original
"'Tis the day of resurrection" would not embarrass the humblest singer.

The difficulty begins when some accent is wrong, or from a change of
rhythm due to careless composition. Who has not suffered from the false
accent on "Mortals" in Charles Wesley's "Rejoice, the Lord is king"? But
it was left standing till 1911, through an exaggerated regard for the
original. More serious are the changes of rhythm in Monsell's "Light of
the world, we hail Thee"; and I am now fully convinced that no tune can
grapple with them. But they were suffered there as in all books since, so
far as I know.

It was indeed, I now think, a fault of the text of 1895 that it made too
little use of the privilege of amendment. The vast preponderance of the
alterations were restorations of what the author originally wrote or
adoptions of changes already made to a hymn's advantage. It was the fault
of an over-scrupulosity in respecting the original texts, natural enough
to a reaction from the uninformed and careless methods of its
predecessors. With more than thirty years of added experience, I should
not now hesitate to go much further: to relieve "All hail the power of
Jesus' Name" of those vexing phrases; to recast a hymn so unwholesome as
"O Paradise! O Paradise!"; and to deliver our hymnody in general from
that preoccupation with death that broods over it like a shadow still in
spite of all the winnowings it has had.[10]

In acknowledging its limitations it is only fair to add that _The Hymnal_
of 1895 and 1911 has exerted a marked influence both in the choice of
hymns and in their presentation. It has introduced many into common use.
No less than five communions have asked formal permission to make use of
its researches and its texts. And it has served elsewhere as an
unacknowledged source-book for many hymnals; thus contributing somewhat
toward the formation of a common text.


In this lecture I have tried to show that Hymnology as well as Letters
must be allowed its own little department of textual criticism; that our
church songs have a textual history, and must submit to canons framed for
special ends. We have studied the canons governing a certain book, as
illustrative and perhaps suggestive. But they are not final. Other
books--other canons and other texts; and a new generation will do its own
mending when once more time shall have frayed the text.

I should like to leave an impression that the state of the text is a
matter of some importance. Of an importance only relative from a purely
literary standpoint; not to be compared with that centering in a Horace
or a Chaucer; but of some human interest, to say the least, and of great
concern to the Church, when we think of the high offices our hymns are
called upon to fill.

For, if the teaching power of hymns is very great, their words are the
vehicle of the teaching. If congregational feeling is better expressed
through hymnody than aught else, then what we have called the text is
nothing less than that expression.

It is a far cry to days when synods and even national parliaments
wrestled over the textual integrity or textual revision of church song.
But there must be a middle ground between overzeal and the indifference
into which the matter has been allowed to lapse in our modern parishes.

In a long oversight of the correspondence between the publishing house of
the Presbyterian Church and the authorities of parishes considering the
introduction of a new hymn book, I have been impressed by the absence
from these parochial letters of any allusions to this matter of the text
of the several books they may have had under comparison. Of course those
who adopt the authorized hymnal of their communion may find no occasion
to set forth their reasons. Those choosing some other book do as a rule
mention the features that commend it. Among them I cannot recall a single
instance in which the state of the text in which the hymns were offered
for use appeared to have received any consideration or to have influenced
the decision. The only exception, if it be such, was the case I am about
to refer to, of a pastor preferring a book in which the hymns generally
had been abridged.




          3. _The Latest Menace to the Integrity of Our Hymns_


Just now the spiritual and literary integrity of our hymns is menaced by
considerations that are purely mechanical.

The American hymnals of the eighteen fifties set the fashion of printing
the tune across the top of the page and filling the space beneath with
hymns corresponding in meter, arranged in double columns and closely
packed. This necessitated some padding when the materials fell short, but
also some trimming of the hymns when the materials were over long; and
the length of a hymn became a typographical consideration.

In the Episcopal Church the hymns are adopted by General Convention
without reference to their tunes, and arranged without grouping the
meters, so that when a musical edition followed a changed typography was
required; a free and open page in which each hymn could be dealt with
separately and given whatever space it required. This arrangement was
adopted for _The Hymnal_ of 1895, and was largely responsible for the
welcome it received. Until lately all the better type of hymnals for
church use adopted this arrangement.

But the newer books are following the pattern set forth in the ephemeral
song books of printing all the words of the hymns between the staves of
the tunes. This expedient arose from the singer's difficulty in mating
the rapid and rollicking tunes to the words provided, the words in many
cases being evidently little more than pegs to hang the musical notes on.

There are, of course, hymns so irregular in meter that a real difficulty
arises in setting the syllables to the proper notes, and in this case
there does seem to exist a reason for printing the words parallel to the
music; but to make this setting-up the standard of the hymns in general
is open to three objections that ought to be final to any one who cares
for the things of the spirit.

(a) The words strung out in long lines stretching across the page cease
to be poetry; for poetry is a form as well as a spirit. Even Whitman and
his followers insist on retaining the line arrangement, understanding
quite well that even free verse must have the look of poetry. No one
would, if he could escape, read the long strings of words crowded between
the staves of these new books. And hymns that are not made personally
familiar by devotional reading have not much spiritual influence.

(b) The unreadable words printed within the staves thus serve only as a
libretto to the music. They are a direct contribution to that thoughtless
singing of glib tunes we sometimes mistake for spiritual song. Where the
music is catching or so rapid as to require attention, I have ascertained
by actual questioning that it is only too common to sing the tune through
to the syllables beneath in practical unconsciousness of any particular
meaning in the words.

(c) The printing of the words between the staves involves the shortening
of the hymns for purely mechanical reasons. Four verses begin to be a
little inconvenient; five verses cause eyestrain; six verses are almost
impracticable.

Now a good hymn is not a collection of stanzas. It has an architecture
symmetrical from base to tower. It has a lyrical movement, progressing
and culminating in a climax. The proposal to reduce our hymns to a
four-verse common denominator was first made by the English Arians when
the singing was slow and their spiritual affections cold. It awakened
protest and approval and one or more editors ventured to apply the
standard to Church of England hymn books. Hymnologists hitherto have
regarded these ineffectual books with amusement, and cited them as "awful
examples."

But now, one of the most recent church hymnals, apparently a successful
one, is being advertised as desirable on the ground of setting the hymns
between the staves of the music. And on examination I find that of the
five hundred hymns of this book only forty-seven have more than four
verses.


I do not know in just what words that will not fall short of urbanity to
characterize this disregard of the spiritual integrity and the poetical
development of our hymns for no reason whatever except for mechanical
considerations. It is, of course, a phenomenon that has passed over from
the side of modern religious song that is admittedly illiterate and
demonstrably decadent.

Let us hope it will not pass far into the fair field of church song. It
may be a fad, but it has already become a menace. In the particular
communion with which I am connected it has begun to affect the higher
interests of church song.

A number of parochial committees have recently rejected the church hymnal
because not printed in the new manner. Even a larger number of pastors
are asking for an edition of _The Hymnal_ so printed; a thing impossible
because no typographical ingenuity can force the full form of many hymns
within the brace and have it still usable. And on the day before writing
these words the climax arrives in a request from a pastor to issue an
edition of _The Hymnal_, with all the hymns reduced to four verses, as
consuming less time in worship.

I do not like to end on so low a note, which sounds as though I were
accusing my brethren of a lack of culture. So, I shall make mine own the
more gracious words with which a distinguished bishop lately ended the
account of his observation of some other modern features of Presbyterian
worship: "It takes culture," he said, "a long time to arrive at
expression."




                               LECTURE SIX
                             HYMN SINGING[1]




I. The Hymn and the Hymn Tune


So far we have been dealing in the main with hymnody as a body of
religious verse furnishing the subject-matter for congregational song,
without special reference to the tunes which are as essential as the
hymns themselves in the actual practice of hymnody. In thus postponing
until now any consideration of the hymn tune we have simply followed the
logic of the situation. Any words chosen to be sung have a natural
priority over the music they are to be set to and the act of singing
them.

But in the case of our hymns the logical priority of their words over
their tunes is immensely emphasized. The body of its hymnody is primarily
the sacred poetry of the Christian religion; the record of the highest
appropriations of truth and the flowers of Christian experience, gathered
out of all ages of the Church and conveyed through the appealing medium
of verse. The verse, just because it is lyrical, is so much the easier to
read and remember. To a considerable body of the brotherhood hymnody is
the only religious poetry that counts, if not indeed the only poetry,
apart from the newspaper waifs and strays, with which they come into
personal contact.

It is as devotional verse rather than as song that our hymns have entered
into the spiritual experience of a myriad hymn lovers, to whom the church
hymnal has meant most as the companion of silent hours, the source of
remembered inspirations. It would be as futile to contend that Christian
hymns have no office and no message until sung in the congregation as to
say that the poetical and spiritual uplift of _The Book of Psalms_ was
confined to the comparatively few Jews who participated in the Temple
worship.

It is more to the point to say that it is only the precedent
appropriation of the hymn's message by each individual heart that makes
its congregational singing worthwhile. It is the truths and experiences
expressed in them that makes the music to which they are sung to be
religious music.

Except in intent and through association there can hardly be such a thing
as Christian music. Indeed if we are to divide life into compartments and
set apart only one as dedicated to religion, it is questionable if there
is such a thing as distinctively religious music. There is of course
carnal and spiritual music. But in music that is pure in feeling and
uplifting who can draw the line between secular and religious? Until it
be clothed in words who can say whether the strains that incite us to
activity incite us to the activities of brotherhood or the struggle for
supremacy; whether the music that brings visions of peace points to
Nirvana or to Heaven? Schumann's _Nachtstücke No._ 4 is secular, I
suppose; but as embodied in our tune, "Canonbury," it is a fit vehicle of
religious expression. Sullivan's "St. Gertrude" would serve as a march of
the marines in _Pinafore_: if it is religious, it is the somewhat
spectacular Christianity of Baring-Gould's "Onward, Christian soldiers"
that transmutes it.

It is then the thought and feeling of the hymn that imparts anything like
a specifically religious tone to the music to which it is set. It would
seem to follow that any theory of hymnody that subordinates the hymn to
the hymn tune is definitely unchristian: and that any tendency in our
hymn books or choir lofts to treat the words of our hymns as a mere
libretto of the music, however beautiful it be, should be dealt with very
frankly.


We have already before us sufficient materials for a rationale of the
hymn tune. We have first of all the hymn whose message, being spiritual,
is necessarily, like the gospel itself, a message to the individual soul;
but whose function is fulfilled only by being sung in fellowship by the
brotherhood who have apprehended the message. And so we must find music
fit to express spiritual values in unison.

The essentials of the hymn tune are, first, a simplicity that brings it
within a congregation's reach, and, second, the spiritual impression it
makes upon them. And, if church song is to rise above a perfunctory
performance of an assigned duty, it is equally essential that the music
have the quality we call charm,--the gift of approaching the spirit by
the avenue of sense, gratified by the appeal of beauty.

The spirituality of the hymn tune is no doubt overstressed in describing
it as "an offering to God," which on that account should be solemn and
stately, with feeling duly repressed. The music is sufficiently spiritual
if it encourages the deeper enterprise of offering ourselves to God. To
that end an element of sentimentality is allowable: probably necessary so
long as we are human beings rather than academic liturgiologists.

The essential of simplicity can hardly be over-stressed. The limits of a
congregational tune are so narrowly rigid. It cannot cover the whole hymn
anthem-wise, or adapt itself to varying verses as a song may. It must
begin and end within the limits of a single verse, to be repeated as
often as verses occur. It must be a clear melody that will carry itself
without the inner parts, kept within the range of the average voice and
the available musical ability.

Great musicians feel the constraint of these limits, just as in hymn
writing Tennyson felt the constraint of what he called "commonplace." It
used to be pleasant to talk over these matters with Horatio Parker, most
scholarly of our composers, who had a part in editing several hymnals and
composed some tunes of exceptional brilliancy. He liked to say in private
what he is reported as saying publicly, that the hymn tune is quite the
lowest form of music. He had no instinctive sympathy with congregational
singing, which he found inartistic; and he had an idealist's contempt for
the common level and for popularity. One of his earlier tunes, "Garden
City," that attained wide vogue, became an offense to him, just as the
popularity of John Hay's early ballads became an irritation to that
writer. Dr. Parker told me he would recall his tune if he could.

And yet effectiveness need not be a bugbear to an artist. The restraint
that adapts a composition to its appointed function is an art motive in
itself. The miniature may exhibit qualities as sound as the colossal
canvasses of Benjamin West, and is much better adapted to be cherished.
Certainly Parker's "Mount Sion" is, within its limits, as good music as
his prize opera "Mona." And one can imagine the hymn tune being sung on
church occasions till the end of time, while it is doubtful if the
profoundly accomplished opera, having had its official hearing, will
again be performed.

The moral of which things is that the Church must not submit to an
academic decree banishing its hymn tunes from the realm of art, lest the
tunes shall be satisfied to clothe themselves in the shabby garments of
the outcast, or in the tinsel and motley of the cabaret, as our popular
song has already learned to do.

The Church and its pastors must really enlarge their minds to let the
hymn tune share whatever concern they feel for the hymns. In the actual
administration of hymnody as an ordinance there is no room for
distinction between words and music. The hymn and its tune together
compose the unit of the hymn as sung, and together stand or fall. An
inartistic tune will kill the most poetic hymn ever written. A dull or
unwelcome tune will impart to the most spiritual words an atmosphere of
insincerity that makes one's spirit shrink. A tune adequate to the
spiritual values of the words, interprets them. A great tune does more:
it adds something to the printed words by way of suggesting things of the
spirit unprinted between the lines.




II. The Primitive Singing


It is a quaint providence that has preserved as a part of our English
Bible the names of several tunes to which Psalms were sung, by indicating
the title of some familiar song to the melody of which the Psalm was set.
Thus Psalm xxii was sung to "A Hind in the Morning"; xlv to "The lilies";
lvi to "The silent Dove of those far off"; lx to "The Lily of Testimony."
The ascriptions add nothing to our knowledge of Hebrew music, but they do
confer a grace of pedigree upon the hymn tune.[2]

No Hebrew melody survives. The attempt to trace a connection of one or
another with traditional synagogue melodies fails because the inherited
tunes differ among themselves, reflecting the country and period of their
origin. The opinion that the Hebrew music is continued in the
ecclesiastical chant of the Roman Church must be relegated to the sphere
of pious tradition.

The Hebrew tune had no harmony in our modern sense. It was a unison
cantillation, free, and not measured like an Anglican chant, and
following more closely the rhythms of the words. The melodies had
individuality enough to be remembered and handed down; for there was no
way of recording them.

At the Last Supper the company would use the one they associated with the
Hallel. Our Lord had no intent of imposing upon His Church His national
music or ritual. The particular tune they used did not become an oral
tradition, and could not have been made a part of the written gospel,
since no system of notation had been invented. I have often thought how
happy that circumstance was. If the music had been included in the
narrative, as it would be in a modern phonographic record, it would
inevitably have acquired a sacrosanct character. It might have formed the
basis of a system of church music that would have kept the later Church
outside the development of modern culture.

It would be surplusage to recall that our Lord imposed no type of music
upon His Church, were it not for the recent order of the Pope (acting as
His Vicar) prescribing the sole use in all churches of the Roman
obedience of that plain-song music which some claim as primitive. In view
also, I might add, of the pronouncements from time to time of Protestant
leaders of ecclesiastical music, venturing to lay out its metes and
bounds with equal precision but with less authority.


The singing of the Pauline Churches is often made the precedent for
congregational song as distinguished from the singing of a later time by
officiants. The psalmody most characteristic, the charismatic, was
certainly not congregational, but delivered solo-wise to a listening
assembly.

There were practical difficulties in the way of "conjoint singing." There
was no common musical standard. It is not clear that Jewish Christians
would find the Septuagint Psalms adaptable to the only music they knew.
Nor can we say how far either Jew or Gentile brought to the meetings the
tradition of simultaneous singing. What was more practicable and
presumably more familiar was that simplest type of antiphonal song in
which a leader carries the Psalm and the congregation makes such
responses as are agreed upon.

Many of the proper tunes of the Psalms had been lost from memory before
our Lord's time; and the musical ideals of the scattered Jews must have
been already modified by Hellenistic influences. Renan[3] would infer the
character of the music not so much from that of the synagogue as from the
Eastern practice of to-day. He argues that a common practice among
religious communities separated since early times testifies to its great
antiquity:

"The chanting with which they accompanied the new hymns was probably that
species of sobbing without distinct notes which is still the chant of the
Greek Church, of the Marionites, and generally of Eastern Christians. It
is not so much a musical modulation as a manner of forcing the voice and
of emitting through the nose a sort of groaning, in which all the
inflections follow each other rapidly. They perform this singular
melopœia standing; the eye fixed, the forehead knitted, the eye-brow
contracted, giving an appearance of effort. The word 'Amen,' above all,
is uttered in a tremulous voice with bodily shaking."


Instrumental music being still excluded from Greek Church worship, the
same method of arguing back from present-day practice, would raise a
presumption that the psalmody was unaccompanied.

Calvin at Geneva took a definite stand against it, and ever since "the
instrumental music question" has vexed the Puritan conscience. In the
days of Puritan ascendancy in England it wrought great iconoclasm.
Perhaps it is settled now. But in "cases of conscience" one never knows.

Certainly it is not settled by the record. St. Paul's verb, "psallein,"
is cited as implying instrumental accompaniment: his "making melody in
the heart" is cited as proving that the heart-strings are the instrument
referred to. In I Cor. xiv, 7, 8, the Apostle refers familiarly to
several musical instruments; but Dr. Porteus, debating _The Organ
Question_,[4] detects a note of contempt in his allusion to "sounding
brass and tinkling cymbal" in I Cor. xiii, 1.

Perhaps we might agree that the record is noncommittal. The enlightened
imagination has indeed a great deal to do with the settlement of these
questions of history and of conscience. And the Christian imagination
continues to hear the blast of Temple trumpets making a loud noise unto
Jehovah, and persists in giving audience not only to a voice from heaven
as the sound of many waters, but to the voice of harpers harping with
their harps as the new song arises to the throne of God itself.




III. Plainsong Melodies


Church music had become little more than recitation when Ambrose
introduced at Milan the antiphonal singing by the congregation of his new
metrical hymns. For tunes he reverted to the Greek scales or modes; and
in four of them composed those Psalm and hymn melodies whose rendering in
the basilica so deeply moved the heart of St. Augustine. Readers of his
_Confessions_ will recall the ecstasy of his delight and the suggestive
cross-examination of that delight to discover if his emotions were not
sensuous rather than spiritual. And yet the tunes were rudimental,
without the charm of harmony, and the voice production distinctly nasal.

On this Greek basis was developed the musical system of plainsong, to
which the labors of the great Gregory have attached the name of Gregorian
Chant.


To any Christian with the historic sense a worship-music with traditions
so venerable makes an _a priori_ appeal: to one ecclesiastically-minded
there is a heightening in the appeal of the only music the Church can
claim as distinctively her own.

When the Oxford Revival turned the English Church mind to Medievalism, a
definite movement began, under Thomas Helmore's lead, to engraft the
Gregorian music upon English worship. This beginning, in the eighteen
fifties, was premature and misinformed.

With the great prominence given to it by the _Motu proprio_ of Pius X in
1903, restoring the purity of plainsong and enjoining its use in Roman
Catholic churches, a new movement has begun to introduce it into Anglican
and Episcopal Churches and some congregations outside. The typical Church
of England book, _Hymns ancient and modern_, in its 1904 edition triples
the number of plainsong melodies of the original issue of 1861. The newer
_English Hymnal_ has a hundred; _The New Hymnal_ of the American
Episcopal Church has fourteen.

Some traces of plainsong influence are in all hymnals: in Lowell Mason's
"Hamburg" for instance. Some of its melodies in a popularized form are
familiar and useful: "Veni Emmanuel" for instance. With these possibly
the plainsong movement might be allowed to rest for the present. It
should be cross-examined in the interests of the congregation. The tunes
are without the aid of harmony, written in unfamiliar keys, timeless and
unbarred. Their beauty depends on adapting the free rhythm to the
mutations of the words. They are confessedly difficult even for trained
choirs. Badly sung they are totally uninteresting.

Such reports as reach me from Episcopal parishes are uniform in their
complaint that the purer plainsong melodies in their _New Hymnal_ shut
out the people from participating in the hymns set to them. Those who are
outside the line of this particular musical tradition may wisely heed a
practical estimate by one born in it and long experienced in it. So I
quote from the _History and Growth of Church Music_ by Father Taunton, a
Roman Catholic musician:[5]

"Although I personally admire and take a delight in joining to the best
of my poor abilities in the Plain Chant, yet I am convinced it does not
do for our people. It does not appeal to them, it does not awake in them
any echoes of the religious life. The impressions it produces are gloom
and monotony, and these are not religious.... The truth is that Plain
Chant is suited to and can only be sung, as it ought to be sung, by the
clergy and religious."

Nevertheless the wide concern of _The English Hymnal_ with plainsong,
suggests that the movement to acclimate it will have to be tried out in
the Church of England. Should the movement win through it will no doubt
affect the more cultivated congregations in non-liturgical communions, so
oddly sensitive as they are to prevailing fashions in liturgical
Churches.

I hear already of one pastor whole-heartedly training his people in the
love and practice of plainsong. Others of us who cherish no expectation
that it will ever be popularized, and are conscious of no wish that it
should be, may yet welcome such a training-school. No music teaches so
impressively the rightful supremacy of holy words over musical notes. Its
measures are the marks of punctuation: its accents the emphasis given to
a syllable in careful speech. A training in it would give the habit of
unremitting attention to the words of a hymn, so lacking at present. To
me it would seem obvious that each melody should be applied only to the
specific hymn to which it was so carefully adapted, and that the hymns
should be sung in the original Latin, whose speech-values and fluctuating
rhythms cannot be reproduced in English.




IV. The Lutheran Chorales[6]


Ambrose's task of finding congregational tunes for new hymns came afresh
to Martin Luther. The task was congenial to one who thought the singing
of united voices "the most beautiful thing in the world"; and not too
difficult for one so familiar with the traditions and so accustomed to
the performance of both plainsong and folk song.

Luther invented or shaped the Protestant hymn tune, in that form which,
as harmonized and developed in the century following, we are accustomed
to call the "Lutheran chorale." Its essence was a sober and elevated but
buoyant melody, in the idiom of the songs in which a musical people were
accustomed to express their feelings, without any great distinction
between those definitely religious or simply human.

Whether Luther composed "Ein' Feste Burg" and other melodies that bear
his name is a problem of no great import, as neither he nor his helpers
sought originality. Their tunes were largely made up from phrases from
plainsong or adaptations of current songs, some of which were already
associated with sacred words and some with secular. He was chided for
going so far afield as to bring folk songs into the sanctuary. What he
did was just what the editors of the recent _English Hymnal_ are now so
widely commended for doing as a relief from the academic monotony into
which Anglican song was falling. And the practical effect of Luther's
course was not to secularize church song so much as to turn the current
of German music into a religious channel.

Luther's equipment was unique, combining his knowledge of the rich
resources, Latin and German, his ability to handle them, his sympathy
with plain people, his saving common sense. The twice-told tale of his
phenomenal success in making popular song his agent in spreading the
gospel and heartening the gospelers does not need to be repeated here.

By a gradual process culminating in the eighteenth century and often
attributed to the relaxed spiritual feelings of a cold rationalism, the
chorales suffered a decadence like that of plainsong. Their rhythmical
movement was often destroyed by reducing them to notes of equal length
too much drawn out, which impart a certain dullness in place of the
buoyant life and motion of the original.


In this duller form the chorales came into this country and have been
presented to American churches: a fact which partly explains why so few
have been appropriated. Lutheran worship itself has been a losing
struggle to keep to the fore its own hymnody with its proper tunes,
during the process of Americanizing successive generations of its people,
who acquire a preference for lighter types of song prevailing among the
people they daily associate with. There is also a temperamental
difference between Germans and Americans that militates against the
adoption of the chorales, especially in the slower and heavier form most
familiar. Most people respond to this great music sung _en masse_ or
orchestrated by Bach; but, when asked to join in, some difference in
training or something in nervous make-up breeds an impatience in the
vocal chords.

Unfortunately there is no pope in Lutheranism to ordain the restoration
of the chorale to its primitive beauty. In the meantime a party has
arisen with that end in view. It is at least possible that the chorale
restored to buoyancy would make a fresh appeal to American congregations.
It is indeed worth hoping for.

The extreme Lutheran restorer of the old paths who at times seems to
imply that the chorale is the one and only hymn setting for our day,
awakens less sympathy. He seems to an outsider to be putting the letter
of Luther's tunes in place of the freedom of Luther's method. If any one
thing was characteristic of his settlement of Protestant music it was the
free spirit that could welcome a contribution of available music from any
source whatever, ecclesiastical or human, of a sort that could be adapted
to holy words and consecrated by holy associations.




V. The Genevan Melodies


Calvin's problem at Geneva was to find popular melodies that would carry
the difficult measures of Marot's Psalms. His attempt to solve it has
been treated by a succession of historians as a blot on the record of
sacred music.

What Calvin did may be summed up in a sentence. Lacking Luther's
equipment he singled out a competent musician, Louis Bourgeois, living at
Geneva under needy circumstances, and put into his hands the preparation
of suitable melodies. We may be quite sure that he impressed upon the
musician just the sort of thing he wanted. Hence the long series of hymn
tunes that graced the _Genevan Psalter_ of 1551. After Bourgeois had left
Geneva, the setting of the balance of the Psalter had to be committed to
inferior hands.

When critics protest against Calvin's insistence on unison singing, his
repudiation of "curious music," and his banishment of the organ, they are
within their rights. Even so one could wish that they might add the
historic sense to their critical equipment and, applying to Calvin's
musical settlement William James' pragmatic test, acknowledge that "it
worked."

Professor Dickinson in his very well-known _Music in the History of the
Western Church_ is somewhat alone in appreciation of the historical
situation. But just what does he mean by calling the Genevan melodies
"unemotional unison tunes that satisfied the stern demands of rigid
zealots," "not having in themselves any artistic value"? Had Professor
Dickinson any first-hand knowledge of this branch of his subject?

Let us turn without further remark to the present Poet Laureate, who has
added a grace to our hymnody by his devotion to it, and whose _Yattendon
Hymnal_ is ample evidence of his musical taste. This is from his
twice-printed _Practical Discourse on some principles of
Hymn-singing_:[7]

"Bourgeois turned out to be an extraordinary genius in melody." Of his
eighty-five tunes in the Genevan Psalter "almost all ... are of great
merit and many of the highest excellence. Bourgeois' tunes are
masterpieces, which have remained popular on the continent from the first
... and the best that can be imagined for solemn congregational singing
of the kind which we might expect in England."

It was their beauty that made the Genevan Psalmody and gave it wings. If
a hymnologist relied on the French Psalms to prove the power of the hymn
to move and sustain the heart, a musician might urge that it was the
tunes that won French hearts. He might go further and say that they
carried the psalmody across the borders and opened the hearts of many who
could not read French. The proof is that it became necessary to translate
the Genevan Psalms into most European languages, always preserving the
meters and rhythms that so they might be sung to the original
melodies.[8]


The Reformed Churches, then, have a musical inheritance of their own;
spiritual, artistic. In English-speaking communions it lies practically
unclaimed. Among ourselves it has left no traces beyond a reminiscence
embodied in the familiar "Autumn" and the survival of the 134th Psalm
melody (our "Old Hundredth"), which, like so many chorales, has been
reduced to notes of equal length.

The question arises how this loss happened. It was the hearing of the
Genevan song that inspired the English exiles of Mary's reign to
undertake an English psalm book. Why did they make so little use of what
they heard? The answer is quite simple. No one of them could imitate the
delicate French lyrical meters which carried the Genevan tunes. They were
hard put to get the Psalms into English measures which would pass for
verse at all. Their disability finally determined the character of the
English Psalm tune as embodied in the _Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter_ of
1562; for the most part a rather dull performance; regrettably so because
dull tunes are fated to become in time the mother of a dogged
congregational hymnody.

Is it worthwhile for English-speaking Reformed communions to claim a
musical inheritance so distinctive and so beautiful? Speaking for his own
Church of England Dr. Bridges is an enthusiast for the revival of the
Genevan melodies, as "thoroughly congenial to our national taste,"
whereas the failure to bring German chorales into general use testifies
to "a difference in the melodic sense of the two nations." The primary
difficulty of finding words to fit the French measures Dr. Bridges has
begun to meet with some lyrics of his own in his _Yattendon Hymnal_. The
editors of _The English Hymnal_ have taken up the task, and given
currency to sixteen of the melodies. The late Dr. Burnap of Brooklyn was
equally anxious to become a pioneer in introducing them into American
hymnals. He found the books inhospitable, and the leaders of church music
indifferent. It may possibly be that an adequate presentation of the
Genevan Psalmody with some simplification of its rhythms might awaken in
Reformed Churches something of the pride Lutherans have in their great
inheritance. "These tunes," says the Poet Laureate, "in dignity,
solemnity, pathos, and melodic solidity leave nothing to be desired."




VI. The English Psalm Tunes


The Psalm tunes of the Reformation period embodied in the English Psalter
of 1562 and the Scottish of 1564 are unharmonized, and in their unadorned
severity of outline suggest the Puritan influence back of them. They
conform to Cranmer's advice to Henry VIII upon translating the liturgy:
"The song made thereunto should not be full of notes, but as near as may
be for every syllable a note, so that it may be sung distinctly and
devoutly."

Some effort was made to provide a proper tune to each Psalm; or, if not,
to refer each to the melody of some other. The 8-line C. M. tune was
greatly favored. Such Genevan melodies as were used were badly marred in
adapting them to English meters, and the new tunes are generally
uninteresting. Some half dozen of the 8-line tunes survive in English
hymnals, but are less known here.

Either these 8-line tunes taxed peoples' memories or else proved dull,
for the harmonized editions of the Psalter that soon began to appear
replaced them with "short tunes" of four lines. It is they to which we
commonly refer as "the English Psalm Tunes."

William Damon's edition, as early as 1579, gave us "Cambridge" and
"Oxford," "Southwell" and (later) "Windsor." Thomas Este's in 1592 gave
us "Winchester" and "Cheshire." Thomas Ravenscroft's of 1621 merely
reflected the prevailing taste in gathering up from various places a
large reënforcement of 4-line tunes. Among his sources was Andro Hart's
1615 edition of the Scottish Psalter, in which a group of twelve appeared
as "Common Tunes," applicable to any C. M. Psalm; easier to remember than
so many proper tunes. Among them were "Dundee" ("French"), "The Stilt,"
"Dumferline," "Martyrs" and others that played so great a part in
Scottish life, and came to be regarded by many Scottish hearts as having
been composed by David himself.

The "short tune" has ever since proved effective, and has often dominated
our church song. Nevertheless it marked a decline and not a progress; a
lapsing of Reformation fervor, a decadence of the general aptitude for
music in Elizabeth's time.

During the long struggle between Puritan and Cavalier the Psalm singing
fell between the two stools of high church and low church, and lay in a
neglect as great as could befall an ordinance destined to survive. Even
the short tunes became unmanageable. With the Puritan ascendancy it fell
into a musical collapse, with Parliament wrangling over the version of
Psalms to be authorized, and the Scottish Assembly putting forth "Rous'
Version" in 1650, mostly in common meter, and (for the first time in
Scotland) without any provision of music whatever.

After the Restoration of 1660 something had to be done to revive the lost
art of congregational song among a people who did not even know the
traditions of a better day. In 1671 John Playford put forth a folio of
tunes old and new; complaining in his preface that nearly all the choice
tunes were lost and out of use and that very few parish clerks even in
London knew enough music to set them. His folio falling flat, six years
later he compiled a setting of the old Psalms in a handy twelvemo, with
simpler harmonies and a 4-line alternate for every 8-line tune. This
became, and for a century continued to be, the musical standard, although
contributing very little to our present-day resources.

Outside the Church Dr. Watts regarded his System of Praise as rescue work
from the intolerable conditions of psalmody among dissenters. But he
depended upon the reviving power of evangelical sentiment, and had no
thought musically of any thing more than getting some snap into the few
tunes the people knew. It was other hands who found his vigorous hymns an
encouragement of a parallel movement to freshen up the musical side also.
To this we owe both words and tune of the ringing Easter Hymn, "Jesus
Christ is risen to-day." Its appearance was almost simultaneous with that
of _Watts' Hymns and Spiritual Songs_.

Within the Church of England the _New Version_ of Tate and Brady, at the
end of the seventeenth century, had been an effort to better things by
providing Psalms more lyrical, singable to current tunes; but its
_Supplement_ enriched hymnody permanently with three fine tunes of Dr.
Croft, "St. Anne," "Hanover" and "St. Matthew's Tune." So far as these
were sung at all, even in London, it was disconnectedly, as the clerk
droned out the Psalm line by line, and some in the congregation, or some
singers representing it, responded with so much of the melody as covered
the line.

The average parish church remained unaffected by the _New Version_. It
was the deplorable conditions of parochial song that inspired John Wesley
to set up the Methodist singing which restored to his people the old
fervor of Reformation song. As an educator Wesley taught them how to sing
and as an administrator published several tune books. He used German
tunes and Psalm tunes, when they pleased him, and, like Luther, secular
songs. He was scrupulous both as to musical exactness and spiritual tone.
He hated dullness but rebuked "horn-pipes." The "Old Methodist Tunes" are
later, and often more florid than he would approve.

Any impression you may get from Green's _Short History of England_ that
Wesley set all England a-singing Methodist hymns is altogether erroneous.
The Wesleyan zeal for song overflowed into the Evangelical side of the
Revival through Whitefield and the Countess of Huntingdon's chapels, and
even tapped the Church of England through the Evangelical party she
inspired. But to the stodgy churchliness of the time the Methodist
"enthusiasm" was simply hateful. It was distasteful even to Dr. Watts and
dignified dissent. The field-song of the revivals had no more direct
influence upon parochial psalmody than the tambourines of the Salvation
Army have now upon English cathedrals.

The Wesleyan side contributed little to the common stock of tunes. But a
number of our hymns are still associated with tunes used in Lady
Huntingdon's chapels or Evangelical services elsewhere. The most striking
original contribution is "Miles Lane," still in England the proper tune
to "All hail the power of Jesus' Name."

An abundance of eighteenth century tune books testify in their way to a
desire to improve congregational singing. The fresh tunes they offer are
an effort to get away from the rigid outline of the old Psalm tune, and
may be viewed as presenting a new type.

This eighteenth century hymn tune has two characteristics: its freedom in
using two or more notes to a single syllable, often expanding into trills
and runs; and its more unconstrained use of vivacious triple time. The
Advent tune, "Helmsley," so dear to the heart of Queen Victoria, is an
example, perhaps the more delightful for being somewhat questionable.

These eighteenth century tune books must have found their market for the
most part among dissenting interests. These more or less florid tunes,
associated in our thoughts with the English Church, were as a rule hers
only by adoption. William Knapp, it is true, was parish clerk, and made
an opportunity to introduce his useful "Wareham" into his Devonshire
parish. But Barthélémon's "Morning Hymn" was the peculiar property of a
London charity school; Wainwright's ringing melody to "Christians, awake"
was an open-air Christmas carol; "Adeste Fideles" was familiar only in
Roman Catholic chapels.

The Church of England had a minor part either in introducing or
countenancing the more florid type of hymn tune that marks the eighteenth
century development of hymnody. Dr. Burney, writing in 1789, assures us
that only two new tunes had been adopted in church services for a hundred
years; Dr. Croft's "Hanover" and the "Easter Hymn."




VII. American Song




                     1. _Psalm Tunes in New England_


The first Protestant tunes heard in this country were the melodies of
Calvin's Psalter, sung in Florida by members of Coligny's expeditions of
1562-64, and which became their most lasting memorial. For Le Challeux
tells us[9] that long after the break-up of the colony the traveler would
catch strains of them uncouthly rendered by the native Indians. But they
were of no influence upon American psalmody.

The Pilgrim Fathers brought to Plymouth in 1620 the Psalter Henry
Ainsworth prepared in Holland for his English flock. Longfellow has made
its name famous, but its music was almost forgotten till Professor Pratt
of Hartford analyzed and annotated it. In his _Music of the Pilgrims_[10]
he has shown that a majority of the tunes were French, not English, and
by public demonstrations has shown how singable they are. The French
meters and the long verses became more and more of a hindrance as musical
ability weakened under the hard conditions of life. But Plymouth held on
to a diminishing remnant of its own tunes till the century's end; when it
resorted to the "short tunes" used in the Bay Colony.

For the Puritans had brought to Massachusetts Bay a few copies of
Ravenscroft's setting of _Sternhold and Hopkins_, which since 1621 had
been the musical standard at home. Endicott's copy is at the
Massachusetts Historical Society; and there lately appeared at auction
the autographed copy of Judge Sewall, to whose diary we owe our knowledge
of the almost unbelievable straits to which New England psalmody was
reduced; with the members of the congregation refusing to sing in time,
and sometimes to sing the same tune. It took ten years of controversy to
persuade the New England conscience that a regulated tune did not
infringe upon individual freedom to worship God in one's independent way.

By the time it ended hardly a congregation could even attempt more than
three or four of the forty C. M. tunes which a note in _The Bay Psalm
Book_ of 1640 had pronounced available.

As a first step toward recovery the edition of 1698 printed at the end a
group of fifteen tunes; the earliest printing of music in the colonies.
Somewhere between 1714 and the twenties the Rev. John Tufts printed the
first American tune book; very small because very daring, with
thirty-seven tunes in three parts, all English. His venture found favor,
and eleven editions were called for.[11] It was followed in 1721 by _The
Grounds and Rules of Musick_ of Thomas Walter, another clergyman. My copy
contains twenty-four tunes, and is apparently complete; but the book was
really a primer.

There is no evidence that any Psalm tune or any music of any kind was
composed by a native of this country till we come to two Philadelphia
contemporaries: Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791) an amateur who was to
become a "Signer," and James Lyon (1735-1794), a Princeton graduate who
was to become a Presbyterian clergyman. Both composed tunes and published
tune books, and one or the other is the first American composer.[12]
Hopkinson's book of 1763 was made and printed in Philadelphia for the
united parish of Christ Church and St. Peter's. Lyon's, probably made in
Princeton, was published in 1761 in Philadelphia as _Urania_, with a
dedication to the clergy of all denominations; who responded by calling
for several editions. It contained some tunes of his own, but depended
mostly upon the eighteenth century English books, some of quite recent
date; and it was the most important thing of its kind as yet done in the
colonies.




                      2. _American Hymn Tunes_[13]


From this date, and for a century, ending in the 1870s, a succession of
those oblong tune books, once so familiar, followed with a persistency
that implies some demand at the time, and involves ample shelving and a
patient mind on the part of a modern collector. Are they worth
collecting? From a musical standpoint hardly so: from a historical
standpoint quite so. They created the phases through which the developing
hymnody found expression in the ordinance of Congregational Song; and in
the end they came very close to wrecking it.

These books made and now cover the epochs of the American tune, and of
hymn singing from the beginnings to the _Gospel Hymns_ of the 1870s.


(a) Billings' Fugueing Tunes came first; with, as he said, "twenty times
the power of the old slow tunes; each part straining for mastery and
victory." They were introduced in a series of tune books ranging from
1770 to 1794. William Billings was a grotesque figure of a tanner, short
in one leg and short of one eye; self-taught as far as taught, with an
entertaining gift of self-applause and a touch of genius; a spiritual
brother of Lord Timothy Dexter of Newburyport.

By the contrast of their excitements with the traditional dullness his
tunes appealed to the rising spirit of revolution in the colonies. The
contagion of their swinging melodies and the thrill of their fugueing
ventures carried New England off its feet and effected a revolution in
church song. His tune "Chester," set to "Let tyrants shake their iron
rod," played a part in the Revolutionary War itself. "Majesty" was his
masterpiece, of a jolly stateliness; and I defy any company to sing it,
in its original and uncorrected form, without a thrill.

As an offering of church song Billings' work no doubt is grotesque. The
permanent lesson it embodies is that if the Church lets its hymnody grow
dull from whatever motive or the lack of any, the irrepressible instincts
of human nature for life and color will take the matter of enlivening
into their own hands, even to the extent of making the hymnody
ridiculous.


(b) Lowell Mason's Work. Billings had started the New England singing
school, which rapidly developed into an institution. Psalmody became a
recreation, and the conduct of it by itinerant "professors" became a
profession. These men were the composers of the tunes and compilers of
the succession of the tune books, for which their local connections
afforded a market. Some were Billings' imitators: most had perforce to
keep nearer the ground, where they were hoping evidently to establish a
school of American church music. This was the "New Psalmody" of the
singing schools, now seeming so uninstructed and dull, or else so
eccentric.

It led to a reactionary movement, that became marked very early in the
nineteenth century, to reëstablish what they called the "Ancient
Psalmody," which might mean the earlier or the eighteenth century Psalm
tunes and newer work patterned on them.

This uncertain, if not confused situation, in a dark age of music, formed
Lowell Mason's background; and gave an opportunity to introduce what may
fairly be called his own type of tunes: in the choral style, sober,
dignified, melodious, with very simple harmonies, and with undoubtedly a
prevailing suggestion of religious feeling.

Mason was a New Englander clerking in Savannah, when in 1822 he succeeded
in having his first tune book printed in Boston under the patronage of
its Handel and Haydn Society. It was they who brought him home under
assurances of employment as musical leader in Boston churches.

By training the young in day-schools, by his writings and a long series
of tune books accompanied by choir training in the art of using them, he
improved the performance and established the type of American psalmody. A
self-made man whose own acquirements were not such as elevated him out of
sight of the average ability of the people, he encouraged a sobering of
public taste so tactfully that his tunes still remain very much alive,
and are our most characteristic contribution to the common stock of tunes
having spiritual value.

At the time he completely dominated the situation. I have a series of
letters to and fro between him and various editors, whose purport is a
desire on his part to claim property in the tunes that make his books
saleable, and on theirs an urgent plea for permission to incorporate his
tunes in their own books; without which, they say, they hardly venture to
go to press.

Mason's tunes seem to us framed in the very interest of a congregation of
limited musical acquirements. It is nevertheless true that he and his
active co-worker, Thomas Hastings, put an emphasis upon choir training
that inevitably tended to a separation of interests between the skillful
choir and the uncultivated congregation. "We must not here be understood
as opposed to congregational song as such," Hastings found it necessary
to protest in his _Musical Taste_.[14] But in his heart he was quite
willing that, until the people acquired more of that taste and a greater
efficiency, they should listen to the choir.


(c) The Parlor Music Type. This listening attitude was accentuated in the
years between 1850 and the Civil War, at the hands of foreign-born
musicians who were brought here to take charge of musical interests in
some parish or who sought a leadership in church song. They were ignorant
of American traditions and more or less bored by Lowell Mason's
ascendancy.

The listening attitude became inevitable under the ministrations of Henry
W. Greatorex, an Englishman brought here in the late thirties to take
charge of the organ at Centre Church, Hartford. His _Collection_ of 1851
introduced into an abounding popularity the hymn tune of a daintier type
of what may be called parlor music, the sacred quartette rather than
choral music. Thus arose the necessity of the quartette choir to do
justice to the music and to dominate the hymnody for many years.

We need not share the liturgical abhorrence of the part-song as an
expression of church song. At its best it may happen to enrich the family
song of the brotherhood. It is enough to say that at the time of
introduction it was hopelessly beyond the capacity of American
congregations. The practical working of this movement was to restore in
our Protestant churches the canon of the Council meeting at Laodicæa in
363 to the effect that "beside the Psalm singers appointed thereto, who
mount the ambo and sing out of the book, no others shall sing in church."
The choir rendered the hymns from the "book," the oblong tune books they
alone had on their ambo, and which were frequently changed in the
interest of novelty. The congregation listened, and in many churches
turned toward the choir loft to see as well as hear the performers.

Of this collapse of popular song I have collected abundant evidence
covering the Congregationalist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Lutheran
communions: In all of them it became indeed a matter of synodical
concern. In all of them the subjugation of the congregation had become
complete. Seated between a pulpit asserting its supremacy in everything
but song and a choir loft monopolizing the song, the people were no
longer a band of common worshipers but merely an audience attending a
performance of worship.


(d) The Congregational Tune Book. If the hymnody was to be restored to a
Protestant basis the first step was to begin where Luther and Calvin had
begun; to provide suitable music and to get it into the hands of the
people who were to sing it.


The ground had been prepared to some extent by Joshua Leavitt, a
specialist in revivals, in his _The Christian Lyre_, which in 1831 began
to appear in monthly installments, with easy tunes set to each hymn or
group of hymns. To Mason and Hastings it seemed to undo their work by
lowering the musical standard and appropriating undesirable secular
melodies. They printed a rival book in 1832, _Spiritual Songs for social
worship_ on the same plan, but somewhat more sober in tone. It is notable
that both books regard "the psalmody of larger and more dignified
assemblies" as a thing quite apart.

These 2-part tunes, these little books, are only for families, social
gatherings, prayer meetings, revivals. Both became popular, and must have
persuaded many Christians that they might do their own singing. Perhaps
we may regard Leavitt's book as marking an extension of camp-meeting and
Methodist song into other communions, and that of Hastings and Mason as
an unintended preparation for a movement that was to put the musical
hymnal into the hands of worshiping congregations.

But not for some years. The church hymnal with tunes in our American
congregations is due more to Henry Ward Beecher than to any other man;
closely followed as he was by the Andover Faculty. He craved the
inspiration of congregational singing in his Brooklyn church both as
affording an opportunity for expressing feeling and as creating the best
atmosphere in which to preach.

He proposed to his organist, Darius E. Jones, the preparation of a small
book of hymns and tunes, _Temple Melodies_, whose success inspired the
larger venture of the _Plymouth Collection_ of 1855. So much of a pioneer
was he, and so eccentric his enterprise seemed that he found a publisher
with great difficulty. But its success was immediate; and the
congregational singing of Plymouth Church became a thing to be imitated.
A musical edition of the Andover book followed in 1859, and in 1862 Dr.
Charles S. Robinson got his hymnal with tunes into many Presbyterian
congregations.

These books fixed the type of the American hymnal on the original
Reformation lines, and through them congregational singing was restored.
They hardly established a specific type of tune, beyond a preference for
what was simple and melodious, with a preponderance of examples of the
Lowell Mason order, by that time become a churchly tradition. On this
general basis the American church tune remained, until enriched and
modified by the influence of the Oxford Revival.


(e) The Tunes of the Oxford Movement proved so persuasive in various
communions on this side of the water that they may conveniently be dealt
with here, as marking a phase in the development of our American hymn
singing.

Their novelty lay largely in freshness of melody and delicacy of
harmonization. They were foreshadowed to some extent by the work of such
men as Samuel S. Wesley, composer of "Aurelia," Henry J. Gauntlett and
Sir John Goss, but emerged full stream in _Hymns ancient and modern_ of
1861 and its supplement of 1867; the classical hymnal of the Oxford
Movement. Its new tunes were largely the work of four men: its editor,
William H. Monk, composer of "Eventide"; John B. Dykes (a disciple of
Mendelssohn), composer of "Lux Benigna"; Joseph Barnby (a disciple of
Gounod), composer of "O Paradise"; and Sir John Stainer, composer of
"Blessed Home."

The new melodies were sentimental rather than strenuous, and often
plaintive; supported in the inner parts by what may be called a
sentimental use of close harmonies, in the manner of current part-song as
over against the independently melodious counterpoint of the old Psalm
tunes. They express more the feeling of the Oxford Revival than its
resolution, the spiritual sentiment of the individual rather than the
sense of corporate worship. And therefore they complemented rather than
replaced the more churchly type of tune being provided by Helmore,
Redhead and others favoring the plainsong tradition.

Such as they were, they at once won the favor of church musicians and the
hearts of the people in ever-widening circles, and became the
characteristic Victorian hymn tune. They were made familiar in the
American Episcopal Church through importations and reprints, and almost
as soon in the Presbyterian Church through the _Presbyterian Hymnal_ of
1874. Until now they seem in many communions like a part of the common
inheritance.

At length their half-century's unbroken popularity is suffering from a
reaction at the hands of church musicians so extreme that they are unable
to express their disdain in terms of that moderation which alone is
convincing.

Mr. Geoffrey Dearmer has a paper in _Music and Letters_ for January,
1925, on "The Fall and Rise of the Hymn Tune," in which Hymns ancient and
modern is represented as "plunging religious music into an abyss" from
which only now there is a movement to rescue it. He is following the
lines laid out in _Worship and Music_ of 1918,[15] by Chancellor George
Gardner, with Bishop Gore's approval.

In the course of his argument the Chancellor makes occasion to refer to
"the thin and perhaps rowdy way" in which Dykes' tune to "Eternal Father,
strong to save" and Barnby's to "For all the saints who from their labors
rest" express their sentiments. Incidentally he refers to "the vulgar
lusciousness" or "cheap world-weariness" of other tunes of Dykes, and
compares Barnby's tune to "When morning gilds the skies" to the "clank,
clank of machinery."

The offense of these tunes lies no doubt in the personal feeling they
express. If the protest is valid it ought to go deeper. The real question
is whether hymns of personal sentiment are proper for public worship.
Granting that they are to be so used, the tune of personal sentiment
logically follows. If "Abide with me" is a proper church hymn, Monk's
tune is its "proper tune." It would be mere affectation to set it to a
plainsong melody. If we are to make a church hymn of "Lead, Kindly
Light," Dykes' tune, as the Cardinal himself admitted, is its inevitable
setting.

Most of us probably believe in a religion of feeling and a hymnody that
expresses it. So perhaps I may be allowed to set down a judgment of these
tunes more favorable than that just quoted.

They are beautiful music of their kind, but the kind is mainly part-song.
They do not exhilarate our feelings, as some of the old Psalm tunes do.
They do not greatly feed our Christian virility, but they bring a message
distinctly spiritual. They fit into the spiritual interpretation of life.
They have a curious gift of suggesting to the imagination that a yearning
after holiness is the way to God's peace.

In respect of the practical effect of these tunes on American worship,
after fifty years' experience, it may be enough to quote the estimate of
Professor Dickinson in his _Music in the History of the Western Church_
to the effect that the value of their influence in inspiring a love for
that which is purest and most salutary in worship music has been
incalculable.[16]


(f) The Gospel Hymn emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century: a new type which for all practical purposes may be called a type
of tune, more or less involving the hymn itself. We are indeed told just
now by Dr. Lapsley in his _The Songs of Zion_[17] that the development of
the English hymn through two centuries and a half "falls into three
clearly defined periods: _The Age of Psalmody_, _The Age of the Standard
Hymn_, _The Age of the Gospel Hymns_." If these are the three epochs of
hymnody, the proper word is not "development" but decadence. Happily they
are not.

The Gospel Hymn was merely a modern instance of that lighter popular song
that has always hovered at the borders of church worship; a rival or
supplement of what Dr. Lapsley calls "the standard hymn." It is the
successor, in reality the outgrowth, of the evangelistic or camp-meeting
"spiritual" of the early nineteen hundreds, more or less modified by the
tripping Sunday school melodies which William B. Bradbury introduced, and
further developed in the work of such men as Root, Doane, Lowry, Bliss
and others.

Their work was appropriated in Dwight L. Moody's English campaign and his
later call upon American churches to add evangelism to worship. Unable to
tell one tune from another, Moody selected the Lowry-Bliss type of music
because he had observed its emotional appeal to the masses. At the hands
of his associate, Mr. Sankey, an untrained singer producing striking
elocutionary effects, it combined the functions of song and homily.

The hymns and tunes were embodied in a series of six books ranging from
1876 to 1891, under the title of _Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs_. Apart
from formal church worship these books for a time monopolized the field,
partly by the popularity of the songs, partly through the rigid
protection of copyright.

The books passed freely into the Sunday school and prayer meeting, and
into the church worship of some parishes whose atmosphere was congenial.
The extraordinary vogue of the _Gospel Hymns_ is within the memory of
some of us. Others can get some sense of it by reading Miss Greene's
_Cape Cod Folks_; the story of life in a Cape village in the heyday of
_Gospel Hymns_, which run like a refrain, almost like a theme, through
the story from beginning to end.

The Gospel Hymn continues the form and manner of the old spiritual and is
equally charged with emotion. It has a contagious melody, pathetic or
ringing, a frequent march or dance rhythm, and that peculiar thinness of
effect which comes of continuing the harmony unchanged through the bar.
It makes use of solo effects, of repeats, of burdens and climacteric
catchwords, with of course a generous use of "that most sociable of
musical devices," the chorus. It is, in other words, the conventional
type of music appealing to the crowd as distinguished from more
thoughtful and cultivated people.

The use of this music by the class of people to whose taste and
attainments it fairly corresponds, especially in evangelistic work, was
not very generally contested even by musicians to whom it seemed insipid
and vulgar. But the proposal to introduce it into church use did suggest
the themes of warm debate.[18] Are these emotional songs really
spiritual, and are their obvious effects an excitement of the senses or a
religious stimulant? Should the efforts of the public school to improve
children's taste be thwarted by the Sunday school? Can the Church afford
to sanction a standard of worship music below that of the educated
society in which it moves?

The debate will still go on no doubt, but the verdict becomes of less
importance year by year. The _Gospel Hymns_ occupy a far background now.
Most are forgotten. Those once popular are staled by repetition. The few
that may find a place in church hymnals convey no covert threat of an
"era of Gospel Hymns," and may or may not prove an addition to church
song of some permanence.


(g) The Later Degeneracy. The more pressing problem is how the Church is
to deal with the evangelistic and popular song that has taken the place
of the _Gospel Hymns_, appropriating their name and now rivaling their
popularity.

From the day of Moody and Sankey, whose aims were undoubtedly spiritual,
and whose royalties on the song books were turned into their work, the
course of this popular song, as distinguished from the church hymnody,
has been an uninterrupted decadence.

Each of the evangelists who followed Moody felt that he too must have his
personal song book. He could not reprint the copyrighted _Gospel Hymns_,
but must look for writers and composers who could imitate their method
and reproduce their reactions. When the new men failed to please the new
public, it became necessary to resort to more sensational and vulgar
musical effects to arouse an unresponsive audience. And lately it has
seemed expedient to the great and profitable trade which has developed in
purveying this material, to descend to the level of current popular song,
which has never been so decadent as now, and to imitate quite frankly the
music of the dance hall and the cabaret, the jingle, the rag-time, the
one-step, the uproarious chorus.

I should not have supposed, _a priori_, that within a sober-minded
communion any pastor could be found to countenance, much less to
introduce into the church life this fatuous verse, this degenerate music.
Unhappily in the only communion of which I have much knowledge at first
hand, the hymnal correspondence of its publishing house reveals that some
of its pastors are making the venture of laying this strange offering on
the altar of the Lord. Their self-justification, one supposes, would be
taken from the atmosphere by which their young people are already
surrounded in daily life; from the prudence of giving the young all the
thrills they are accustomed to in secular songs but freed from the
indecencies of which current song are so full. An interesting case of
reciprocity in a North Carolina city is reported by Professor Poteat of
Wake Forest College.[19] It was a dance at which the orchestra used one
of these "sacred song books" to provide music enough for the whole
evening.

No good purpose would be served by attempting at the close of these
lectures any minute delineation of a situation as unpleasant as it is
prevalent in certain sections of the South and West.[20] There is the
less occasion for it since Professor Poteat has devoted a whole book to
the subject. His _Practical Hymnology_ exposes and handles the situation
with an aggressive frankness for which he deserves only thanks. It has
been suggested that his book would be more effective by being more
urbane. Urbanity no doubt is a grace and in debate more effective than
invective. But Professor Poteat has lived in close contact with this new
song, with full opportunity of studying its reactions in young lives. And
the warmth of his protest is perhaps inevitable. There were occasions
when even our Lord lost His urbanity; and one can conceive the rendering
of some of these present-day songs in His presence as possibly presenting
such an occasion.




VIII. The Inheritance and the Outlook


In looking back over the long history of the hymn tune, we discern
clearly enough a development as well as a genealogy.

While the Gregorian music prevailed, the hymn tune was nothing more than
an adaptation to the words of the hymn of the one type of ecclesiastical
chant that covered the psalmody and other prose of the Daily Office. With
the Reformation the modern hymn tune began as an effort to apply
contemporaneous standards of popular music to sacred song. And on that
line it has developed ever since. Each new phase of the hymn tune stands
in a living relation to the generation that produced it, and expresses
the ideal and idiom of the music popular at the period.

The lesson of it all is that this whole process has neither conserved any
special type of tune that is sacrosanct nor developed only one type that
is imperative by reason of spiritual fitness. The original Jewish sacred
music did not percolate through the Empire, and is now beyond recovery.
The Gregorian Chant was not originally sacred, but appropriated from
Greek Pagan music. And both Luther and Calvin embodied the form of the
popular song and drew freely from its stores. These older tunes and those
that followed have acquired the sacredness of holy association, but they
have no traditional authority, as setting up a norm and model or even a
type of what is sacred. They suggest rather the wisdom of doing what our
fathers did, of adapting our music to the needs of our own generation.

When that is said, the whole body of the historical hymn tunes remains
with us as our inheritance, and the best of them are still a part of the
available resources of congregational song. Leaving out the lost melodies
of Israel there is hardly a type of the historic hymn tune that is not
represented in our modern hymnal. The people are not indifferent to them
or to so many of them as they can understand, and whose musical idiom
comes natural to them. To an instructed and imaginative Christian the
historic tunes bring a spiritual glow they only can impart, a sense of
the Church's unending song. That is what an Anglo-Catholic gets out of
the Gregorian Chant, and what a Scotchman gets out of Dundee.


Some things need to be done before we can fairly estimate our inherited
resources. The Gregorian melodies have at last been purified, and are now
in the way of being tested in actual use, if indeed the game be worth the
candle. The German chorales need to be restored to their original rhythms
before we discard them as dull and heavy. The old English Psalm tunes
need to be rescued from the undeserved neglect into which they are
falling by a retrial in their original form. They are not properly
presented in our hymnals, and our organists and people have quite lost
the art of handling them. "St. Anne" is a very great tune, but sung in
modern speed with a sort of staccato effect, it is not a means of grace.

But we ought not to be asked to revive any of the older tunes merely for
the sake of any curious interest they may have rather than for a
spiritual message. And we ought not to be asked to carry indefinitely any
of the traditional American tunes that, for whatever reason, have ceased
to inspire or to please, and have become luggage in the hand rather than
melodies in our hearts.


There are also some sources of congregational song that have hardly as
yet been tapped.

First of all, the wealth of Welsh tunes which express the most
warm-hearted and inspiring congregational song that is now practiced.
Owing to the isolation of Wales linguistically and to the nineteenth
century contentment with Anglican and Victorian hymnody the
English-speaking people until quite lately have given very little
attention to Welsh song. Its unapproached fervor and the enthusiastic
reports brought home by the delegates to the Presbyterian Alliance at
Cardiff in 1925, suggest a thorough study of the Welsh hymnody at its
sources. In the meantime Dr. Vaughan Davies in _The English Hymnal_ and
in his later _Students' Hymnal_ has made accessible a large selection of
Welsh tunes, some of which invite a testing with American congregations.

_The English Hymnal_ of 1906, just referred to, is the most interesting
because the most experimental of modern hymn books, and the first that
has threatened the overwhelming supremacy of _Hymns ancient and modern_
in the Church of England since 1861. Unfortunately it bears the hall-mark
of highly developed Anglo-Catholicism. One of its striking features is
its revival of no less than forty-two of the traditional folk song
melodies of the English people and their adaptation to church use. A
large body of these had been unearthed by the labors of the Folk Song
Society, and the ability of their quaint and simple beauty to reach the
hearts of English people has again been demonstrated in congregations
adopting _The English Hymnal_. Whether the same thing would prove true of
our American congregations is by no means assured, but it is one of the
things waiting to be tried out. _The English Hymnal_ made also a narrow
use of the American spirituals which used to figure in our hymnals as
"Western melody" and which Dr. Lorenz likes to think of as our American
folk songs. Upon them, at all events, it seems reasonably sure that the
"Negro spirituals" now attracting so much attention were based.


The general state of congregational song affords no real ground for
discouragement. But, compared to what it has been and what it may be, it
is respectable and comely rather than satisfying. There is a great deal
of half-hearted and perfunctory singing in our services; an atmosphere of
indifference or inattention from which it must be rescued.

It were quite vain to deny that our pastors are to a considerable degree
responsible for this. The indifference in the pews is very apt to be the
reflection of the indifference in the pulpit. Wherever the extreme
liturgical or artistic ideal of worship prevails there develops a
disposition to delegate its expression to the choir; especially to the
boy-choir, whose only fault is that it is so pleasant to listen to. But
the extreme homiletical ideal of worship is quite as detrimental. If a
preacher obviously intends to dominate the worship, he is just as
obviously encouraging in his people that habit of becoming listeners
rather than participants, which so easily develops into a habit of
becoming listless, from which it is hard to rouse them.

When the pastor tries to do so by pulpit appeals urging the Christian
duty of joining in singing the praises of God, after the fashion set by
William Law in his _Serious Call_, he is beginning his belated reform at
the wrong end. Surely there are Christian duties enough without adding
that of singing to their number. The spirit of song is spontaneous, and
outside the sphere of ethics. The condition precedent is not a sense of
duty disturbing the conscience, but the word of Christ dwelling richly in
the heart that breaks forth spontaneously into songs of thanksgiving and
gratitude and fellowship. Its utterance will rise above the sphere of
duty and flourish in the atmosphere of spiritual pleasure. "Sing praises
unto His Name; for it is pleasant."


And so we get at the two-fold function of the church hymnal; that of
deepening the spiritual life out of which song flows, and of lifting
Christian hymnody out of the sphere of duty by encouraging the spirit of
song.

The immediate need surely is to get the church hymnal back into the hands
of the people where Luther and Calvin first put it. At present it is
hardly more than a part of the furniture of the pew racks in our
churches. As regards hymnody the congregation is very much where it would
be in knowledge of Scripture if there were no Bibles except those in the
pulpit or the lectern. Very few of the people now have hymnals of their
own. They do not read the poetry devotionally; they do not sing the tunes
at home or in social gatherings: they have no familiarity with either and
consequently little love for them. When the hymn is given out in church
they often start to sing without knowing what is coming or whether it
expresses their personal feelings in any way; and they can hardly be
expected so to sing either in the Spirit or with understanding. For they
are continually singing a strange song.

So inspiring and uplifting can the spiritual ministry of poetry and music
to human lives be made that I venture to propose this task and
opportunity of getting the hymnal back into the homes and hands and
hearts of Christian people as one of the most rewarding that can engage
us.

Before this can be done we must agree that the hymnal itself shall be
made more lovable than it is. In the desire to incorporate the
traditional as well as the timely, to gratify a wide range of taste and
opinion, and especially to cover every possible occasion and sermon
theme, the church hymnal has become cumbersome to the hands in which we
would place it, too encyclopedic and utilitarian to appeal to the heart.

It is the demand of our pastors, who require all sorts of hymns for all
sorts of purposes, and not the judgment of the compilers, that makes our
hymnals so big and pads them with so much that is dull. This encyclopedic
range may be a pastoral convenience but it is a spiritual blunder. So
much material discourages devotion and defeats the memory; and a good
deal of it transcends the true sphere of song. It is regrettable that so
many pastors prefer the prosaic hymns to those that are lyrical, and, if
the reports from the parishes are true, only too often confine their
people within a dull and monotonous round of them.

I like to foresee a time when our pastors shall discover that the highest
utilitarianism lies in cultivating the spirit of song for its own sake.
For the spirit of Christian song is simply the Holy Spirit. Himself,
making melody in the heart.




                                  NOTES




                                LECTURE I


[1]The title of Dean Church's lectures of 1874.

[2]On the 148th Psalm.

[3]It can be read in Skene's _The Lord's Supper and the Passover Ritual_
   (a translation of Bickell's _Messe und Pascha_), Edinburgh, 1891, p.
   207.

[4]_Cf. Encyclopædia Biblica_, art. "Hallel"; and Schürer, _The Jewish
   People in the time of Jesus Christ_ (English trans., Div. ii, vol. i,
   p. 291). Edinburgh, 1885. The Hallel as a whole covered Psalms
   115-118.

[5]Skene, _ut supra_, pp. 174, 207.

[6]_The Expositor_, '85b, 3.

[7]In preface to his (_Cambridge Bible_) Commentary on St. Luke.

[8]_The Presbyterian_, Edinburgh, February 1, 1872.

[9]_Some Thoughts concerning the present Revival in New England_, Boston,
   1742, p. 181.

[10]Robert Baxter's _Narrative of Facts characterizing the Supernatural
   Manifestations_ is scarce. The substance of his testimony is in Dean
   Stanley's _Corinthians_ (Ed. 1882, pp. 252 ff.).

[11]_Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England_,
   Boston, 1743, p. 126.

[12]_A faithful Narrative of the surprising Work of God ... in
   Northampton_; 2nd edition, London, 1738, p. 15.

[13]John McPherson, _Commentary on Ephesians_, Edinburgh, 1892, p. 390.

[14]The _Athenæum_, April 11, April 18, May 30, 1914.

[15]_The Odes and Psalms of Solomon_, 2nd edition, Cambridge, 1911, p.
   89.

[16]_Das apostolische Zeitalter der christlichen Kirche_, 2nd edition,
   Freiburg, 1892; English trans., London, 1895, vol. ii, p. 259 ff.

[17]Walter Lowrie, _The Church and its Organization_, Longmans, Green and
   Co., 1904, p. 213. Principal Lindsay also follows Weizsächer in his
   _The Church and its Ministry_, London, 1902, p. 45.




                               LECTURE II


[1]_The Stromata_, book vii, chap. 7.

[2]_Ibid._, chap. 8. That new hymns of human composition as well as
   Psalms are referred to, Clement makes plain by remarking incidentally
   that "an unworthy opinion of God preserves no piety either in hymns or
   sermons or writings or dogmas" (chap. 7).

[3]_Ad uxorii_, book ii, chap. 8.

[4]_De spectaculis_, chap. 29.

[5]_De carne Christi_, chap. 17, 20.

[6]Socrates, _H. E._, book vi, chap. 8.

[7]Basil, _De Spiritu Sancto_, 73.

[8]It appears in the list of works on the back of the Hippolytus-statue.

[9]Eusebius, _H. E._, vii, 24, 4.

[10]_Ibid._, v, 28, 5.

[11]_De Spiritu Sancto_, 73.

[12]_Amherst Papyri_, part i, No. 2.

[13]In his _Heresies_, 67.

[14]_Ep._ x, 96.

[15]_Apology_, chap. 39.

[16]Book ii, chap. 4.

[17]_Apol._, 1, 13.

[18]Eusebius, v, 28, 5.

[19]53rd _Homily_ on Heretics.

[20]Referred to in the Muratorian Fragment.

[21]Socrates, _H. E._, vi, 8.

[22]_Gen. Hist. of Christian Religion and Church_, Torrey's trans., ed.
   1871, vol. ii, p. 354, n. 3.

[23]Mgr. Pierre Batiffol, _History of the Roman Breviary_, rev. English
   ed., Longmans, 1912, p. 8.

[24]Sozomen, _H. E._, viii, 8, 1-5.

[25]_Vide_ "Africa and the Beginnings of Christian Latin Literature" in
   _Am. Jour. of Theology_, Jan. 1907.

[26]_Cf._ H. Leclercq, _L'Afrique Chretienne_, Paris, 1904, vol. i, chap.
   5, "Les Dialectes."

[27]_Ibid._, appendix.

[28]_Comm. in Ep. ad Gal._ ii, pref.

[29]Tertullian, _De Jejunio_, chap. 10.

[30]_Cf._ Batiffol, _op. cit._, chap. 1; and Duchesne, _Christian
   Worship_, English trans., London, 1903, chap. 16.

[31]The texts of this and the following rules and canons are conveniently
   gathered in U. Chevalier, _Poesie liturgique_, Tournai, 1894.

[32]For possible exceptions, see Batiffol, p. 140. On this point, and on
   the monastic concern with hymns, _cf._ W. C. Bishop, _The Mozarabic
   and Ambrosian Rites_, London, 1924, pp. 56, 62, 65, 67.

[33]The hymns of the Roman Breviary are admirably presented in Matthew
   Britt, _The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal_, Benziger Brothers,
   1922.

[34]For the Sequence any history of the Mass may be consulted; and, for
   detailed information, John Mason Neale, _Essays in Liturgiology and
   Church History_, London, 1863, pp. 359-370; and Julian, _Dictionary of
   Hymnology_, art. "Sequence."

[35]_The German Mass_, 1526.

[36]_Formula Missæ_, 1523.

[37]_Ibid._

[38]Preface of 1545.

[39]Luther's hymns are to be found in innumerable editions; accessibly in
   James F. Lambert, _Luther's Hymns_, Phila., General Council Publn.
   House, 1917; with translations, the hymn book prefaces and other
   interesting matter. The prefaces may also be found in R. Massie,
   _Martin Luther's Spiritual Songs_, London, 1854. Luther's various
   liturgical proposals, on which his use of hymns in public worship
   depends, are translated and annotated in Richard and Painter,
   _Christian Worship: its principles and forms_, 2nd ed., revised,
   Philadelphia, [1908]. The Lutheran chorale is discussed in the last of
   the present lectures.

[40]_Formula Missæ._

[41]_Ibid._

[42]Preface of 1525.

[43]The letter to Spalatin.

[44]Christoffel, _Huldrich Zwingli_, Elberfield, 1857. English trans.,
   Edinburgh, 1858, p. 150, n.

[45]_Calvini Opera_, ed. 1863 seq., vol. Xa, 12.

[46]"Alterum ut ad publicas orationes psalmorum cantio adhibeatur."

[47]The author gave a much more detailed account of the origins of the
   Reformed Psalmody in a former Stone lecture, printed in _Journal of
   The Presbyterian Hist. Soc._, Phila., for March and June, 1909.

[48]_Calvini Opera_, vi, 165-172.

[49]This phase of the subject is popularly portrayed in Prothero, _The
   Psalms in Human Life_, var. eds.

[50]_Cf._ Quick, _Synodicon_, vol. i, p. xliii.

[51]The process of transition from a strict Psalmody to an evangelical
   hymnody in English-speaking Churches is fully set forth in the
   author's _The English Hymn_, N. Y. and Phila., 1915.




                               LECTURE III


[1]_Zachariae Ferrerii Vicent. Pont. Gardien. Hymni Novi Ecclesiastici
   ivxta veram Metri et Latinitatis Normam a Beatiss. Patre Claemente
   VII. Pont. Max. vt in divinis quisque eis vti possit approbati et
   novis Lvdovici Vicentini ac Lavtitii Pervsini Characteribus in Lvcem
   traditi. Sanctvm ac necessarivm Opvs. Breviarivm ecclesiasticvm ab
   eodem Zach. Pont. longe brevivs et facilivs redditvm, et ab omni
   errore pvrgatvm propediem exibit._ [colophon:] Impressum hoc diuinum
   Opus Rome in ædibus Ludouici Vicentini et Lautitii Perusini, non sine
   Priuilegio.--Kal. Febru. M.D. XXV.

   Mgr. Batiffol (_op. cit._) discusses Ferreri and the humanist Breviary
   promised on the title-page in his charming way; and to his translator
   I am indebted for the English version of the lines quoted.

[2]The English Psalter (commonly called _Sternhold and Hopkins_, or the
   _Old Version_) appeared in its completed form from the press of John
   Day at London, as _The whole Booke of Psalmes, collected into Englysh
   metre by T. Starnhold, I. Hopkins & others: conferred with the Ebrue,
   with apt Notes to sing them withal, Faithfully perused and alowed
   according to thordre appointed in the Quenes maiesties Iniunctions.
   Very mete to be vsed of all sortes of people priuately for their
   solace & comfort: laying apart all vngodly Songes and Ballades, which
   tende only to the norishing of vyce, and corrupting of youth._
   [Followed by two texts and imprint]. _An._ 1562.

[3]_A new Version of the Psalms of David, fitted to the tunes used in
   churches. By N. Tate and N. Brady._ London, 1696.

[4]_The Psalms of David in meeter. Newly translated, and diligently
   compared with the originall Text, and former translations: More plain,
   smooth, and agreeable to the Text, than any heretofore. Allowed by the
   Authority of the Generall Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, and
   appointed to be sung in Congregations and Families. Edinburgh, Printed
   by Evan Tyler, Printer to the King's most Excellent Majesty_, 1650.
   This came to be familiarly known as "Rous' Version."

[5]_The Muse in Council: being essays on Poets and Poetry_, Houghton,
   Mifflin Company, 1925; pp. 60 ff.

[6]George Saintsbury, _A History of English Prosody_, vol. ii, Macmillan,
   1908, p. 531.

[7]_The English Lyric_, Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1913, p. 6.

[8]It is worth while to remember that Arnold's respect for John
   Ellerton's hymns, his tribute to Watts' "When I survey the wondrous
   cross" just before the hand of death touched him, are just as real, as
   sincere, as his personal distaste for "Nearer, my God, to Thee." His
   criticisms arose out of the conviction that hymns are to be judged as
   poetry, to be criticized for their violations of poetic canons. So
   elevated a point of view is inspiring, to say the least of it, and any
   critical remarks its occupant cares to send down are not disposed of
   by the fancied discovery of a manner of condescension. They ought to
   be welcomed.




                               LECTURE IV


[1]"[Ambrose's] hymns were used to convey correct Catholic doctrine to
   the minds and hearts of his people." Matthew Britt, _op. cit._, p. 21.

[2]This definition, so far as it is true, is itself the echo of a great
   soul, the late Richard Holt Hutton.

[3]In some hymnals the editors think it needful to print the people's
   part in the responsive Psalter in large capitals, like a child's
   primer. A prominent pastor writes me of the importance of getting the
   entire hymn on a single page, even though the left hand page at a
   given opening, saying that his people close the books as soon as the
   bottom of a page is reached.

[4]_A Collection of Hymns_, New York, 1831.

[5]One who questions this may revert to Dr. Alexander's preface of 1831:
   "The systematic method of arranging hymns according to their subjects,
   as commonly pursued, is incapable of being rendered perfect or even
   satisfactory; for it often happens, that in the same hymn there is
   such a diversity, as to the nature of the emotions and sentiments
   expressed, that it cannot with propriety be referred to any one head."
   Dr. Alexander proceeds to arrange his 742 hymns alphabetically
   according to the opening word--an arrangement that appeals to the eye
   readily until we reach those beginning with "Oh."

[6]Anna Robeson Burr, _Religious Confessions and Confessants_, Houghton,
   Mifflin Co., 1914.

[7]Since the date of these lectures I have endeavored to embody this
   mission of good cheer in a hymnal, _Christian Song_, New York and
   Philadelphia, 1926.

[8]Clarence Edward Macartney, _Reconciliation through Jesus Christ_,
   Office of the Gen. Assembly, Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.
   [1925], p. 9.




                                LECTURE V


[1]_Hymns and Choirs: the matter and the manner of the Service of Song_,
   Andover, 1860.

[2]Boston, 1857.

[3]P. 202 ff. "The Old School Collection" was the _Psalms and Hymns_ of
   1843.

[4]London, 1787. Often reprinted and widely used here.

[5]See my "American Revisions of Watts' Psalms" in _Journal of the
   Presbyterian Historical Society_, Philadelphia, for June and
   September, 1903, and separately.

[6]_A Selection of Psalms and Hymns for public and private use, adapted
   to the Church of England_, Sheffield, 1819.

[7]_Memorials: part i_, Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne, Macmillan,
   1896, vol. ii, p. 464.

[8]_Memoirs_, by Holland and Everett, London, 1855, vol. iv, p. 70.

[9]Preface to _Hymns for the Christian Church and Home_, 1840, p. xi.

[10]All these things I have since attempted in _Christian Song_ already
   referred to.




                               LECTURE VI


[1]The general course of the development of Church Music may be followed
   in Edward Dickinson, _Music in the History of the Western Church_, New
   York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902. Edmund S. Lorenz, _Church Music:
   What a Minister should know about it_, F. H. Revell Co. [1923], aims
   to meet the needs of Seminary classes in Church Music. The best
   account of the history of Psalm and hymn singing in England is the
   introduction to _Hymns ancient and modern: historical edition_, (in
   folio), London, 1909. See also Grove's _Dictionary of Music_, art.
   Psalmody. James T. Lightwood, _Hymn Tunes and their Story_, London
   [1905]; and J. Spencer Curwen, _Studies in Worship Music_, 1st and 2nd
   series, London, n.d., are interesting and dependable. Books such as
   Brown and Butterworth, _The Story of Hymns and Tunes_, Am. Tract.
   Soc., New York [n.d.] should be avoided or used with greatest care.

[2]John E. Peters, _The Psalms as Liturgies_, Macmillan, 1922, p. 49,
   puts the meaning of these titles to the question.

[3]_Les Apôtres_, Paris, 1866, pp. 99 f.

[4]_The Organ Question. Statements by Dr. Ritchie and Dr. Porteus, for
   and against the use of the Organ in Public Worship in the proceedings
   of the Presbytery of Glasgow_, 1807-8, Edinburgh, 1856, p. 96.

[5]Ethelred L. Taunton, _The History and Growth of Church Music_, London,
   Burns and Oates, n.d., pp. 107 f.

[6]Archibald W. Wilson, _The Chorales: their origin and influence_, The
   Faith Press, London, 1920, is a recent and useful study of them.

[7]In _The Journal of Theological Studies_ for October, 1899, and
   separately by R. H. Blackwell, Oxford, 1901.

[8]There is a bibliography in F. Bovet, _Histoire du Psautier des Eglises
   Réformées_, Neuchâtel, 1872; continued in O. Douen, _Clément Marot
   et le Psautier Huguenot_, Paris, 1878-9. The last named is the fullest
   presentation of the Genevan melodies and the subsequent harmonizations
   of them.

[9]Charles W. Baird, _History of the Huguenot Emigration to America_, New
   York [1885], vol. i, pp. 37, 68.

[10]_The Music of the Pilgrims: a description of the Psalm-book brought
   to Plymouth in 1620_, Boston, Oliver Ditson Co. [1921].

[11]_An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm-tunes, in a plain easy
   method. With a collection of tunes in three parts._ The date of
   original publication is uncertain. My copy is a fifth edition of 1726.

[12]See O. G. Sonneck, _Francis Hopkinson and James Lyon_, Washington,
   D.C., 1905; which contains an analysis of _Urania_. For the earlier
   music of the immigrant mystics, Johannes Kelpius and Conrad Beissel in
   connection with the Wissahickon and Ephrata communities, see _Church
   Music and Musical Life in Pennsylvania in the Eighteenth Century_,
   Philadelphia: Penna. Soc. of Colonial Dames, 1926, etc.; and Julius F.
   Sachse, _The Music of the Ephrata Cloister_, Lancaster, 1903.

[13]Waldo S. Pratt, in _American Supplement to Grove's Dictionary of
   Music and Musicians_, has given special attention to the tune writers
   and tune books in his trustworthy way. Frank J. Metcalf, _American
   Psalmody or Titles of books containing tunes printed in America from
   1721 to 1820_, New York, Chas. F. Heartman, 1917, supersedes James
   Warrington, _Short Titles of books relating to the History and
   Practice of Psalmody in the U. S._, Philadelphia, 1898. Metcalf's
   _American Writers and Compilers of sacred Music_, The Abingdon Press
   [1925], is valuable both for biography and bibliography.

[14]_Dissertation on Musical Taste_, Albany, 1822; rev. and enlarged ed.,
   N. Y., 1853. During his prolonged campaign for better church music,
   Hastings published numerous books and review articles, as well as tune
   books; and the memory of a useful man should not be overshadowed by
   the greater fame of Lowell Mason. But he will live as the composer of
   "Toplady."

[15]_Worship and Music: suggestions for Clergy and Choirmasters_, by
   George Gardner, M.A., Mus. Bac., London, S.P.C.K., 1918.

[16]P. 384.

[17]_The Songs of Zion: a brief study of our Hymns_, by R. A. Lapsley,
   D.D., Presb. Com. of Publication, Richmond, Va. [1925].

[18]Those who favor the use of these songs in worship will find the
   points of Dr. David R. Breed's objections to them in his _The History
   and Use of Hymns and Hymn-tunes_, Revell, 1903. Those who oppose their
   use may encounter a warm advocate of the employment of the better of
   them in almost any one of Dr. Lorenz's books on Church Music. And the
   whole matter is sanely and impartially presented in Waldo S. Pratt,
   _Musical Ministries in the Church_, Revell, 1901.

[19]Herbert McNeill Poteat, _Practical Hymnology_, Boston [1921], p. 69,
   n.

[20]"Thousands of our churches and Sunday schools are using the _same
   sort of music exactly_ as is jingled forth by electric piano at the
   picture house, the pony ballet in the theater, and the jazz orchestra
   in the public dance hall." Poteat, p. 69.




                                  INDEX


  Abney, Lady, 112
  Abridgement, 211
  _Acta Johannis_, 28
  Addison, Joseph, 125
  Admonition, 43, 149
  Advent, 178
  Africa, North, 67
  _Afrique Chretienne, L'_, 282
  Ainsworth, Henry, 252
  Alexander, Archibald, 148, 149, 284
    James W., 180
  All-Saints, 170, 175
  Alteration of texts. See _Tinkering_
  Ambrose, 23, 68-70, 72, 73, 74, 114, 236, 284
  Ambrosiani, 70, 72, 77
  _American Psalmody: American Writers and Composers_, 286
  _Amherst Collection_, 61
  Andover Faculty, 192, 194, 205, 261
  Anglican chant, 233
    hymn tunes, 263
  Antioch, 62, 63
  Antiphonal singing, 28, 69, 234, 236
  _Apocalypse, The_, 51-53
  Apostles' Creed, 80, 81, 145
  _Apôtres, Les_, 286
  Arian hymnody, 64, 67
  Arnold, Matthew, 99, 109, 133, 134, 284
  Art, 133, 138, 231
  Ascension hymns, 182
  Athenogenes, 60
  Auber, Harriet, 182
  Augustine, St., 23, 68, 70, 141, 237
  Aurelian of Arles, 72
  Austin, John, 109, 110

  Bacon's _Psalms_, 104
  Baird, Charles W., 286
  Balfour, Lord, 158
  _Bangor Antiphonary_, 73
  Bardesanes, 64
  Baring-Gould, Sabine, 166, 229
  Barlow, Joel, 199
  Barnby, Sir Joseph, 164, 262
  Barthélémon, François H., 251
  Barton, William, 109
  Basil, 61
  Basilicas, 43, 65, 68, 70, 171
  Batiffol, Pierre, 66, 282, 283
  Baxter, Richard, 110
  Robert, 281
  _Bay Psalm Book_, 189, 190, 253
  Beauty, 122, 137
  Beecher, Henry Ward, 196, 261
  Benedict of Nursia, 72, 74
  Benedictus, 24
  Benson, Archbishop, 115
  Bernard of Morlaix, 169
  Berne, 80, 81
  Berridge, John, 123
  Beza, Theodore, 102
  Bickell, Prof., 29, 281
  Billings, William, 255, 256
  Bird, Frederick M., 206
  Bishop, W. C., 282
  Bithynia, 46, 61, 62
  Blake, William, 130
  Bliss, Philip P., 266
  Blume, Clemens, 206
  Bonar, Horatius, 50, 152, 178
  _Book of Common Order_, 29, 42
  _Book of Common Prayer_, 24, 41, 162, 172, 173
  _Book of Praise_, 205
  Bourgeois, Louis, 243-246, 247, 252
  Bovet, Felix, 286
  Boy Choirs, 274
  Bradbury, William B., 265
  Braga, Council of, 72
  Breed, David R., 287
  Breviary, 24, 66, 70, 71, 73, 100, 172, 282
  Bridges, Robert, 244-246
  Britt, Matthew, 282
  Brooks, Phillips, 94, 179
  Brown and Butterworth, 286
  Browning, Robert, 104
  Brownlie, John, 24
  Bryant's hymns, 134
  Burnap, U. C., 246
  Burney, Dr., 252
  Burr, Anna R., 155, 285
  Byrom, John, 117, 212
  Byron, Lord, 128

  Calvin, John:
    as reformer, 79
    and hymns, 73, 79-85
    and poetry, 100, 101
    and music, 235, 243
    _on Colossians_, 84
    _Manner of Lord's Supper_, 41
  Camp-meeting song, 34, 260, 265
  Campbell, Thomas, 128
  Campion, Thomas, 106
  Canonical hours, 70
  Canticles, 25, 30, 74, 87
  _Cape Cod Folks_, 266
  Carthage, 67, 68
  Catechism, 19
  Cennick, John, 123, 156
  Charismata, 35-37
  Chauncey, Charles, 38, 281
  Cheerfulness, 31, 32, 76, 157-159
  Chevalier, Ulysses, 282
  Choirs, 66, 258, 259, 274
  Chorales, 240-242, 272
  _Christian Examiner, The_, 111
  _Christian Hymnology_, 23
  _Christian Lyre, The_, 260
  Christian music, 228
  _Christian Psalmist, The_, 125, 127
  _Christian Psalmody_, 201
  _Christian Song_, 285
  _Christian Worship_ (Richard and Painter), 283;
    (Duchesne), 282
  _Christian Year, The_, 127, 212
  Christian Year, The, 74, 170-182
  Christmas, 174
  Christmas hymns, 179
  Chrysostom, 67
  Church, The, in hymnody, 50, 145, 166, 168, 184
  Church, Richard W., 281
  _Church Music_, 285
  Churchly hymns, 165-170, 184
  Classification of hymns, 150, 284
  Clement of Alexandria, 59, 61, 62
  Clement VII, 100
  Coleridge, S. T., 134
  Coligny, 252
  _Collection of Hymns for Methodists_, 116, 202
  Commandments, The, 81, 144
  "Common Tunes," 247
  Communion hymns, 27, 28, 40-42, 62, 164, 173
  Communion service
    Calvin's, 41
    Knox's, 29, 42
    in _Directory_ for worship, 29, 42
    American Presbyterian, 29
    in _Book of Common Prayer_, 41, 172
  Comparative Hymnology, 22, 23
  Conder, Josiah, 106
  Confession of sin, 161
    the "General," 162
  _Congregational Hymn Book_, 193
  Congregational Singing. See "Singing"
  Congregationalist hymnody
    in England, 88, 249
    in New England, 189, 196, 199, 252-258
  Connecticut Association, 196, 199
  Constantine, 43
  Conway, Moncure D., 115
  Corinth, 35, 39
  Cotterill, Thomas, 203
  Cowper, William, 93, 123, 126, 156
  Coxe, Arthur Cleveland, 167
  Cranmer, Thomas, 246
  Crashaw, Richard, 108
  Criticism of hymns, 132
  Crossman, Samuel, 109
  Curwen, J. Spencer, 285

  Daily Office, The, 24, 65, 71, 73, 74, 75, 77, 270
  Damon, William, 247
  "David's Tunes," 248
  Davies, Samuel, 151
  Vaughan, 273
  De Witt (Professor), John, 147
  Dearmer, Geoffrey, 263
  Death's shadow on hymnody, 32, 158, 176
  Degeneracy, 268-270
  Dexter, Henry M., 59
  Timothy, 255
  Dickinson, Edward, 243, 244, 265, 285
  _Dictionary of Hymnology_, 17, 205
  _Dictionary of Music_, 285
  _Dictionary of Religion and Ethics_, 22
  _Didache_, 41, 47, 62
  _Directory for Worship_
    Scottish, 29, 42, 175
    American, 21, 29, 42, 163, 175, 191
  Dionysius, 60
  Doane, W. H., 266
  Doctrinal Hymn, 143
  Doddridge, Philip, 114, 125, 151
  _Does God Send Trouble?_, 214
  Douen, O., 286
  Doxology (L. M.), 177
  _Dream of Gerontius_, 144
  Dreves, G. M., 206
  Drinkwater, John, 117-119
  Duchesne, L., 282
  Dullness, 134, 135
  Duty, 274
  Dwight, President, 166, 199
  Dykes, John B., 262, 263, 264

  Easter, 175
  Easter hymns, 175, 181
  Edessa, 61, 64
  Edification, 43, 143, 150
  Educational values, 148
  Edwards, Jonathan, 35, 36, 38
  Eighteenth century hymn tune, 251
  "Elegance," 122, 123
  Ellerton, John, 178, 206, 284
  Elliott, Charlotte, 162
  Emerson, Ralph W., 115
  England, Church of
    Psalmody, 86, 103
    Hymnody, 106, 165, 172-174, 246-252
    Chants, 90
  _English Hymn, The_, 283
  _English Hymnal_, 238, 239, 241, 246, 273
  _English Lyric, The_, 111, 133, 284
  English Psalm tune, 247, 272
  "Enthusiasm," 250
  Epiphanius, 61
  Epiphany, 179
  Ephraim, 64
  Ephrata music, 286
  _Essays in Liturgiology_, 282
  Este, Thomas, 247
  "Eucharist," 42
  Eucharistic hymnody, 41, 43
  Evangelical
    hymns (78), 122-124, 158
    hymns in America, 124
    party, 123
    revival, 37, 38, 112-124, 156, 250
    settlement of hymnody, 88
  Evangelistic hymns, 38, 134, 265-270
  Evening hymns, 157, 176

  Faber, Frederick W., 215, 216
  _Faithful Narrative_ (Edwards), 281
  Farel, 80
  Farrar, Frederic W., 30, 112
  Fawcett, John, 123
  Feelings, The, 146, 264
  Ferreri, Zacharias, 100, 283
  Florid tunes, 251, 255
  Florida, 252
  Folk song, 240, 273, 274
  Francis I, 102
  Francis, St., 100
  Free Church of Scotland, 34
  French
    Reformation, 79-85
    Psalmody, 84-85
    Music, 243-246, 247, 252
  Friends' meeting, 20
  Fugues, 255, 256

  Gardner, George, 263
  Gaul, 70, 73
  Gauntlett, H. J., 262
  "General Confession," The, 162
  Geneva, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 102, 243
  Genevan melodies, 144, 243-246, 247, 252
  German hymnody. See Luther
  Gibson, Mrs., 47
  Gifts, The, 35-38
  Gladness, 31-32
  Gloria in excelsis, 42, 61, 73
  Gloria Patri, 73
  Glory song, 170
  Gnostics, 64
  _Golden Treasury, The_, 111
  Good Friday, 180
  Gore, Bishop, 263
  _Gospel Hymns_, 38, 265, 266
  Goss, Sir John, 262
  Gower, John H., 164
  Great Awakening, The, 35, 36, 37, 38, 190
  Greatorex, H. W., 258
  Greek as the liturgical language, 61
  Greek Church
    hymns, 24, 66, 173
    music, 235, 236
  Green's _Short History_, 250
  Greene's _Cape Cod Folks_, 266
  Gregorian Chant, 236, 270, 271
  _Grounds and Rules of Musick_, 253
  Grove's _Dictionary of Music_, 286

  Hall, C. Cuthbert, 214
  Hallel, The, 29, 171, 233, 281
  _Hallelujah_, 107
  Hallelujah meter, 109
  Harnack, 47
  Harris, Rendel, 47
  Hart, Andro, 247
  John, 123
  Hartopp, Sir John, 112
  Hastings, Thomas, 258, 260, 286
  Haweis, Thomas, 123
  Hay, John, 231
  Heber, Reginald, 127-129, 147
  Hebrew music, 232, 233, 235, 271
  Helmore, Thomas, 237, 263
  Henry VIII, 103
  Herbert, George, 108, 202
  Heresy, 45, 64, 65, 83
  Herrick, Robert, 108
  Hesiod, 23
  Hierakas, 61
  Hilary, 68, 69, 73
  Hippolytus, 60
  _Histoire du Psautier_, 286
  _History and Growth of Church Music_, 286
  _History and Use of Hymns and Hymn Tunes_, 287
  Hodge, Archibald A., 42
  Holiness, 124
  Holmes, Oliver W., 124
  Holy daies, 175
    Week, 179
  _Holy Year, The_, 144, 153, 154
  Homer, hymns of, 23
  Homiletical ideal of worship, 20, 21, 151, 274
  Hopkinson, Francis, 254
  _Horæ Lyricæ_, 111, 206
  "Hornpipes," 250
  Hours, The, 70
  Huguenot psalmody, 85, 252
  Humanism, 99
  Huntingdon, Lady, 250
  Huntington, William R., 208
  Hussite hymns, 38, 75
  Hutton, Richard Holt, 146, 284
  "HYMN," in the Dictionaries, 22
    in comparative religion, 22
    in the Septuagint, 23
    in St. Paul, 23, 46
    in St. Augustine, 23, 141
    in the Greek Church, 24
    in _Testament of our Lord_, 63
    in the Latin Church, 24
    in Book of Common Prayer, 24
    in controversy, 25
    in modern usage, 25
    in literature, 23, 24
  Hymn Book, The
    Apostolic, 30, 45
    vernacular, 38, 75
    first English church, 108
    modern, 38, 261, 276
    function of, 19, 21, 275
    its make-up, 221-223, 284
    as a service book, 21, 176
  _Hymn Tunes and Their Story_, 285
  HYMNS (_individual_)
    Abide with me; fast falls the eventide, 264
    According to Thy gracious word, 94
    Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas, 155
    Ah! lovely appearance of death, 158
    Alas! and did my Saviour bleed, 160, 217
    All hail the power of Jesus' Name, 218
    All people that on earth do dwell, 210
    All praise to Him who dwells in bliss, 120
    All praise to Thee, my God, this night, 109
    Am I a soldier of the cross?, 152
    And did those feet in ancient time, 130
    Art thou weary, art thou languid?, 173
    As pants the hart for cooling streams, 105
    As the sun doth daily rise, 176
    Awake, my soul, and with the sun, 109, 176
    Beautiful isle of somewhere, 131
    Before Jehovah's awful throne, 202
    Behold the sun that seem'd but now, 107
    Behold what wondrous grace, 151
    Blessèd feasts of blessèd martyrs, 174
    Bound upon the accursèd tree, 129
    Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, 129
    Britain was doomed to be a slave, 198
    By cool Siloam's shady rill, 129
    Children of the heavenly King, 123, 156
    Christ the Lord is risen to-day, 120
    Christ, whose glory fills the skies, 120
    Christians, awake! salute the happy morn, 212
    Come, let us join our friends above, 120
    Come, let us to the Lord our God, 94
    Come, Lord, and tarry not, 179
    Come, oh, come, with pious lays, 107
    Come, Thou long-expected Jesus, 120
    Death! 'tis a melancholy day, 152
    Deep in the dust before Thy throne, 151
    Dies irae, dies illa, 212
    Eternal Father, Strong to save, 263
    Faith is the brightest evidence, 152
    Faith of our fathers, living still, 215
    Father, hear Thy children's call, 164
    Father, whate'er of earthly bliss, 153
    Firmly I believe and truly, 144
    For all the saints who from their labors rest, 170, 264
    For ever with the Lord, 126
    For thee, O dear, dear country, 169
    From Calvary's cross a fountain flows, 203
    From every stormy wind that blows, 162
    From Greenland's icy mountains, 129
    Give me the lowest place, 170
    Give me the wings of faith to rise, 170
    Give me to bow with Thee my head, 119
    Glorious things of thee are spoken, 166
    "Go, preach My gospel," saith the Lord, 217
    God bless our native land, 208
    God rest you merry, gentlemen, 159
    Great God, how infinite art Thou, 217
    Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah, 123
    Hail, gladdening Light of His pure glory poured, 61
    Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound, 158
    Hark! how all the welkin rings, 120, 179
    Hark! my soul, it is the Lord, 208
    Hark! the herald angels sing, 120, 179
    Hark! the sound of holy voices, 170
    Hark! 'tis the watchman's cry, 179
    Hasten, sinner, to be wise, 43
    He sat to watch o'er customs paid, 174
    Holy! Holy! Holy Lord, 144
    Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty, 142, 147, 182
    Hosanna to the living Lord, 129
    How sad our state by nature is, 151
    How short and hasty is our life, 152
    Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber, 114
    I heard the voice of Jesus say, 152
    I love Thy kingdom, Lord, 166
    I'm but a stranger here, 169
    Into the woods my Master went, 130
    Is the Bridegroom absent still?, 179
    Jerusalem, my happy home, 126
    Jerusalem the golden, 169, 212
    Jesu, dulcis memoria, 155
    Jesu, Lover of my soul, 120, 122, 152, 154, 163, 203, 210
    Jesus Christ is risen to-day, 181
    Jesus, in Thy dying woes, 164
    Just as I am, without one plea, 162, 164
    Lead, kindly Light, 173, 178, 210, 264
    Let tyrants shake their iron rods, 255
    Let our choir new anthems raise, 170
    Light of the world, we hail Thee, 217
    Light's abode, celestial Salem, 169
    Lord, her watch Thy Church is keeping, 167
    Lord, it belongs not to my care, 110
    Lord, when we bend before Thy throne, 177
    Love Divine, all loves excelling, 120, 210, 214
    Mistaken souls that dream of heaven, 151
    My country, 'tis of thee, 208
    My God, how endless is Thy love, 114
    My God, is any hour so sweet, 162
    My life's a Shade, my daies, 109
    My Lord, my Love, was crucified, 110
    My sins, my sins, my Saviour, 162
    My song is love unknown, 109
    My soul, there is a countrie, 108
    Nearer, my God, to Thee, 208, 284
    Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore, 106
    New every morning is the love, 176
    Not all the blood of beasts, 151
    Now the day is over, 176
    O come, all ye faithful, 217
    O day of rest and gladness, 144, 177
    O Deus, ego amo Te, 155
    O Father, hear my morning prayer, 176
    Oh, for a closer walk with God, 123, 156
    O God of Bethel, by whose hand, 94
    O Jesu, Thou the Virgin's Crown, 174
    O little town of Bethlehem, 94, 179
    O Lord of heaven and earth and sea, 144
    O Love that wilt not let me go, 152
    O Paradise! O Paradise!, 157, 217
    O Sacred Head, now wounded, 180
    O Sinner, for a little space, 174
    O what their joy and their glory must be, 169
    On our way rejoicing, 214
    One sweetly solemn thought, 217
    Onward, Christian soldiers, 166, 229
    Our blest Redeemer, ere He breathed, 182
    Our God, our Help in ages past, 114
    Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, 126, 162
    Praise God from whom all blessings flow, 177
    Rejoice, the Lord is King, 217
    Return, O wanderer, return, 151
    Ride on! ride on in majesty, 129
    Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 122, 163, 196, 197, 203
    Round the sacred City gather, 166
    Safe in the arms of Jesus, 120
    Saviour, again to Thy dear Name we raise, 178
    Shall we not love thee, Mother dear, 174
    Shepherd of tender youth, 59
    Sin, like a venomous disease, 152
    Sing Alleluia forth in duteous praise, 170
    Sing to the Lord with joyful voice, 202
    Spirit Divine, attend our prayers, 177
    Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear, 173, 176, 212
    Sunset and evening star, 130, 217
    Sweet flow'rets of the martyr band, 174
    The Church's one Foundation, 145, 166, 184
    The chariot! the chariot! Its wheels roll on fire, 129
    The day is gently sinking to a close, 176
    The day of resurrection, 217
    The earth is hushed in silence, 177
    The God of Abraham praise, 126
    The Lord descended from above, 104
    The Son of God goes forth to war, 129
    The world is very evil, 169
    There is a blessèd home, 170
    There is an eye that never sleeps, 162
    There is a fountain filled with blood, 203
    There is a green hill far away, 173
    There is a land of pure delight, 114
    These things shall be,--a loftier race, 212
    This is the day of light, 177
    Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown, 217
    Thou hidden love of God, whose height, 115
    'Twas on that night when doomed to know, 94
    Up to those bright and glorious hills, 108
    Veni, Creator Spiritus, 24
    View me, Lord, a work of Thine, 106
    When I can read my title clear, 154, 170
    When morning gilds the skies, 264
    When I survey the wondrous cross, 114, 212, 284
    When our heads are bowed with woe, 129
    When through the torn sail the wild tempest is streaming, 129
    Who hath believed Thy word, 151
    While shepherds watched their flocks by night, 94
    Why should the children of a King, 151
    Why do we mourn departing friends, 152
    Why doth that impious Herod fear, 174
    With glory clad, with strength arrayed, 105
    Ye Christian heralds, go proclaim, 214
  HYMNS (_grouped_)
    Advent, 178
    Ambrosian, 18, 68-71, 73
    Arian, 64, 67
    Ascension, 182
    Breviary, 24, 71, 172, 282
    carols, 179
    cheerful, 31, 32, 76, 157, 159
    Christian, 22, 23, 46
    Christmas, 179
    churchly, 166-170, 184
    closing, 177
    Communion, 27, 28, 41, 164, 173
    confession, of, 161
    degenerate, 268, 269
    didactic, 144
    doctrinal, 143, 146
    dull, 134, 135
    Easter, 175, 181
    edification, of, 43, 143, 150
    Epiphany, 179
    Eucharistic, 41, 43
    evangelical, 78, 122-124, 158
    evangelistic, 38, 134, 265-270
    evening, 157, 176
    experiential, 38, 152
    festal, 41
    German, 38, 76
    Gnostic, 64
    Good Friday, 180
    "Gospel," 38, 265
    Greek, 61, 66
    Heaven, of, 168
    heretical, 64, 65
    "I and my," 44, 152, 264
    inspirational, 35
    Kingdom, of the, 168
    Latin, 68, 173
    Litany, 164
    liturgical, 170
    lyrical, 105, 122, 128, 130, 136
    metrical, 69, 77
    missionary, 179
    mnemonic, 143
    morbid, 32, 158, 176
    morning, 176
    New Jerusalem, 169
    objective, 154
    opening, 177
    Pagan, 22
    Palm Sunday, 179
    Passion, 180
    Pauline, 48-51
    penitence, of, 161
    poetic, 99-102, 106-110, 115-122
    polemic, 185
    praise, of, 23, 63, 141
    prayer, of, 63, 162
    prose, 25
    real, 159, 161
    repentance, of, 161
    sectarian, 185
    sentimental, 160, 264
    sequences, 24, 74, 172, 282
    sermonic, 150
    service, of, 167
    social service, of, 168
    spirituals, 265, 274
    subjective, 152, 264
    Sunday, 177
    Sunday school, 131, 132, 265, 267, 287
    Syriac, 64
    Trinity, 182
    Unitarian, 200, 215, 223
    vernacular, 38, 75
    "We" hymns, 152
    "Weary Willie," 157
    wholesome, 155
    Whitsunday, 182
  Hymns, their proper printing, 221-223
  _Hymns, ancient and modern_, 170, 173, 174, 238, 262, 263, 273, 285
  _Hymns and Choirs_, 192, 193, 285
  _Hymns and Sacred Poems_, 116
  _Hymnes and Songs of the Church_, 106, 107
  _Hymns for the Christian Church and Home_, 215, 285
  _Hymnal, The_
    Presbyterian,
      of 1866, 93
      of 1874, 153, 263
      of 1895, 131, 178, 207-218, 221
      of 1911, 216, 218, 224
    Protestant Episcopal
      of 1891, 207
      of 1916, 178, 238
  Hymnology
    of German origin, 16
    rise of, 17
    as related to theology, 15, 17-22
  _Hymnology, Dictionary of_, 17, 205

  "I and My" hymns, 44, 152, 264
  Ignatius, 60
  Inattention, 148, 284
  India, native hymns, 34
  Individualism, 44, 153
  Inspirational hymns, 35-38
  Instrumental music, 235
  Ireland, 73
  Irving, Edward, 36
  Italy, 70

  James, St., 57, 159
  Jerome, 68
  Jerusalem (new) motive, 169
  Jewish music, 232, 233, 234, 235, 271
  _Jewish People in the Time of Christ_, 281
  John, St., 47
  Johnson, Samuel, 132, 133, 209
  Jones, Darius E., 261
  Julian, John, 17, 205
  Justin Martyr, 62

  Keats, John, 127
  Keble, John, 61, 127, 212
  Ken, Bishop, 109
  Knapp, William, 251
  Knox, John, 29, 42
  Koch, Eduard E., 206
  Kyrie eleison, 61

  Lanier, Sidney, 130
  Laodicæa, Synod of, 65, 259
  Lapsley, R. A., 265, 287
  Last Supper, 27-29, 32, 233
  Latin
    as Church language, 67, 75, 77, 100
    hymns, 68, 69, 172, 173
  Law, William, 274
  Leavitt, Joshua, 260
  Le Challeux, 252
  Leclercq, H., 282
  Leo X, 99, 100
  _Life of the Spirit and Life of To-day_, 157
  Lindsay, Principal, 281
  Lightwood, James T., 285
  Litanies, 164
  _Literature and Dogma_, 134
  Liturgical hymnody, 170
  Liturgies, 20, 21
  Long Meter, 69
  Longfellow, Henry W., 24, 252
  Lord's Supper, 27-29, 32, 233
  Lorenz, Edmund L., 274, 285
  Love Feast, 40, 62
  Lowell, Amy, 209
  Lowrie, Walter, 52, 281
  Lowry, Robert, 266
  Luke, St., canticles in, 30, 46
  Luther, Martin
    his canon, 78
    equipment, 75, 241
    hymns, 76, 283
    work, 75, 77, 240
  Lyon, James, 254
  Lyrical Movement, The, 127-138
    test, 122, 128, 277

  Macartney, Clarence E., 161, 285
  McPherson, John, 45, 46
  Magnificat, 30
  Marcion, 64
  Marot, Clement, 101, 102
  _Marot, Clèment, et Le Psautier Huguenot_, 286
  Martineau, James, 214, 216
  Mason, John, 110
  Lowell, 238, 256-258, 260
  Mass, The, 24, 41, 74, 75, 171
  Massachusetts Bay, 189, 253
  Matheson, George, 152
  Metcalf, Frank J., 286
  Methodist
    hymns, 115
    tunes, 250
    hymn book, 115, 202
  Metrical Psalmody, 81-85
  Milan, 68, 69, 70, 73, 236
  Miller, Joaquin, 28, 32
  Milman, Henry H., 128, 129
  Milton on poetry, 121
  Milton's _Psalms_, 104
  Missal, The, 171, 172
  Missionary hymns, 179
  Mnemonic hymns, 143
  _Mona_, 231
  Monastic hymnody, 71
  Monk, William H., 262, 264
  Monsell, J. S. B., 214, 218
  Montgomery, James, 94, 125, 126, 127, 203
  Moody and Sankey, 38, 266
  Moore, Thomas, 128
  Morbid hymns, 32, 158, 176
  Morning hymns, 176
  Mother Goose, 217
  _Mozarabic and Ambrosian Rites, The_, 282
  Murray, Dean, 23
  _Muse in Council_, 117
  Music (bibliography), 285
  _Music and Letters_, 263
  Music and Religion, 27, 228-232
  _Music in the History of the Western Church_, 243, 265, 285
  _Music of the Pilgrims_, 252, 286
  _Musical Ministries in the Church_, 287
  _Musical Taste, Dissertation on_, 258, 286

  _Narrative of Facts_ (Baxter), 281
  Nason, Elias, 193
  Neale, John Mason, 24, 168, 173, 217
  Neander, Augustus, 65
  Negro spirituals, 274
  Nepos, 60
  New England psalmody, 253-258
  _New Version_, 104, 249, 284
  Newman, John H., 144, 264
  Newton, John, 93, 123, 126, 166
  "Non-liturgical churches," 15, 20, 174, 182
  Northampton, 38, 281
  "Nunc dimittis," 30, 81, 155

  "Odes," 39, 46, 47
  _Odes of Solomon_, 47, 48, 281
  Office, Daily, 24, 65, 71, 73, 74, 75, 77, 270
  _Old Version_, 104, 283
  _Olney Hymns_, 93, 123, 204
  Opening hymns, 177
  Ordinance of Sacred Song, 15, 26, 33
  Ordo psallendi, 71
  _Organ Question, The_, 236, 286
  Organs, 236
  Origen, 49
  _Oxford Hymn Book_, 106, 144
  Oxford Revival, 165-174, 262

  Palgrave, Francis T., 110, 111
  Palm Sunday hymns, 179
  Palmer, Roundell (Lord Selborne), 17, 205, 285
  Paraphrases, Scottish, 94
  Parlor music, 259
  Park and Phelps, 192-195, 205
  Parker, Horatio, 230, 231
  Part Song, 259, 262
  Passion hymns, 180
  Passover Ritual, 29
  Pastor's part, the, v, vi, 15, 137, 148, 160, 178, 183, 184, 232, 269,
          274-277
  Paul, St., and Hymnody
    his ideal, 39-44
    his practice, 35, 36, 40, 57
    his hymn writing, 50, 51
  Paul of Samosata, 63, 64
  "Pause," 212
  Penitence, 161
  Peronnet, Edward, 123
  Peters, John E., 286
  Phelps, Austin, 192
  Pierpont, John, 32
  Pilgrim Fathers, 252
  Pinafore, 229
  Pius X, 234, 237
  Plainsong, 236, 270, 271
  Playford, John, 248
  Pliny, 46, 61
  Plymouth, 252
  _Plymouth Collection_, 196, 261
  _Poesie Liturgique_, 282
  Polemic hymns, 185
  Poetry
    and truth, 18
    and religion, 19
    sacred, 17, 22, 133, 227
    and hymns, 17, 99-138, 227, 284
    Drinkwater on, 117
    Milton on, 121
    modern study of, 209
    office of, 118, 159
    scope of, 133, 138
    and popularity, 122
    of the Psalter, 99, 138
  Porteus, Dr., 236
  Poteat, Herbert Mc N., 269, 270
  _Practical Discourse on Hymn Singing_, 244, 286
  _Practical Hymnology_, 269
  Praise, 23, 31, 141, 142
  Pratt, Waldo S., 252
  Prayer in hymnody, 162
    attitude of, 163
    and praise, 63
  Premillenarism, 178
  Presbyterian Alliance, 273
    unity and hymns, 58
    hymnody, 124
  Presbyterians
    Scottish. See _Scottish_
    American
      communion service, 29, 42
      _Directory for Worship_, 21, 29, 42, 163, 175, 191
      _Hymnal_ (1866), 93
      _Hymnal_ (1874), 153, 263
      _Hymnal_ (1895), 131, 178, 207-218, 221
      _Hymnal_ (1911), 216, 218, 224
      New School, 196
      _Psalms and Hymns_ (1831), 172, 179, 202
      _Psalms and Hymns_ (1843), 93, 172, 179, 194, 195, 202, 204
      Worship, 21, 29, 42, 163, 224
  Private psalms, 61, 63
  Prose hymns, 24
  Protestant Episcopal
    hymn books, 221
    _Hymnal_ (1891), 207
    _Hymnal, New_ (1916), 178, 238
    plainsong in, 237, 238
  Prothero's _Psalms in Human Life_, 283
  Psalm, "Jewish-Christian," 31, 33, 46
  "Psalm," in St. Paul's Epistles, 37, 46
  Psalm headings, 232, 286
  Psalm tunes
    Jewish, 232, 233, 235
    English, 247, 272
  Psalmody (metrical)
    origins, 80-82
    in Reformed churches, 82, 85, 86, 87
    in Church of England, 86, 105
    in America, 86
  Psalmody (prose)
    Jewish, 27, 33
    Greek, 33, 63, 65, 66
    Latin, 67, 71-74
    Lutheran, 76, 77
    Church of England, 90
  Psalmody, the "Gift," 35-37
  "Psalmody Controversy, The," 57, 191
  _Psalms, The Book of_,
    as poetry, 99, 138
    as the inherited hymnal, 31
    as a sealed hymnal, 28, 31, 87
  "Psalms and Hymns," 91, 92
  "Psalms, hymns and spiritual odes," 46, 84
  _Psalms as Liturgies_, 286
  _Psalms in Human Life_, 283
  _Psalms of David in meter_, 92, 105, 109, 190, 191
  _Psalms of Solomon_, 47, 281
  Psychology, 20, 157
  Puritans, 109, 189, 190, 191, 235
  "Purity," 189

  Quarles, Francis, 108
  Quick, _Synodicon_, 283

  Ravenscroft, Thomas, 247, 253
  Reality in hymns, 159
  Redhead, Richard, 263
  Reformation, 75, 79
  Reformed churches, 79
    Psalmody in, 82, 85, 86, 87
    their musical inheritance, 245
  Reformed worship, 79, 80
  Regent Square Church, 36
  "Regular Singing" controversy, 253
  _Religious Confessions and Confessants_, 155, 285
  Renan, 235
  Renascence, The, 99
  Repentance in hymnody, 161
  Restoration, The, 109, 110, 248
  Revivals
    Early American, 34
    Evangelical, 37, 38, 122-124, 156, 158, 250
    Great Awakening, 35, 36, 37, 38, 190
    Methodist, 37, 38, 118, 250
    Moody and Sankey, 38, 266
    Oxford, 165-174, 262
    Welsh, 36
  Richard and Painter's _Christian Worship_, 283
  Rippon, John, 196
  Robinson, Charles S., 165, 207
  Rogers, Charles, 206
  Romaine, William, 198
  Romantic Revival, 127
  Rome, 61, 72, 74, 99
  Root, George F., 266
  Rossettis, The, 115
  "Rous' Version," 92, 105, 109, 190, 191

  _Sabbath Hymn Book_, 192, 194, 261
  Sanday, William, 144
  Sandys' _Psalms_, 104
  Saints' Days, 174, 175
  Saintsbury, George, 121, 284
  Sankey, Ira D., 38, 266
  Schelling, Felix E., 111, 133
  Schumann, Robert, 229
  Schürer's _Jewish People_, 281
  Scott, Sir Walter, 105, 128
  Scottish
    _Directory_, 29, 42, 175
    _Paraphrases_, 94
    _Psalter_ (1564), 246, 247
      (1650), 92, 105, 109, 190, 191
  Tunes, 247
  Scripture texts
    Psalms--23rd, 154
      " 51st, 154
      " 75th, 198
      " 100th, 202
      " 103rd, 29, 42
    St. Matthew 26:30--27
    St. Luke (the canticles in), 30, 31
    St. John 4:24--20
    Acts 2:46-47--30
      " 4:23-30--31
    1 Cor. 11:33--40
      " 13:1--236
      " 13--51
      " 14--35
      " 14:7-8--236
      " 14:15--50
      " 14:26--35, 40
    Ephesians 1--51
      " 5:18-20--40, 41
      " 5:14--48, 49
    Colossians 3:16-17--40, 42, 43
    1 Tim. 3:16--49
    2 Tim. 2:11-13--49
    St. James 5:13--57, 159
    Revelation 4 and 5--52
  _Seasonable Thoughts ... in N. E._, 38, 281
  Sectarian hymnody, 185
  Sedgwick, Catharine, 135
    Daniel, 205
  Selborne, Lord (R. Palmer), 17, 205, 285
  Sentimentality, 160, 230, 264
  Septuagint, 33, 46, 61, 67, 234
  Sequence, 24, 74, 172, 282
  _Serious Call_, 275
  Sermonic hymns, 150
  Service, Hymn of, 167
  Sewall, Judge, 253
  Shakespeare, 103
  Shelley, Percy B., 24, 127
  _Short Hymns_, 93
  "Short Tunes," 247, 248
  Simplicity, 137, 230
  Sidney's _Psalms_, 104
  Simeon, 154
  Sin, 161
  Singing
    antiphonal, 28, 69, 234, 236
    apostolic, 234
    choir, 66, 174, 258, 259
    congregational
      not primitive, 28, 234
      duty of, 274
      decay of, 248-250, 253, 259
      Eastern, 69, 235
      in Latin Church, 69, 236
      at Lord's Supper, 27, 233
      pleasure of, 275
      "Regular," 253
      responsive, 28
  _Singing of Psalm Tunes, Introduction to_, 286
  Skene's _The Lord's Supper_, 281
  Social service hymnody, 152, 168
  Socrates' _Church History_, 282
  _Solomon_
    _Odes of_, 47, 48, 281
    _Psalms of_, 47, 281
    _Song of_, 107
  _Some Thoughts concerning the Revival_, 281
  Song, the spirit of, vii, 44, 162, 277
  _Song of Solomon_, 107
  _Songs of the Church_, 165
  _Songs of the Sanctuary_, 165
  _Songs of Zion_, 265, 287
  Sonneck, O. G., 286
  Southey, Robert, 128
  Sozomen's _Church History_, 282
  Spain, 72, 73
  Spenser, Edmund, 24
  Spirit of song, The, vii, 44, 162, 277
  "Spiritual Odes," 39, 46, 47
  _Spiritual Songs for Social Worship_, 260
  Spirituals, 265, 274
  Spirituality, vi, 44, 77, 137, 229, 230
  Stainer, Sir John, 262
  Stanley, Dean, 51, 281
  Steele, Anne, 114, 153
  Sternhold, Thomas, 103, 104
  _Sternhold and Hopkins_, 103, 104, 189, 210, 246, 253
  Stone, Samuel J., 145, 166
  _Story of Hymns and Tunes, The_, 286
  Strasburg, 81, 101
  Structure of a hymn, 213, 222
  Students' Christian Movement, 130
  _Students' Hymnal_, 273
  _Studies in Worship Music_, 285
  Subjective hymns, 152, 264
  "Subject-matter of Praise," 16, 141
  Suggestion: its power, 156, 157
  Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 229
  Sunday hymns, 175, 177
  Sunday school hymns, 131, 265-267, 287
    President Wilson on, 132
  Surrey and Wyatt, 103
  Swinburne, Algernon, 24
  Symonds, J. Addington, 212
  Syriac hymnody, 64

  _Tate and Brady_, 94, 104, 249
  Taunton, Ethelred L., 238, 239
  Taylor, Jeremy, 109
  Te Deum, 25
  _Teaching of the Apostles_, 41, 47, 62
  Teaching power of hymns, 44, 64, 143, 148, 149
  _Temple Melodies_, 261
  Tennyson, Lord, 130, 142, 230
  Tertullian, 59, 60, 62, 64, 68
  _Testament of Our Lord_, 63
  Tests of subjective hymns, 155-162
  Text (textual criticism) of hymns, Lecture V
  Thanksgiving, 41, 42
  Theology and Hymnology, 15-21
  Thring, Godfrey, 206, 210
  Tinkering of hymns, 194-203, 209, 210, 214-218
  Toledo, Council of, 72, 73
  Tours, Council of, 72
  Toplady, Augustus M., 122, 125, 202
  _Tracts for the Times_, 173
  Traherne, Thomas, 108
  _Treasury of Sacred Song_, 110
  Trinity Hymns, 147
  Tufts, John, 253
  Tune, the hymn-; essentials of, 229
  TUNES (_individual_)
    Adeste Fideles, 251
    Aurelia, 262
    Autumn, 245
    Blessed Home, 262
    Cambridge, 247
    Canonbury, 229
    Cheshire, 247
    Chester, 255
    Commandments, 144
    Dumferline, 247
    Dundee, 247, 271
    Easter Hymn, 181, 249, 252
    Ein' Feste Burg, 240
    Eventide, 262, 264
    For All the Saints, 264
    French, 247
    Garden City, 231
    Glory Song, 170
    Hamburg, 238
    Hanover, 249, 252
    Helmsley, 251
    Just As I Am, 164
    Laudes Domini, 264
    Lux Benigna, 262, 264
    Majesty, 256
    Martyrs, 247
    Melita, 263
    Miles Lane, 250, 251
    Morning Hymn, 251
    Mount Sion, 231
    Old Hundredth, 245
    Oxford, 247
    Paradise, 262
    Passion Chorale, 181
    St. Anne, 249, 272
    St. Gertrude, 229
    St. Matthew's Tune, 249
    Southwell, 247
    Stockport, 251
    The Stilt, 247
    Toplady, 287
    Veni Emmanuel, 238
    Wareham, 251
    Winchester, 247
    Windsor, 247
  TUNES (_grouped_)
    Anglican, 263
    _Bay Psalm Book_, of, 253
    Billings', 255, 256
    Bourgeois', 243-246, 247, 252
    Bradbury's, 265
    Camp-meeting, 260, 265
    Choir, 258, 259, 274
    Chorales, 240-242, 272
    "Common," 247
    Damon's, 247
    "David's," 248
    Degenerate, 268-270
    Dykes', 262-264
    Eighteenth century, 251
    Evangelistic, 265
    Florid, 251, 252
    Folk Song, 273, 274
    Fugueing, 255, 256
    Genevan, 144, 243-246, 247, 252
    "Gospel Hymns," 265, 266
    Greek, 235
    Gregorian, 236, 270, 271
    Hebrew, 232, 233, 235, 271
    Historic, 271
    Hornpipes, 250
    _Hymns ancient and modern_, of, 262
    Jewish, 232, 233, 234, 235, 271
    Luther's, 240-242
    Mason's, 257, 261
    Methodist, 250
    Moody and Sankey, 266
    Oxford, 262-264
    Parker's, 231
    Parlor Music, 259
    Pilgrim Fathers, of, 252
    Plainsong, 236, 263, 270, 271
    Psalm (English), 247, 272
    Rag-time, 268
    Ravenscroft's, 247, 253
    Redhead's, 263
    Scottish, 247
    "Short," 247, 248
    Spirituals, 265, 274
    _Sternhold and Hopkins'_, 245, 246, 253
    Sunday school, 265, 267
    Victorian, 263
    Welsh, 272
    Wesley's, 250
    "Western," 273
  Tupper, Martin F., 104
  _Two Books of Ayres_, 106

  Underhill, Evelyn, 157
  Unitarian hymns, 200, 215, 223
  United Presbyterians, 92
  _Urania_, 254, 286

  Valentine, 60, 64
  Vaughan, Henry, 108
  Veni Creator Spiritus, 24
  Vernacular hymns, 38, 75
  Verse--its power, 144
  Victoria, Queen, 251
  Victorian hymn tune, 263

  Wackernagel, 206
  Wainwright, John, 251
  _Waller, Life of_, 132
  Walter, Thomas, 254
  Warfield, Benjamin B., 30, 67
  Warrington, James, 286
  Watts, Isaac, 73, 88-91, 125
    his "System of Praise," 88
    his hymn writing, 88, 150
    his texts, 198-202
    first editions, 206
    and poetry, 110-114
    and music, 249
    _Horæ Lyricæ_, 111, 206
    _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_, 88, 93, 206
    _Psalms of David imitated_, 78, 89, 91, 92, 191, 195, 198
    "Watts entire," 201
    in America, 190, 199
    school of, 114, 125, 151
  "We" hymns, 152
  "Weary Willie" hymns, 157
  Week of Prayer, 179
  Weizsächer, 52, 281
  Welsh
    hymn competitions, 36
    revival, 36
    tunes, 272, 273
  Wesley, Charles
    his hymn writing, 115, 119, 152
    as a poet, 117-122
    Montgomery on, 125
    _Short Hymns_, 93
  Wesley, John
    and hymnody, 115-117
    and music, 250
    and education, 116
    and poetry, 115, 116, 129
    and tinkering, 202
  Wesley, Samuel, 115
    Samuel Sebastian, 262
  West, Benjamin, 231
  "Western melodies," 273
  Westminster Assembly, 105
    its Directory, 29, 42, 175
  Whitefield, George, 190, 202, 250
  Whitman, Walt, 222
  Whitsunday hymns, 182
  Whittier, John G., 212
  Wholesome hymns, 155
  Williams, William, 123
  Wilson, Archibald W., 286
  Wilson, Dr., 33
  Wilson, President, on S. S. hymns, 132
  Wither, George, 106-109
  Worcester, Samuel, 199, 201
  Worship
    liturgical conception of, 21, 274
    homiletical conception of, 20, 21, 151, 274
    Presbyterian, 21, 29, 42, 224
    Quaker, 20
    Zwinglian, 20
  _Worship and Music_, 263, 287
  Wordsworth, Christopher, 144, 153, 176, 177
  Wordsworth, William, 127, 128
  Wyatt, Sir T., 103

  _Yattendon Hymnal_, 244

  Zurich, 80
  Zwingli, H., 20, 79, 80, 143




[End of _The Hymnody of the Christian Church_ by Louis F. Benson]
