The Hymn-Book of the Modern Church, by Arthur E. Gregory: a Project Gutenberg eBook

This lecture consists of a series of essays introductory to the study of English hymns, in which I have tried to give some account of the sources from which the Church gathers its sacred songs, and to sketch briefly the growth of the modern hymn-book. It has been necessary to omit several sections which I had intended to include, and this volume covers a portion only of the ground indicated by the title. I may, perhaps, some day be able to carry the work a stage nearer completeness.

It may be thought that I have given disproportionate space to certain periods and to certain hymn-writers. If so, I can only say that they seemed to me specially interesting or important. In quotations, especially from less-known writers, I have taken as much liberty as possible, and I think this is the redeeming feature of the lecture. In extended quotations I have usually given the preference to hymns not readily accessible to the general reader, and have only occasionally quoted hymns to be found in the Methodist Hymn-book.

To the hymns of the Wesleys I have given considerable space. The subject was chosen for me in view of the publication of the new Methodist Hymn-book, and the occasion seemed to require a somewhat detailed survey of the early Methodist hymns. Nor do I think that many will consider the attention given to them more than their intrinsic value justifies. ‘After the Scriptures,’ wrote Dr. James Martineau, ‘the Wesley Hymn-book appears to me the grandest instrument of popular religious culture that Christendom has ever produced.’[1]

Delightful as this work has been to me, the book has been written under great pressure and amid countless interruptions. I have had to redeem odd minutes and the evening hours when a long day’s work had already been done.

I have to acknowledge constant obligation—much more extensive than is indicated by frequent reference—to Dr. Julian’s monumental Dictionary of Hymnology, which has lightened the labour of research for all students of hymns.

To my friend, Dr. J. T. L. Maggs, I am under manifold obligations which I most gratefully record. Dr. Maggs read a great part of the book in MS, and the whole in proof; and I am also indebted to him for calling my attention to, or procuring for me, some important books of reference. Mr. W. Garrett Horder has also given me the benefit of his advice and ix criticism—all the more valuable because his judgement has often differed from my own.

It is a pleasure to mention the valuable help rendered me by some of my friends connected with The Children’s Home, and especially by Miss F. L. Moon (now Mrs. Carey), who most kindly relieved me of the greater part of the burden of the actual preparation of the MS. for the press. My son, Benjamin A. Gregory, has prepared the Index, verified quotations, and helped me in many other ways.

No Fernley Lecturer has had a more attractive theme. I wish its treatment had been more worthy. But with all its imperfections I trust that He who inhabiteth the praises of Israel may deign to bless my little book to the edification and comfort of some who read it.

THE HYMN-BOOK OF THE MODERN CHURCH

INTRODUCTION

The source and inspiration of Christian song is the word of Christ. ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.’ The common phrases of common life cannot satisfy the soul filled with the Spirit and rich with the wealth of Christ’s indwelling word. Religious emotion finds truer and more fitting expression in poetry than in prose. If God had not given to His Church poets, as well as apostles, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, the best that is in us could never have been uttered. Words and phrases that are large enough for intercourse with our fellows become cramped and inexpressive when we speak to God. Praise and penitence alike would often be silent in the congregation of the saints if they could not at once veil and reveal their profoundest feelings in psalms and hymns. Poetry gives to devotion those robes of glory and beauty without which it would, at times, be almost unseemly 2 to join in the public worship of God or to disclose the heart’s secrets in the presence of fellow-worshippers.

Our theme, then, is peculiarly sacred, since it deals with the spiritual songs in which earnest and sincere men have uttered, in the very presence of God, their most secret thoughts, confessions, and aspirations. Every true hymn was first spoken by one man to God alone, was prayed before it was sung, though now it may be heard daily from ten thousand voices. Harsh or flippant criticism is out of place here, an irreverent impertinence, like the interruption of private prayer. In the study of hymns

Yet St. Paul himself reminds us that the word of Christ is to dwell wisely as well as richly in our hearts. ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.’ ‘Next to a sound rule of faith, there is nothing of so much consequence as a sober standard of feeling in matters of religion.’[3] Morbid, insincere, fanatical, or exaggerated emotion is as much to be deprecated as doctrinal error, and its evils are at least as disastrous. The diffusion of false or superficial sentiment in the household of the faith is like the spreading of a subtle disease which saps the strength and mars the beauty of devotion, while error bears a charmed life if it comes in the words of a familiar 3 and attractive hymn. Moreover, it is in the hymns of the Church rather than in its formal declarations of faith and doctrine that we find the truest and generally the most favourable revelation of its character. Hymnology is a more important element in the history of religion than most Church historians and theological writers have recognized.[4]

The present time is in many respects peculiarly appropriate for a consideration of the growth and development of the hymns of the modern Church. We are in a state of rest or pause after tumult. The great religious ‘movements’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are matters of history, and we can regard even the most recent of them calmly and without the prejudice which while conflict rages may, not altogether unfairly, be regarded as patriotism. The Methodist Revival, the Evangelical Awakening, the Oxford Movement, the Salvation Army Campaign, the Undenominational Evangelism of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, may all be taken into account in considering the material and character of the hymn-book of the modern Church.

Again, it is interesting to remember that of the hymn-writers of the nineteenth century few survive. For the moment there is neither evangelist nor poet to give us new songs. Our fathers made hymn-books; we 4 re-edit them. Within the last few years the standard Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican,[5] and Methodist hymn-books have appeared in new and revised editions, whilst in the Arundel Hymns we have the most recent Roman Catholic hymnal. Dr. Barrett’s Congregational Church Hymnal, issued in 1887, is of the modern type, though it preserves many of the features of the older Nonconformist books. Mr. Garrett Horder’s Worship-Song represents the taste of an individual, not of a committee or community; but it is in many respects the best and most complete collection of the hymns of the modern Church. These books enable us to discover current opinion and taste in regard to hymns which are worthy to take their place in the service of the Christian sanctuary, and both in their unity and diversity are of great value as indicating the life and thought of the Churches they represent.

1. A brief preliminary inquiry into what constitutes a true hymn, suited for use in Christian worship.

2. A very brief review of the relation of the Hebrew Psalter to the Christian Hymnal, and a passing glance at the hymns of the New Testament and of the early Church.

3. A more detailed survey of the rise and development of modern English hymns and their use in the Church since the Reformation.

Such a study, however unskilfully guided, cannot, I hope, be altogether without interest or edification, since it brings the student into fellowship with the sweetest and the saintliest souls, and bids him join in spirit the choir invisible who praise God day and night in His temple.

I regret that the limits assigned to my lecture make it impossible to refer to translations from the Greek, Latin, German, and other languages. These form a most valuable and an increasing portion of all modern hymnals. They furnish abundant material for a separate volume.

I
A True Hymn

When my revered father, more than thirty years ago, delivered the fourth Fernley Lecture, he laid this down as the first scriptural Church principle—‘The Church is not a thing of rigid definition.’ I may adapt that phrase to my own subject, and say, A hymn is not a thing of rigid definition.

Commenting on the note which closes the second book of Psalms, ‘The prayers [LXX. hymns] of David the son of Jesse are ended,’ St. Augustine gives this definition:

In commenting on Ps. cxlviii. he repeats this rule in almost the same words. The definition commends itself at once as excellent, and in regard to a large 7 number of hymns adequate; but even when the widest sense is given to the words it is much too narrow and would exclude many of the truest hymns. Indeed, it is impossible to deny the title to innumerable compositions which do not fulfil these conditions. Many a verse of which it may be said, This is not a hymn, demonstrates its right by the fact that it is hymned by the Church from age to age.

St. Augustine’s third canon may be accepted without hesitation. A poem that cannot be sung may speak in the sublimest accents of devotion, yet it is of necessity unsuited to the service of the Christian choir. Spenser’s ‘Hymn of Heavenly Love’ is a glorious example of this form of praise. Indeed, there are some stanzas which a skilful hand might make available for use in the congregation.

Many of Herbert’s and of Miss Rossetti’s poems are of the same type. We would give much to add them to our hymnals, but they would be out of place there. They belong to the manual of devotion.

That the primary idea of a hymn is praise may also be granted, but even so ‘praise’ must be given an extensive connotation, that it may include whatever directly or indirectly glorifies God. St. Paul’s exhortations show how much more than the offering of adoration is included in the province of Christian song. Our hymn-book, like the Hebrew Psalter, must have not only its songs of high thanksgiving, its sacrifice of praise, but also its prayer of the penitent as he poureth out his soul unto God, its sin-offering as well as its thank-offering, its intercessions and meditations, its instructions and exhortations, its lighter songs and melodies. ‘Every feeling which enters into any act of true worship may fitly find expression in a hymn.’[7]

Dr. Johnson declared that sacred poetry must always be poor because ‘the topics of devotion are few, and being few are universally known; but few 9 as they are can be made no more.’ To this criticism Keble replied in his essay on Sacred Poetry—

If, on its subjective side, sacred poetry has a wide range of topics, how manifold and how magnificent are the themes presented by the historic facts upon which faith rests, and by the great truths of the gospel! In Johnson’s day no one understood how 10 large a realm belonged to the Christian singer, but we have no cause to complain of sameness or dullness in the songs of the Christian choir.

St. Augustine’s second canon need not be regarded as implying that every hymn must be formally addressed to God. The very hymns (the psalms) upon which he was commenting abundantly justify our use of hymns which are rather uttered in the divine presence than actually spoken to God. The 103rd Psalm is as truly a hymn of praise, and that of God, as the 104th. After the same self-exhortation, ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul,’ the one continues in the form of a devout meditation, in which the consciousness that God hears is never for a moment absent; while the other at once addresses ‘the Majesty on high.’

Devout meditations which do not actually speak 11 to God are amongst the best and most truly devotional hymns. Watts’s spiritual song,

illustrates the meditation which is partly the communing of the soul with itself, and partly (perhaps in this case only in the second verse) a direct address to God. Yet each is a true hymn. The ideal exercise of the Christian hymn-writer is the practice of the presence of God.

Not only, then, are the subjects of sacred song infinitely varied, but the forms it may assume are many. In the poet, as well as in the prophet, God speaks ‘in divers manners.’ This is seen in St. Paul’s twice repeated classification, ‘psalms, hymns, spiritual songs,’ and by the directions he gives for the use of song in the Church.

Psalms are, no doubt, primarily, if not exclusively, those of the Old Testament, which would naturally form the basis of the hymn-book of the Christian Church. It would have been the worst ingratitude, the most crass stupidity, if such a treasure actually in their hands and in their hearts had not been adopted in the services of the first Christian worshippers, even though it must soon have been felt that some psalms were as little in harmony with the spirit of the new dispensation as the law which Christ Himself enlarged and enlightened.

Hymns ‘would more appropriately designate those hymns of praise which were composed by the Christians themselves.’[10] Of these, as we shall note in the next chapter, some fragments remain, and they are specially characteristic of Christian worship. ‘It was of the essence of the Greek ὕμνος (hymn) that it should be ... addressed to a god or hero, that is, a deified man.’[11] Christianity inherited the Hebrew psalm, it adopted and consecrated the Greek hymn.

Ode, or song, is a more general term, qualified and limited by the epithet ‘spiritual,’ and may be regarded as justifying our use of many modern hymns which a severe or narrow taste would reject. Bishop Beveridge 13 understood it to include ‘all sorts of songs upon any spiritual subject.’

Probably the three terms were not very rigidly distinguished, though they are convenient for describing various classes of devotional poetry. In the title of Ps. lxxv. the LXX. gives the three words: ‘among hymns, a psalm for Asaph, an ode concerning the Assyrian.’[12]

The variety of form which the songs of the Christian temple may assume is seen to be of the utmost value when we consider how large a part the ministry of song has in Christian life and worship. Although Jehovah is ‘exalted above all blessing and praise,’[13] yet does He sit ‘enthroned upon the praises of Israel.’[14] ‘Praise waiteth for God in Zion.’ The ancient summons to worship is—

The walls of the city of God are called Salvation, and her gates Praise.[15] The mystic Jerusalem is the true ‘city of praise.’[16] The one offering of the Christian temple is its perpetual eucharist,[17] ‘the sacrifice of praise.’[18] The high praises of God are in the mouth of His saints because His love is shed abroad in their hearts, and they ‘cannot from His praise forbear.’

Whatever the form of the song, its music is for the ear of God, its melody is that of the heart.

In the Christian Church, as in the Jewish Temple, we may call instrumental music to our aid, and count its offering not unacceptable to God.

Yet all this pomp and circumstance of worship are but sounding brass and clanging cymbal unless there be the accompaniment of ‘grace in the heart.’

Praise needs ‘a thousand tongues,’ and even so would find ‘eternity too short’ for its service.

Though St. Paul associates praise—thanksgiving—with singing in both the passages referred to, it is 15 instructive to note how clearly he asserts the teaching function of the songs of the Church: ‘Speaking one to another,’ ‘teaching and admonishing one another.’ Bishop Christopher Wordsworth said, as I think, truly:

An entirely opposite view is often taken, especially by Dissenting writers. Mr. Horder even regards the definite assertion of the doctrine of the Trinity in Heber’s greatest hymn as ‘its only fault.’[22] Dr. Martineau argued that to eliminate from a hymn its distinctive doctrinal teaching, and to ‘translate’ it into broader theological language, was ‘simply to remove an obstruction,’ and to introduce the author ‘to the veneration of thousands, to whom otherwise he must appear as a repulsive stranger.’[23] The general question of alterations in the text of hymns may be considered later. At the moment I need only point out that the apostolic ideal of a hymn includes both ethical and doctrinal teaching. John Wesley prided himself upon having given in his hymn-book ‘a little body of experimental and practical divinity.’

The same principle may be applied to hymns of invitation, of which there are so many in the Methodist collection, and of which Faber’s ‘Souls of men, why will ye scatter?’ is the best modern example. An off-hand criticism may condemn hymns addressed to our own souls, to ‘souls of men,’ to ‘neighbours and friends,’ to ‘sinners poor and wretched;’ but they have ample warrant both in precept and precedent.

Passing from the form to the character of the hymn, there are certain great principles concerning which there will, I imagine, be little difference of opinion. The first essential in every hymn is surely that it be not unworthy of use in the service of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and is to be worshipped in the beauty of holiness. There must be—

1. Sincerity.—Fitness for divine service depends not upon beauty of form or expression, but upon sincerity of thought.

‘The garment of praise’ is the white robe of the pure in heart, and, lacking this, the stately anthem has less 17 of heaven’s music than the discordant voices of the village choir.

Sincerity requires that the thoughts expressed should be real to the singer as well as to the poet. They may not be such as would have occurred to him, and the expression may be altogether beyond his powers of origination, but they must be such as he can think in his best moments or may be helped to enter into at the hour of prayer. Sincerity does not require that all our hymns should be on the lowest level common to a general congregation, but that the sentiment expressed, the emotion presupposed or to be excited, be suited to the heart of man in the presence of his Father in heaven. In the compilation of a hymn-book something must be left to the good sense and judgement of those who are to use it; and there is no part of public worship which calls for more serious and intelligent consideration than the selection of hymns suited to the occasion and to the congregation.

It is perhaps too much to say that sincerity also requires that the writer of a hymn should be not unworthy of a place in the Christian choir. Happily this question rarely arises. The author’s name is often an aid to devotion, and in most hymn-books there is hardly a name—except Dryden’s—that seems wholly unfitted to this sacred service.

2. Reverence.—‘God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few,’ restrained, seemly. The profoundest reverence, the lowliest adoration, shrinks from utterance when it hears and sees unspeakable things. This is sublimely taught in those great lines of Dante:

Even so profuse a hymn-writer as Watts feels that there are times when it is best to ‘leave untold’ what the heart most desires to tell:

It is a less sublime, but not less acceptable, form of worship which attempts that which yet it knows to be impossible. Praise must be heard in Zion lest if men hold their peace the very stones should cry out. Nor 19 is it right that awe should silence love. We worship the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, yet even so we praise Him who ‘like as a Father pitieth His children’; and when we sing praise to Christ as God, we remember that He called His disciples not servants, but friends.

It would be easy to give illustrations of offences against the spirit of reverence, especially in hymns of the eighteenth century and the earlier part of the nineteenth. The Moravian hymns in particular were often disfigured by the most revolting phrases, so had indeed that one does not care to give them even the notoriety of emphatic condemnation.[27] But such gross 20 offences are rare in our time, and are practically unknown to Protestant hymnals. Some of the Romish hymns, and a few in Anglican books, refer to the details of our Lord’s Incarnation and Passion with irreverent and even indecent realism, and those addressed to the Virgin Mary are often as bad as any found in the older Moravian books.

We are, on the other hand, in some danger of carrying our sense of what is reverent too far, and of altering without reason the glowing words of devout Christian affection. John Wesley shrank from including

in his Collection. The expression is quoted from Wisd. xi. 26: ‘But Thou sparest all; for they are Thine, O Lord, Thou Lover of souls’; and he saw no objection to its general application as in the lines—

Canon Ellerton hesitated as to the propriety of the inclusion of this great hymn in a Church hymnal, and spoke of it as standing ‘absolutely upon the line’ which separates hymns for public worship from those of private devotion. But the Church in all its borders has decided the question, and our heart tells us that the decision is right. Nor is it, indeed, a hymn solely 21 for the sanctuary and the saint; it is a hymn for the street and for the sinner.[28]

The epithet ‘dear’ is not one to be scattered thoughtlessly through hymns and prayers. Yet there are lines from which it is almost an impiety to remove it. There is a language of reverent affection which has in it nothing of the earth.

though I wish he had used another epithet; and I certainly could not draw a rough pen through Cowper’s tender line

There is something due to the men who wrote thus. If they loved much, we should let them speak their love to all the ages in terms of strong affection, and our colder hearts may learn to burn within us as we draw near with them to Him who ‘sought us Himself with such longing and love.’

Bad taste is an error of judgement, not irreverence, 22 but it has very much the same effect upon the worshipper, and it is to be regretted that some very great hymns, consecrated by ten thousand sacred memories, are marred by phrases which will not bear comment or meditation. If the hymn were new, not many modern books would include Cowper’s lines

3. Closely allied to reverence is Dignity, the elevation and refinement of thought and language which beseem the worship of God. Nor is it any disadvantage to the less enlightened or less educated in the Christian assembly that they should learn to speak the language of the family of God. Dignity is not necessarily obscure or pompous. It represents what is worthy of man’s thought when it is engaged on the highest of all themes. The intrusion into the most sacred moments of what is mean or vulgar in sound or association is a grievous offence. Hymns belong to the belles lettres of the literature of devotion; to be familiar with them should be in itself a liberal education.

4. Beauty.—‘Intercourse between God and the 23 human soul,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘cannot be poetical’—a characteristically dogmatic assertion for which there might be some excuse in his day, but which succeeding years have overwhelmingly disproved. A hundred years ago it was necessary to include in a hymn-book compositions that compensated for their lack of poetry by their undoubted piety, but we have such a wealth of song at our disposal that there need be nothing poor, prosaic, commonplace in our hymnals. Watts’s greatest error was his excessive tenderness for ‘vulgar capacities.’

5. Simplicity.—We may say of great hymns what Tennyson said of great men—they are

Heavy words are rightly to be regarded as fatal to a good hymn. Charles Wesley was peculiarly prone to use words which make hymns impossible in public worship. Who desires in prayer or praise to use such words as ‘consentaneous,’ ‘implunged,’ ‘choral symphonies’?

The best hymns are made up of short words, and have a large preponderance of monosyllables. The words, too, should be such as men use in the more serious intercourse of daily life. It goes without saying that colloquialisms and words with mean associations are not fit for the sanctuary, but the finest hymns are often those which the plain man recognizes as written in his own tongue.

Bishop Ken’s great hymns are models of simple directness of thought and expression, and so are some verses of Pope’s Universal Prayer.

6. Fervour.—If there is no fire or glow in a hymn, it might as well be prose as poetry. Indeed, many hymns are so prosaic, so wooden, that it is difficult to see how they can ever

above the dullest levels of devotion. There should be in a hymn a restrained fervour, a reverent rapture of poetic inspiration free from all admixture of the sensuous and morbidly emotional. ‘Be not drunken with wine ... but be filled with the Spirit.’

Nay, rather, if we find no ‘minstrel rapture’ for the praise of the Most High, may we not ask with Charles Wesley—

As might be expected, it is among the Anglican and the rationalistic communities that there is the greatest dread of the emotional in worship. Yet Dr. Martineau is the ablest apologist for fervour in religious poetry.

We should, perhaps, hesitate to say that a Christian hymn may have the ‘fine, careless rapture’ which is the glory of Browning’s thrush, but we must not deny to it the ‘inward glee’ as well as the ‘serious faith’ of Wordsworth’s stock-dove. The fervour of Christian song is the bright expression of our glorying in the Lord.

7. Truth of doctrine.—If it be allowed that hymns play an important part in the teaching of the Church, it is hardly necessary to press this point. Indeed, there is often more to be feared from theological pedantry than from doctrinal sensitiveness. The essential unity of the faith of Christendom is nowhere better illustrated than in the number of hymns which belong to the common treasure of the Church. There is already a union of hearts in the language of devotion which is the surest promise of 27 the reunion of Christendom. At the same time, there are not a few hymns which must either be excluded from denominational hymn-books, or be revised into accord with the faith of the congregations that are to use them.

I well remember the distress of a distinguished Independent minister when I quoted to him Wesley’s verse—

and the pained incredulity with which he deprecated my assurance that the hymn was still in use in our congregations. I remember, too, how abruptly an eminent Methodist minister closed his hymn-book and directed the congregation to cease singing when he found them approaching the last verse of one of Toplady’s hymns—

The verses set forth accurately and appropriately the teaching of the Churches to which the hymns respectively belong, but they are impossible in other theological regions. A very wide range should be allowed to religious thought as expressed in hymns, but those which contradict the things most surely 28 believed in a Church are rightly excluded from its hymnal.

8. We should add, I think, if not to the essentials, yet certainly to the virtues of a good hymn, Scriptural language. Our greatest prose writers have found in the English Bible the most effective, forceful, impressive words; and the hymn-writer has the advantage not only of its pure, strong diction, but also of the hallowed associations which the words of Holy Scripture preserve for all Englishmen.

II
Hymns of the Bible and the Early Church

The hymn-book of the modern Church is the direct descendant of the Hebrew Psalter. Had David and Asaph never sung, the hymns of Watts and Wesley, of Keble and Montgomery, could hardly have been written. If the praises of Israel had not rung through the courts of the Temple, the choir of the Christian Church would have been silent. Primitive Christianity struggled hard to free itself from the swathing-bands of Jewish ritual; but it recognized from the first the riches of its inheritance in the Book of Psalms. There, more than in any other Scripture, the first Christians heard ‘the voice of Christ and His Church.’[32] Our Lord Himself joined in singing these ancient hymns, and bade His disciples understand that all things must needs be fulfilled which ‘were written in the ... psalms’ concerning Him. St. Paul and St. James alike commend the singing of psalms, and thus, without controversy, the Psalter was claimed by the Church as her own. The determination to hear the voice of Christ everywhere, led to extravagances of 30 exposition which a more critical age cannot tolerate, but it gave the psalms a firm hold upon the heart of Christendom. The ancient Scriptures would have passed away with the ‘worldly sanctuary’ had it not been for the witness of the priest, the prophet, and the psalmist to Christ.

Religious poetry and song must long have preceded any collection of psalms or hymns. One would like to know who first, in the far-off days, said to his brother, ‘O come, let us sing unto the Lord’; but that unknown poet or musician had been famous and forgotten before history was born. The first Hebrew psalm is the Song of Moses at the Red Sea, the earliest of the triumph songs of the people of God, the hymns which celebrate Jehovah, who ever showeth Himself ‘a God of deliverances.’[33] Sung first to ‘the loud timbrel by Egypt’s dark sea,’ it becomes in the Apocalypse the Song of Moses and of the Lamb, chanted to the harps of God by the glassy sea mingled with fire. At the first the singers are the congregation, not yet a people, whom Moses brought out of Egypt in haste; at the last they are the white-robed army of them that have gotten the victory through the blood of the Lamb.

Moses, then, is the first singer in the Christian choir; and if to this song of triumph we can add the 90th Psalm, we may well place Moses amongst the sweetest and the sublimest of hymn-writers.

But Moses is not the founder of Hebrew psalmody. The fact that he and others may have written psalms does not detract from the fame of David, ‘the sweet psalmist of Israel.’ It was he who won for the psalm a permanent place in the worship of God. It is not for me to discuss here critical questions in regard to the Davidic authorship of particular psalms; but I venture to deprecate a too ready or complete acceptance of Wellhausen’s phrase that the Psalter was ‘the 32 hymn-book of the second temple,’ as though it settled the question of the existence of previous Psalters used in the days before the Exile. Unless we are prepared to reject history and tradition alike, David must still hold his place amongst the singers of the Church of God.

The builders of the great vanished cities of the olden time, of its palaces and pyramids; the founders of its monarchies, empires, and republics, pass into oblivion or preserve at best the dull memorial of a name in history; but ‘he who sang the Holy Spirit’s song’ has an audience that never wearies, though the individual listeners pass in solemn and ceaseless order to the silent land. For man is one everywhere and in all ages. The accidents of life vary, but its essence abides. ‘The universal Church of Christ hath given its witness that these psalms are not made for one age, but for all ages; not for one place, but for all places; not for one soul, but for all souls.’[36]

The contention that David’s history is not consistent with the high religious tone of the poems ascribed to him need not disturb us. The man who wrote the Lament for Saul and Jonathan was no mere brigand chief, but one who wore ‘the graces that adorn a king,’ and as a poet and a friend deserves to rank with Milton and with Tennyson.

Is there not the same note in David as in Milton, the same lingering on the loved name, the same reiteration of the words of sorrow?

Jonathan is shrined as richly and as unfadingly as Edward King or Arthur Hallam, and we may well believe that the man whom Jonathan loved as his own soul loved God from his inmost heart—that the author of the Lament was the singer of the 18th Psalm. And if it be allowed that David wrote that song—‘the Psalm of Clovis and John Wesley’[37]—it is difficult, merely on the ground of personal character, to deny him any psalm in the whole book.

It may be true that the value of the psalms to the Church does not depend upon the settlement, one way or another, of the rival claims of singers before and after the Exile, yet the question is of vastly more than mere literary or historic interest. We lose much if we lose David and the psalmists of the kingdom from ‘the glorious choir’ which sings for ever the praises of Israel’s God and David’s Son. And we are all the poorer if the sources of Christian song are to be sought, not by

but by the dull canals of Babylon, where the exiled 35 people wept when they remembered Zion. Even the most extreme of modern English critics tells us that, ‘As mere academical exercises, by not merely unnamed but unknown individuals, the psalms will neither edify the Church nor charm the literary student.’[38] But, after all, we have not yet lost our fellowship with the men of David’s time. The psalms are to us a memorial of the golden days of Israel’s history. They are still to us, as to Francis Davison,

It is this ‘personal element’ which makes the Psalter a living book in every age.

The earlier Hebrew psalmists, even when they wrote in view of the imposing ritual of the temple service with its crowded choir, its thousand white-robed priests sounding their silver trumpets, were never bound by a narrow conventional opinion as to what beseemed the order of public worship. Fettered 36 by rule and rubric as the later Jewish Church was, the psalmist as well as the prophet stands for the right of the individual soul to enter alone into the presence of God.

The personal element is, in some respects, the most precious gift of the Psalter to Christianity. Had the hymns of the mediaeval Church, instead of the Hebrew Psalter, been the pattern for modern hymn-writers, we should have lost the best, the grandest, the most abiding of modern hymns. But the revival of hymn-writing, alike in Germany and in England, was a result of the Protestant Reformation, which set aside ecclesiastical in favour of Biblical precedents; so our hymn-books are inspired by the Psalter, not the Breviary. And this vindication of the rights of the individual soul we owe in the first instance to David, or to the men who wrote the psalms ascribed to him. As Edward Irving has said, with his majestic and unrestrained eloquence:

Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, in the elaborate preface to his Holy Year, says:

This is an entirely superficial criticism, though, in greater or less degree, it has been accepted in many modern hymn-books. It is unsound in principle, and contrary to the highest precedents, ancient and modern. It is the personal element that makes a hymn dear to the congregation of Christ’s flock. It is the fit expression of profound individual experience that gives a hymn its charm for the multitude, who can think poetry, but cannot write it. Perhaps no hymn of the last century has touched more hearts than Newman’s ‘Lead, kindly Light’; yet it was written as a personal prayer, giving expression to a special and temporary experience. Few hymns better illustrate the appropriateness to others of the experience of one. In his later years, Newman declined, almost querulously, to be ‘examined’ as to what he meant exactly by the closing lines of his famous hymn, written in 38 a ‘transient’ state of mind, ‘when home-sick or sea-sick’; but to Mrs. Tait, who inscribed the lines

beneath the portrait of the children taken so suddenly from the desolated Deanery at Carlisle, no lapse of years could ever dull their meaning. The poet often speaks ‘not of himself,’ and his words may be truer as well as richer to the man who repeats than to the man who wrote them. A formal service, performed by professionals or by the technically ‘religious,’ may find suitable expression in general terms; but the Christian congregation

The grandest of all hymns, ancient and modern, throb with individual life, whether they soar to heaven on the wings of ecstasy, or bow to earth beneath an overwhelming sense of sinfulness.

Some of the most sublime passages in ancient chant and modern hymn are those in which the singer turns from the confession of a common sin or the expression of a common gratitude to claim a personal share in it. Even that greatest hymn of the Church’s public worship, the ‘Te Deum Laudamus,’ voices at last the cry of the individual believer—

So Charles Wesley, celebrating the first anniversary of his conversion, sings—

So Thomas Olivers at the end of his great anthem to the God of Abraham adds his own voice to the voices of the celestial choir—

The contrast between the liturgical hymn written for others to sing and the hymn of personal experience, the pouring out of the soul before God, is well illustrated in the Psalter; e.g. compare Ps. cxv.—

It is in the earlier psalms, though not in them exclusively, that we find the personal element conspicuous, and it is those psalms which have inspired the highest forms of Christian song.

Even in psalms written for the congregation and with direct liturgical intent there is often the introduction of the personal element, as in Ps. cvi.

In the Book of Psalms we have not only the cry of the seeker after God, but the voice of the Church in its common prayer and praise. We find here, too, hymns for the Sabbath day and other festivals, hymns in commemoration of the older saints, national prayers and anthems, which confess the sin of the people or record the mighty works of God, setting the nation’s history to music. Indeed, it is difficult to discover in modern hymn-books any hymn which has not its prototype in the Psalter, though the Incarnation and its manifold revelation brought into Christian life and thought 41 a light that far outshines the brightest stars of the earlier dispensation.

Like other great hymn-books, the Hebrew Psalter grew by stages and gathered into its treasury things new and old. In its final form it is a collection of hymns ancient and modern—a fusion of various hymn-books, in which, as in other collections, there is occasional repetition, free quotation of one writer from another, reminiscences of familiar psalms of earlier psalmists, and evidences of the exercise of a wide editorial discretion in revision and emendation.

We should like to know something of the man who edited the final Collection of Hymns for the use of the people called Jews. If he had written a preface, or even a title-page, he would have solved for us many interesting literary questions—though he would have added little to the spiritual or liturgical value of the Psalter. It is enough for us to know that the psalms as we sing them to-day are the Psalms of which our Lord spoke, when He appealed to them as witnesses with Moses and the prophets to His mission. It was a hymn-book ready for use in the Church of Pentecost, and was adopted in its worship from the beginning.

The influence of the Psalter upon Christian hymnody extends far beyond the use of the rhythmic psalms. The metrical versions, which long supplied the place of hymn-books, gave to the Psalms a double share in Christian worship. Even to-day, when the 42 metrical Psalter has lost its hold upon the Christian congregation, many of our greatest hymns are versions of Hebrew psalms. Nor is the rhythmic version outworn. No complete order of Christian worship is possible which does not include at least some portion of the Psalter in one or other of our three grand English renderings.[42]

The birth of the Lord Jesus was marked, as so many critical periods have been, by a ‘sudden blaze of song.’ The choir of heaven itself sang the ‘Gloria in Excelsis’; Mary chanted the ‘Magnificat’; Zacharias, the ‘Benedictus’; whilst Simeon’s swan-song, the ‘Nunc Dimittis,’ closed the rich though scanty hymnody of that great transition time.

The apostolic Church had no David. The Epistles preserve for us some few lines of early Christian hymns; but it was left to later times to give its sublimest songs to the Christian choir. Yet, if for a moment we think of what might have been, surely St. Paul could have written battle-songs grand as Luther’s; St. Luke, an earlier Christian Year; and St. Peter might have sung with the simple pathos of John Newton. But though other gifts were theirs in abundance, the gift of song was not bestowed upon them; and since the apostolic Church had no poet, the New Testament has no Psalter. Nor, indeed, does it 43 need one; for God’s great poem, His sublimest work, is the Man Christ Jesus.

But though the primitive Church had no great hymn-book, it had its ephemeral ‘songs and solos,’ its minor poets who helped many an earnest worshipper to draw nigh to God with the voice of a psalm. Indeed, there is some reason to think that the Corinthian Church suffered from too great a number of would-be poets, for there ‘every one’ had ‘a psalm,’ and St. Paul would obviously have liked to issue, as John Wesley actually did, a rule against the giving out of hymns of the preacher’s own composing.

The fragments that remain of the hymns of the apostolic age are few and uncertain. The most distinctly rhythmic is the short creed, which may have been said or sung, found in 1 Tim. iii. 16—

In Eph. v. 14 there are three lines which may have been taken from an ancient baptismal hymn.

Westcott and Hort print in metrical form not only these passages, but St. Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, which thus takes its place among the earliest Christian hymns.

It is very possible that the metrical structure of St. Matthew’s version may to some extent explain its variations from St. Luke.

‘The hymns of the Apocalypse show, strange to say, no metrical arrangement of diction,’[44] but their influence upon Christian song has been great. Thus the New Testament makes a most important, though chiefly indirect, contribution to the hymnal of the Church.

St. Paul’s division of religious poetry into ‘psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs’ indicates the character and variety of the songs of the apostolic Church, but gives little information concerning its hymnals. We may assume, however, that whilst the Hebrew Psalter formed the first and greatest section of the songs of the Church, there were also a number of recognized ‘hymns’ and ‘odes,’ to which additions might at any time be made. By the law of spiritual selection these ancient hymns have passed out of the literature of the Church; they perished in the using, and having served their own generation according to the will of God fell on sleep.

The Church universal is indebted to the liturgical 46 Churches for the inclusion in their Books of Common Prayer of the psalms which heralded the dawn of the day of the Son of Man. It is surely a narrow and superficial notion of divine worship which would exclude such canticles from our services as archaic or artificial.

How beautiful, for example, is the ‘Nunc Dimittis’ whether sung daily at eventide, or when the day of life is ended and the Lord now letteth His servant depart in peace! It is in Christian usage what the sounding of ‘The Last Post’ is to the British soldier, marking the close of the common day or sounding the last farewell to a comrade whose warfare is accomplished. A petty and prosaic criticism may regard as unreal such adaptations of ancient hymns, though consecrated by many centuries’ use, but there is as legitimate a poet’s licence in devotion as in literature.

The Old and New Testament alike, though the former more directly than the latter, gave to hymns a place in the worship of God. But the new wine of the gospel, which burst the wine-skins of out-worn ritual, could not be contained even in the golden chalice of the Psalter or the canticles written on its models.

Distinctively Christian hymns which, as we have seen, are occasionally quoted in the Epistles, and are referred to as a recognized part of public and social worship, date from the earliest times. The famous letter of the younger Pliny to Trajan tells how those who were terrified into the denial of their Lord, 47 confessed no worse crime than that of meeting on an appointed day before the dawn to sing antiphonal hymns to Christ as to a god.[45] Judaism had its Messianic psalms, but the hymns which give praise to Christ as

are the glory of the new dispensation. The early defenders of catholic doctrine appealed without hesitation to the fact that ‘whatever psalms and hymns were written by the brethren from the beginning, celebrate Christ the Word of God by asserting His divinity.’[46]

Orthodox and heretic alike—perhaps the heretic especially—sought to win acceptance for his teaching, to fix it in the memory of the congregation by setting it to music. The famous heretic Arius (d. 336) disseminated his doctrine in hymns which are said to have been written in metres associated with the most licentious songs. They were answered by the orthodox hymns of Ambrose. Later heretics, like Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea (d. 390), followed his example; whilst St. Augustine himself wrote an acrostic hymn or psalm against Donatist error. But it was in the beginning as it is in our own day, a man’s doctrinal aberrations were forgotten, at least for the moment, if he could write good hymns. So Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, writing against Nepos, ‘a bishop in Egypt,’ 48 protests that he ‘greatly loves’ Nepos for his skill in psalmody, ‘by which many are still delighted.’[47]

In an often quoted passage in the Confessions, St. Augustine tells how he was affected to tears by the singing of ‘hymns and canticles,’ and records the introduction at Milan of antiphonal singing ‘according to the custom of the Eastern regions,’[48] whilst the people watched in the church ready, if need were, to die with their beloved bishop, St. Ambrose.

Ambrose of Milan and Hilary of Poictiers divide the glory of introducing the singing of hymns into the Church of the West. Hilary compiled a hymn-book—Liber Hymnorum—which is only known to us by a few hymns more or less doubtfully ascribed to him. Ambrose is the first great Latin hymn-writer who still lives in the songs of the sanctuary. His hymns are unrhymed, and, as Trench says, of ‘almost austere simplicity.’

To St. Ambrose many of the earlier Latin hymns are attributed, and the ‘Te Deum’ is known in the Breviaries as ‘The Song of St. Ambrose and St. Austin,’ according to the tradition that it was composed and sung by them in alternate verses when the latter was baptized at Milan.

The familiar English translation is by an unknown hand. Grand as it is, there are some verses in which a more literal rendering would have been still grander. As the Latin text may not be known by some readers, I give what may be called the received text—

In the Prayer-book version we miss the apostles’ ‘glorious choir,’ the martyrs’ ‘white-robed’ army; and the close would, I think, have been even more impressive as well as more literal had the last lines read—

In the primitive days, before the rise of the mediæval Papacy, before the time of Breviary and Mass-book, the singing of hymns was well established alike in the East and West. In almost every language in which the gospel was preached, hymns were written, and were used not only to aid the devotion of the devout worshipper in the services of the Church, but to arrest and teach the careless wayfarer. Thus Bishop Aldhelm of Sherborne ‘would sit on the bridge, as the people came out from Mass to loiter gossiping on their way home, and sing them sacred lays, teaching them their faith, as it were, in chance verses, and enlisting in God’s service the national love of music and song. It was Alfred, himself a singer, who preserved this tale.’[52]

In later days, when the Romish worship had become more elaborate and formal, it is chiefly in the Breviaries that we find the hymns of the Church, in Latin, of course, and as little understanded of the people as the rest of the service. A large number of these hymns are in existence, and whilst many are disfigured by the idolatrous and often coarse adoration offered to the Virgin Mary and the saints, and others dwell with dreadful particularity upon the details of the Passion, many give worthy and sincere expression to the profoundest experiences of the devout soul. Some of the best and sweetest of these songs, which are often reckoned amongst ‘ancient’ hymns, belong to the 52 degenerate days of the Papacy. They are not only intrinsically precious, but are gracious evidence that the genuine spirit of devotion was found, and the voice of praise and prayer and penitence heard, in quiet places and pure hearts, even in a time of general apostasy. Any detailed reference to pre-Reformation hymns would be outside the limits of this lecture, but the translations of Greek and Latin hymns which are to be found in our modern hymnals will naturally claim attention at a later stage.

In concluding this brief and necessarily superficial preliminary sketch, I may refer to a few of the ancient hymns which are probably little known to the ordinary worshipper.

1. Syriac.—These are chiefly known to us through the great teacher and writer, Ephraem Syrus, who died at Edessa in 373. His hymns were written to counteract the influence of the popular songs of the heretic Bardesanes, and his son Harmonius. Dr. Bonar, Mrs. Charles, Mr. Moorsom, and others have translated several of these Syriac hymns; but they are not likely ever to win such wide acceptance as the Latin or the Greek hymns, though a few are to be found in modern collections. Several of the most touching of St. Ephraem’s hymns are on the death of children, whilst others celebrate the hosannas of the children at the Triumphal Entry. I give a translation, or ‘imitation,’ by Dr. Bonar of a hymn for the Lord’s Day.

SABBATH HYMN

In the new and revised edition of Church Hymns, there is a translation by the Rev. R. M. Moorsom of an anonymous Syriac hymn, which is one of two placed under the heading, ‘The National Church.’

2. Greek.—What is often called the first Christian hymn is found in the Paedagogus, or Tutor, of St. Clement of Alexandria (d. cir. 212). It has been translated into English by many writers. Dean Plumptre’s version is the best known. At the end of his treatise Clement ‘burst out into a kind of choral, dithyrambic ode, in anapæstic metre, the lines very short and abrupt, and the whole being more exclamatory and fervid than most later hymns.’

I must add one other hymn, though it has been often translated, and is found in several modern hymn-books. There is a pretty little version in Longfellow’s Golden Legend, but the best is Keble’s fine rendering published in the Lyra Apostolica. It is a hymn for eventide, and was sung at ‘The Lighting of the Lamps.’ It has been sung at vespers in the Greek Church for many centuries, and is still in daily use.

3. Latin.—The following hymn has not only intrinsic value, but peculiar interest on account of St. Augustine’s reference to it as having brought to his eyes the kindly relief of tears, as he thought of his mother laid that day in her grave.

It is found in the Breviaries as a Saturday vesper hymn, and is a good example of the hymns of St. Ambrose. It has much of the strength and simplicity of Ken’s hymns.

The best English translation is by Mr. J. D. Chambers, late Recorder of New Sarum. I take it from his beautiful Psalter; or, Seven Hours of Prayer of the Church of Sarum.[55]

I would gladly linger awhile longer among these ancient hymns; but except as they have passed into our hymnals in the last two centuries, they hardly belong to my subject.

LITERATURE

III
Early Modern Hymns

I.—Sixteenth Century

Before the Reformation England was rich in ballads, but had practically no hymns. Yet there are in that earlier period a few great names—Cædmon, Aldhelm, Bede, Alfred—which are beginning to appear in some modern hymnals.[56]

It is usual to date English hymnody from the days of Dr. Watts. Before his time, however, a considerable number of hymns had been written in English, a fair proportion of which were of high poetic character, and not unsuitable for public worship. But the idea of a hymn-book had hardly entered the mind of the Church. Many longed for ‘godly ballads’ to supplant the vain songs of the Court, the camp, and the street, but for the most part they longed in vain. We must not, however, overlook the preparation made during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The English Reformation had no poet, no one who could give the common people songs such as Luther 63 had provided for the Germans. Myles Coverdale (1487-1569), Bishop of Exeter, saw how great the need was; but he could not supply it, though he did his best. His ‘Ghostly Psalms and Spiritual Songs, drawn out of the Holy Scripture for the comfort and consolation of such as love to rejoice in God and His Word,’ is an unsuccessful attempt to render into English some of the German hymns. He confesses that the verses are ‘rude in song and rhyme.’ Yet there is not wanting that yearning after God, that quiet trust in Christ, that turning to Him with hope and penitence and love which is the note of all Christian psalmody. I quote a few verses—modernizing the spelling—from what is, I think, his best effort.

Coverdale’s hymns prepared the way for more successful efforts in the same direction. And it is pleasant to remember that the brave old reformer, who stood by his friend and tutor, Robert Barnes, the martyr, when he was summoned to appear before Wolsey as a heretic, and who devoted so many years to the translation of the Holy Scriptures, was one of the first who desired to make the English folk love godly hymns.

It is an ancient fashion to disparage Sternhold and Hopkins’s version of the Psalms, but it was a great advance upon Coverdale, and ‘marks an era in the history of sacred song.’[58] Sternhold died in 1549, and Coverdale survived him for twenty years. He was Groom of the Robes to both Henry VIII and Edward VI. Probably the popularity of Clement 65 Marot’s[59] French version may have suggested to Sternhold the attempt to provide the English Court with similar sacred songs instead of the profane ballads which pleased both French and English courtiers. Henry had a sincere regard for him, and remembered him in his will. Edward loved to hear these metrical psalms sung by their author, and caused them to be ‘sung openly,’ so that others might learn to love them as he did. Sternhold was a modest man, and did not claim any great merit for his songs.

Part of his version of Ps. xviii. is usually given as the best example of his work.

The Old Version, which bears the name of Sternhold and Hopkins, was the work of several hands. 67 John Hopkins was the largest contributor. Of his life little is known. Warton called him not the least of the British poets of his day, and his versions are generally considered superior to Sternhold’s. They are no doubt smoother, but I cannot see that they have more poetry in them. Sometimes his lines are ridiculously divided, and it is difficult to imagine that at any period they could have been regarded as tolerable.

It was, however, a psalm of Hopkins’s which comforted John Wesley after hearing a sermon, of which he disapproved, at Bow, in 1738. ‘God answered the thoughts of my heart, and took away my fear, in a manner I did not expect, even by the words of Thomas Sternhold. They were these (sung immediately after the sermon)’—

William Whittingham, Calvin’s brother-in-law, and Knox’s successor as pastor of the English congregation at Geneva, contributed about twelve psalms, including the cxix., which runs to over 700 lines. In 1563 he became Dean of Durham, and was excommunicated by the Archbishop of York (father of George Sandys). He died in 1579, and was buried in the cathedral in which he is said to have destroyed the image of St. Cuthbert and other ancient monuments which were obnoxious to his Puritan taste. Other writers were John Pullain, another Genevan exile; Robert Wisdome, who was frightened into a recantation of his ‘errors’ by Bishop Bonner, but shortly after recanted again; Thomas Norton, who wrote the version of Ps. cxlvii., beginning—

William Kethe, author of ‘All people that on earth do dwell;’ John Marckant, and John Craig.[60] John Marckant, vicar in 1559 of Great Clacton, and of Shopland 1563-8, was the author of four psalms in the Old Version. But he is remembered by ‘The Lamentation of a Sinner,’ which is one of the redeeming features of the book. It is known in modern times almost exclusively in Heber’s revision. The original is admirable in its pathos and simplicity.

THE LAMENTATION OF A SINNER

With Sternhold and Hopkins began the reign of the metrical Psalter. The attempt to turn the whole book of Psalms into verse for congregational use has had a curious fascination. No one has attained more than very partial success, not even Watts or Keble. In Julian’s long list of those who have essayed to render the Psalms into English verse, are many names upon which one lingers with interest. Queen Elizabeth, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Archbishop Parker, Sir Philip Sidney and his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, Bishop Hall, George Wither, George Herbert, George Sandys, John Milton, General Fairfax, Richard Baxter, Joseph Addison, Cotton Mather, Christopher Smart, and great numbers in more recent times.

Of the multitude of these forgotten psalms the majority, even of the best, are but literary curiosities, myriads are not even curious, they are simply dull. A few little-known psalms of these early days I quote 71 either for their own or their authors’ sake. The following by Queen Elizabeth is characteristically vigorous in expression. I have modernized the spelling—

PSALM XIV

In the sandy desert of the metrical Psalters there are, however, some wells of living water. Such are the psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and his sister, and those of George Sandys. The metre, for the most part, as well as the language, makes them unsuitable for use in the congregation; but I think many readers will be glad to see the following verses. The verses from Ps. xix. are by Sir Philip, and the version of Ps. xciii. is by the Countess of Pembroke.

PSALM XIX

PSALM XCIII

George Sandys (1577-1643) was a true poet. Dryden called him ‘the best versifier of the former age,’ and Richard Baxter said, ‘I must confess after all that, next the Scripture poems, there are none so savoury to me as Mr. George Herbert’s and Mr. George Sandys’s.’ Charles the First comforted himself with Sandys’s psalms during his imprisonment at Carisbrooke.

He is even yet little known to our hymn-books, though a few of his psalms make, with a little adaptation, good hymns. The Methodist Hymn-book contains two—

These quotations must suffice for the psalms of the period between the Old and New Versions. Those who are interested in this not very attractive literature will find specimens of the principal British and American writers in Holland’s Psalmists of Britain (1843), and Glass’s Story of the Psalters (1888). When one looks at the two authorized metrical versions, and the many attempts made to supplant them, it is difficult to understand how the Church could so long have clung to the metrical Psalter, and could be so slow to use a hymn-book. Keble says of his own version—‘It was undertaken, in the first instance, with a serious apprehension, which has since grown into a full conviction, that the thing attempted is, strictly speaking, impossible.’ Yet scores have made the same fruitless effort since Keble failed.

Apart from the psalm-versions there are few hymns of the sixteenth century. George Gascoigne (d. 1577), a lawyer, poet, and courtier of Elizabeth’s day, and a descendant of Sir William Gascoigne, the judge who committed Henry V, when Prince of Wales, to prison, wrote a poem entitled ‘Good Morrow,’ from which 75 a good hymn has been made, which is in many of the better school hymnals.

Thomas Campion (1567-1619), a doctor of medicine, wrote some lovely hymns, ‘admirable for their union of melodious simplicity, beauty, and strong common sense.’[66] Josiah Conder included one in the section for Private Worship of the Congregational hymn-book, 1836.[67]

Campion is not mentioned in the Dictionary of Hymnology, but he deserves a place there.

One other hymn must be mentioned, ‘Jerusalem, my happy home.’ It is found in a MS. preserved in the British Museum, with the title ‘A Song Mad, by F. B. P. To the tune of Diana.’ Who the author was no one knows, but internal evidence indicates that he was a devout Roman Catholic. In the Arundel Hymns it is attributed to Father Laurence Anderton, alias John Beverley, S.J. The MS. has twenty-six verses, of which nineteen were printed in London in 1601. The hymn is probably based upon a passage in the Meditations of St. Augustine. The popular modern hymn, ‘Jerusalem, my happy home,’ which is now believed to have been written by Joseph Bromehead, Vicar of Eckington, near Sheffield, was no doubt suggested by this hymn, or one of the various versions of it, but has little verbal agreement except in the first and last verses. I give a portion of the original poem.

III
Early Modern Hymns

II.—Seventeenth Century

When the seventeenth century opened there were, as we have seen, hardly any English hymns except such as may be taken from metrical versions of the Psalms. With the new century a new era begins; and though we are not yet in what George Macdonald calls ‘the zone of hymn-writing,’ we are soon able to gather the materials of a hymn-book of the modern type. It would be quite possible to compile a very good hymnal from writers who preceded Dr. Watts, if a wise editorial discretion were exercised in the omission of unsuitable verses and the revision of phrases offensive to modern taste.

Amongst the hymn-writers of the seventeenth century one name is pre-eminent—Thomas Ken (1637-1711), Bishop of Bath and Wells. His fame rests upon his three great hymns—Morning, Evening, and Midnight—for little else in his voluminous poetical works is suited to the worship of the sanctuary. In all the 81 Christian choir there is no worthier name than that of Thomas Ken, whom neither fear nor flattery could move from the strait path of duty. He lived in the spirit of his own lines—

He spent his earlier years of ministry in quiet places, amongst those who honoured and loved him, but later had some curious experiences as Lord Dartmouth’s chaplain at Tangier, where he testified with his accustomed resolution against evil-doers and evil-speakers, coming, as Samuel Pepys records, into collision with the afterwards infamous Colonel Kirke, because he preached against ‘the excessive liberty of swearing which we observe here.’

Amongst all the heroes of his day there was none with a more serene courage than ‘little Ken,’ who would not receive Charles’s mistress at his house—‘No, not for his kingdom’—and thus won his bishopric in as unlikely and as creditable a fashion as ever bishopric was earned. After that one is not surprised to find him, as one of the seven bishops, saying to James II, ‘We have two duties to perform, our duty to God and our duty to your Majesty. We honour you, but we fear God.’ Nor need we wonder that, notwithstanding his resistance of James’s illegal demands, he could not bring himself to take the oath of allegiance to William 82 of Orange. Ken always had that infirmity of noble souls, ‘a weakness for the weaker side.’ As Dean Plumptre well says, ‘If he was in doubt it was safer, in quite another sense than that in which others counted safety, to take the losing and not the winning side.’

Ken was deprived in 1791, and the bishopric was offered to Beveridge, then Archdeacon of Colchestor. Had Ken been translated to heaven, or to Canterbury, Beveridge would have accepted the preferment with delight, for he had no nonjuring scruples and wished to be a bishop. But he too was a saint, and not unworthy to be Ken’s successor; so he would not take the place from which Ken had been thrust out, and waited thirteen years for ‘preferment,’ becoming Bishop of St. Asaph in 1704.

When Ken left the episcopal palace, Lord Weymouth honoured his own magnificent mansion of Longleat by welcoming Ken to its hospitable shelter, as Sir Thomas Abney, in widely different circumstances, made the great Nonconformist hymn-writer his guest twenty-five years later. Longleat was Ken’s home for twenty years. There he died, after long and acute suffering, soothed by the writing of hymns, and by the thought that they would be sung on earth while he praised God in heaven.

Ken’s hymns, as we now sing them, are selected from the thirty-seven verses of the originals, which were intended in the first place for the scholars of his old school—Winchester. As in most other cases, the popular selection is amply justified. The hymns abbreviated are much more serviceable alike for public and private devotion than if they were transferred in extenso to our hymn-books. Like Sternhold, Herbert, and Watts, Ken was a musician, and loved to accompany himself on the lute or organ.

The morning hymn, which consists of fourteen verses, falls into three sections, addressed (1) to the soul, (2) to the angels, (3) to God. In the evening hymn two verses are addressed to the guardian angel. The following verses from the morning hymn are not usually found in modern hymnals—

The special charm of Ken’s hymns lies in their simplicity and suitability. In the plainest words he asks for just what every Christian feels that he needs, morning and evening, his whole life through. They are the first great English hymns, and are worthy to lead the devotions of the Church.

Ken’s influence upon later poets has been great. Charles Wesley, Keble, and Christopher Wordsworth were, to some extent, inspired by his hymns on the Festivals, whilst Newman desired to add Ken to the Calendar of English saints, and actually prepared a service for use on ‘Ken’s day.’[72]

Archbishop Alexander, himself a poet, preaching in Wells Cathedral at the festival commemorative of the bicentenary of Ken’s consecration, said—

Montgomery wrote of Ken’s three hymns that, ‘had he endowed three hospitals, he might have been less a benefactor to posterity.’[74] The importance of his hymns as setting a standard of simplicity and directness can hardly be overstated. Yet it is curious how slowly they won general acceptance. They were not printed in the supplement to the Book of Common Prayer till 1801, and though John Wesley included them in his Psalms and Hymns, 1738, he omitted them from 86 his later publications and from his hymn-book. Dean Plumptre, however, says that both the hymns had appeared in some of the earlier collections of hymns for congregational use by English clergymen between 1750 and 1760. The three hymns are given in the Moravian Hymn-book of 1754.

After Ken the seventeenth century had no sweeter hymn-writer than John Austin (1613-69), who left St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1640, on becoming a Romanist. He wrote two volumes of Devotions in the Ancient Way of Offices. These were ‘a family piece among Catholics,’ and were much used by devout Protestants. The nonjuring Bishop Hickes edited them for Protestant use, and John Wesley included seven of the hymns in his Charlestown hymn-book—a larger number than by any other author except Watts. Austin did not complete his work. ‘Death, for which he had fitted his soul by a well-spent life, interrupted his labours.... When he perceived death immediately seizing its prey, he gave up the ghost with these remarkable words: ... “Now, heartily for heaven, through Jesus Christ!”’[75]

Austin’s hymns are used chiefly outside his own communion,[76] though Romanism has no English hymn-writer to compare with him till the time of Faber. In the Arundel Hymns his verses are attributed to W. Austin (a Protestant contemporary). The following 87 hymn illustrates the similarity of Austin and Faber’s writing. Few readers would guess that one of these four verses was written two centuries after the others.

FROM DEATH TO LIFE

In this hymn the first verse is from Faber’s series on ‘The Life of our Lord,’[78] and the rest from Austin’s 88 ‘Vespers for our Blessed Saviour.’ Wesley’s selection from the same hymn began with the verse—

Austin’s best hymns, however, are, I think, one for Monday morning, which Wesley entitled ‘Universal Praise,’ and the evening hymn, of which some verses will be familiar to most readers.

MORNING

EVENING

William Austin (d. 1633) had not the devotional fervour of his younger namesake (he does not seem to have been a relative, though both were of Lincoln’s 91 Inn), but he is among the noteworthy hymn-writers of a time when hymns were few. As his poems are little known, I give a charming little hymn and two verses of a bright Christmas carol—

George Wither (1588-1667), lawyer, soldier, poet, Cavalier, Roundhead, Puritan, Anglican, was a writer of many hymns. He finds a secluded corner in a few modern hymnals; but had there been what we call hymn-books in his day, he would have been a considerable contributor. His hymns are more of the Evangelical than the Puritan type. His songs of the Church form a ‘Christian Year,’ and some of the hymns for Saints’ days are much more original and poetic than those commonly in use. Here are three verses for—

ST. MATTHEW’S DAY

There is nothing in these simple lines of the exquisite beauty of Keble’s poem on St. Matthew’s Day, one verse of which would reconcile the least ecclesiastical of us to the observance of saints’ days—

But as a hymn to be sung in church or to be read in the hour of private devotion, Wither’s lines compare very favourably with those of Bishop Ken,[83] Bishop Wordsworth, and even Dr. Monsell.

Wither’s hymn for Whit Sunday is a very appropriate ‘devotion’ for that festival. Here are four of its six verses—

Other poems in this series are well worth preserving, though perhaps few would find favour with the average congregation. For the most part they run smoothly; the language is that of plain men, and the spirit of the festival finds happy expression in praise or prayer. His Communion hymn is intended to be sung during the 95 administration. It is interesting to find that those who are now adopting this custom are but reviving an ancient order. ‘We have a custom among us,’ he says, ‘that during the time of administering the blessed Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper there is some psalm or hymn sung, the better to keep the thoughts of the communicants from wandering after vain objects.’

But the piece which is most easily adapted to modern use is the poem, a paraphrase of Ps. cxlvii., which he prefixed to his Preparation for the Psalter. I give the poem as Wither published it. Mr. Horder and Miss Wood[84] have shown how well it may be adapted to public worship.

Wither has been slow in winning his place among our sacred poets. He was a man of war from his youth, had a perilous gift of sarcasm, and lacked the caution and good sense which were so much needed in his troublous times. He was boycotted by the booksellers, satirized by Butler in Hudibras, by Pope, Dryden, and Swift, and seemed likely to be forgotten, save as the butt of a former age. But Southey, Charles Lamb, Montgomery, Edward Farr, George Macdonald, F. T. Palgrave, Dr. Grosart, among others have recognized his merits. He was a devout man and courageous, for he not only fought on both sides in the Civil War, but with rarer bravery chose to remain in 97 London during the Great Plague, and to render what little help he could to the sufferers in that awful visitation. The king is said to have spared his life at Sir John Denham’s good-naturedly contemptuous entreaty that he (Denham) might not be ‘the worst poet in England’; his contemporaries thought the prison cell a fit cage for the poet, but somehow he joined the lark, and sang at heaven’s gate.[85]

Samuel Crossman, who died in 1683, within a few weeks of his appointment to the Deanery of Bristol, makes up in quality what he lacks in quantity. Of his nine hymns—published in 1660—two or three have won an assured place in the hymn-book of the Church.

They are in a minor key, but they speak to the heart of the Christian pilgrim who seeks another country—his true fatherland. His other hymns are seldom met with. I quote one, omitting a verse.

THE GIFT

Richard Baxter (1615-91) is to Nonconformity what Ken is to Anglicanism. He might have been a bishop if he would, but preferred the rough ways of persecution for conscience’ sake to the pleasant paths 99 of ecclesiastical preferment. He wrote many hymns, and attempted, with as little success as others, a metrical version of the psalms. He is, and will be, known to our hymn-books by the exquisite verses taken from his long poem on the ‘Covenant and Confidence of Faith.’ These verses, beginning

are in almost every hymn-book. Another of his hymns, in a brighter tone, is in many collections—

The two following are not so well known. They are good in themselves, and very characteristic of their author.

The three following verses are in Miss Wood’s Hymns for School Worship—a very striking selection of hymns suitable for intelligent young people.

If Austin is the Faber of the seventeenth century, John Mason (d. 1694), whom Baxter called ‘the glory of the Church of England,’ is its Newton. There is in Mason the same childlike simplicity which is the charm of the Olney hymns, with an added quaintness which belongs to the earlier century. He is one of the minor poets of the sanctuary, but in his own time he was amongst the best of the evangelical hymn-writers. Mason was born a Dissenter, but entered the Anglican Church. His friend, Thomas Shepherd (1665-1739), who also wrote some noteworthy hymns, seceded from the Establishment, and was for a few years pastor of the church at Nottingham, where Doddridge subsequently ministered. Of the hymns of these good men, George Macdonald and Mr. Horder 101 express a high opinion, comparing them favourably with those of Dr. Watts. Mr. Horder justly says that Mason would have reached a higher standard had his lot been cast in a ‘hymn-singing age.’

Some of Mason’s verses are too racy for congregational use, e.g. this from ‘A Song of Praise for Health’—

A GENERAL SONG OF PRAISE TO ALMIGHTY GOD

Shepherd’s poems were called ‘Penitential Cries,’ and were published with Mason’s Songs of Praise in 1693. His best-known hymn begins

Most of his hymns have vigour and freshness, but there is generally something which hinders them from becoming hymns of the first class. The following verses are taken from a hymn entitled, ‘Lamenting the Loss of First Love,’ and were probably known to Cowper—

Other hymn-writers of this period are almost or entirely unknown to modern hymnals. One or two names may, however, be mentioned. Matthew Henry wrote a number of ‘family hymns’; Benjamin Keach (1640-1704) not only wrote hymns by the hundred, but published a defence of congregational singing under the title—The Breach repaired in God’s Worship.

William Barton may be taken as a fair example of the poorer hymn-writers of the time. There is little to choose between the best and the worst of his Six Centuries of Hymns. The work was dedicated to Sir Matthew Hale, who had spoken a good word for the 105 hymns to the Mayor and Aldermen of Leicester, in which town Barton had been minister of St. Martin’s Church. Led by Dr. Julian’s statement that these hymns ‘deserve more attention from compilers than they have hitherto received,’ I have searched them diligently, but in vain. I am most impressed that such dull productions could ever have been popular.

There is, indeed, something very pathetic in the author’s evident satisfaction with his work and in his son’s pride in his father’s ‘pious and laborious undertaking,’ which he was led to attempt, ‘finding that the ancient usage of our speech in Sternhold and Hopkins’s translation was become obsoletely contemptuous to many people of this age.’ This filial editor believed that the hymn-book ‘would sufficiently manifest its excellency in the perusal,’ a belief which the extensive circulation of its many editions may be taken to justify. Barton’s first book, his version of the Psalms, was published in 1644, and the last edition was printed in 1768. During a great part of that period it was probably the standard psalter of the Nonconformist congregations. His hymns are usually brief, and he was careful to use familiar metres, having a special weakness for ‘delicate and expeditious tunes.’ His psalms and hymns owed their long life to the poverty of rivals, but one cannot be surprised that Enoch Watts, in urging his brother ‘to oblige the world by showing it your hymns in print,’ should say that ‘honest Barton chimes us asleep.’

Although the seventeenth century is poor in hymn-writers, we find some grand and beautiful hymns written by poets and men of letters. There is, for instance, Sir Thomas Browne’s evening hymn, of which he says, ‘This is the dormitive I take to bedward: I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection.’[87]

Another great name is that of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s, and friend of James I, who wrote one of the truest and most affecting hymns of that or any other century. If its form prevents its being sung in 108 modern congregations, it is at least one of those spiritual songs which we should preserve for the hour of private devotion.

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER

Ben Jonson’s lovely Christmas hymn is to be found in a few hymn-books to-day. Is it too much to hope that it may yet become a familiar carol of the Nativity?

Robert Herrick’s (1591-1674) quaint ‘Litany to the Holy Spirit’ yields a few verses to some of our best modern collections, but his irrepressible humour makes several verses impossible, and his references to ‘furies in a shole,’ to ‘flames and hellish cares,’ shut out others. In his Noble Numbers are many fine verses and epigrams, but he is not a hymn-writer.

George Herbert (1593-1632) did not write hymns to be sung in church, though his ‘Antiphon’ and ‘The Elixir’ are, for love of their author, found in many modern hymn-books, and ‘Praise’ is also beautifully possible as a hymn. Yet his loveliest poems cannot be adapted to congregational use. He is the greatest of the poets of the sanctuary, but he is not a chorister. John Wesley and George Rawson tried to make Herbert’s poems into hymns, but with no great success—though in one or two instances Wesley came near it.[88] In any collection of religious poetry for use in the hour of private devotion, Herbert would rank among the chief contributors, and it is well that he should be represented in our hymn-books, if only that he may be remembered and honoured by our children.[89] He is the chief singer of a school of poets in which Henry Vaughan and Christina Rossetti are distinguished and worthy disciples.

I give three of Herbert’s poems. The first because it is an ideal example of his quaint but exquisite pathos, and of his gracious, humble, affectionate devotion to his Lord; the others because they are the most hymn-like of his poems.

LOVE

PRAISE

THE CALL

After Herbert comes Henry Vaughan (1621-95), ‘the Silurist,’ or South Wales man, who says that his 113 master was ‘the blessed man, Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least.’ Vaughan had his devoted admirers, but his verse never attained anything approaching to the popularity of Herbert’s. It was long the fashion to ignore or disparage him, and it was not till Henry Francis Lyte republished his Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, with a brief memoir, that he came to his rightful place amongst the minor, but not to be forgotten, poets of the seventeenth century. He was a mystic, and had visions Blake might have envied.

Vaughan’s songs have the marks of the true Christian poet—intense devotion to Christ, humility, ecstasy. His best-known hymns are—‘My soul, there is a country,’ and ‘Up to those bright and gladsome hills’ (Ps. cxxi.). I give one less often quoted. Vaughan’s title is

BEGGING

Herbert and Vaughan were in the seventeenth century what Heber and Keble were in the nineteenth.

Henry More (1614-87) ‘the Platonist,’ whom Professor Palgrave calls ‘the most interesting figure among our poetical mystics,’ owes his place in our hymn-books to John Wesley, who made from one of More’s ‘Divine Hymns’ two numbers in his Collection

John Norris (1657-1711), who succeeded—sixty years intervening—George Herbert as Parson of Bemerton, was a Platonist of the school of More, for whom he had unbounded admiration, saying

John Wesley and Dr. Martineau tried to make Norris’s poems available for congregational use, and 116 his name is linked with those of Ken and Mason in the preface to the Moravian book of 1754, but he can never take a place among hymn-writers.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-67) wrote a number of hymns, most of them being published in his Golden Grove, but they are unsuited for congregational use. His ‘Advent Hymn’ has, however, been adapted with admirable skill, and has a place in many hymnals. It is perhaps as good a specimen of this kind of ‘translation’ as can be found. I give Taylor’s original first, and afterwards the version of the Sarum Hymnal, which is said to have been made by Earl Nelson. There is another good version in the Leeds Hymn-book, which has been adopted by Mr. Horder and others.

HYMN FOR ADVENT; OR CHRIST’S COMING TO JERUSALEM IN TRIUMPH

Near the end of the seventeenth century the New Version of the Psalms appeared, under royal and episcopal sanction, and began at once to supplant the Old Version. The authors were both Irishmen. Nahum Tate (1652-1715) was a very minor poet, who 118 became Laureate in 1690. Nicholas Brady (1659-1726) was, like Charles Wesley, a scholar of Westminster and student of Christ Church. He entered the Church in Ireland, but in later life held various livings in England, being at one time Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon. The New Version was published in 1696.

Many attempts had been made to depose the Old Version from its supreme position as the hymn-book of the English Church, and some by men of much greater gifts than Sternhold, Hopkins, or any of their fellows. But the innate conservatism of Englishmen, and especially of English Churchmen, gave the Old Version a long life. Moreover, no version was sufficiently superior to it to win wide approval until Tate and Brady produced the New Version and secured royal ‘permission’ for its use in churches. Without this ‘permission’ it would probably never have dislodged the Old Version, though it owes something to intrinsic merit. Compared with the great hymn-writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Tate and Brady are, as a rule, dull, pretentious, diffuse; but as compared with their predecessors and the vast majority of their successors, their version deserves more consideration than it usually receives. Even in our own day there are more of their psalms in our best hymn-books than there are of Keble’s. It is unfortunate that neither of the authors was a man for whom it is possible to feel any great regard, or in whom one can take an interest.

There is about such songs a gracious simplicity worthy of John Newton, who might well have written—

Dr. Watts and the Wesleys did not scruple to borrow from the New Version, and Watts, with characteristic modesty, is content to yield them ‘the preference of’ their ‘poesy’ in some of their compositions.

Whatever its intrinsic merit or demerit, the New Version rendered an important service in breaking the 120 monopoly enjoyed by the Old Version, and thus preparing the way for a larger view of Christian psalmody.

Tate, being Laureate, naturally considered the state occasions on which psalms were to be used. The sentiments, at least, of his version of Ps. cl., which is appointed for the day of the Sovereign’s accession, are excellent.

With the publication of the New Version a new era began. It was to be the last ‘authorized’ metrical version. Hymns of the modern type were beginning to be known, and soon there would be hymns in abundance.[92]

IV
Eighteenth-century Hymns

I.—The School of Watts

The greater sacred poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries spoke, for the most part, to themselves and to God; their hymns are of the study and the oratory. But with the eighteenth century a new era began. Its chief hymn-writers were ministers of religion, accustomed to offer prayer and praise, not only for themselves, but for the people. Their hymns were for the congregation and the religious society. They were written with the distinct intention of providing for common need; and in the Nonconformist Churches hymns supplied the place of the rejected liturgy, enabling the congregation to unite in praise and prayer.

The earlier centuries give us many rich devotional poems, few of which are entirely suited to the public worship of our time. But we now reach, what George Macdonald calls, ‘the zone of hymn-writing,’ and are embarrassed by the plenteousness of the stores available for use in the service of the sanctuary. Moreover, by this time modern English has become 123 fairly established, and there are few archaic expressions to distract the unlearned.

Whatever may be said of the metrical Psalters, no one can doubt that we are in an ampler, purer air when we listen to Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Brighter days were dawning for the religious life of England, and especially for the Nonconformists. Yet as a babe Isaac Watts was nursed by his mother as she sat on a stone near the door of the prison where his father was confined for conscience’ sake. But by the time he was a man the sky had cleared, and there is little in his hymns to recall the times of trouble except the version of Ps. lxxv., ‘applied to the glorious revolution by King William or the happy accession of King George to the throne,’ in which these verses occur—

His own life was happy, and its story is singularly attractive. His feeble health saved him from many a rough conflict, and called forth the affectionate hospitality of Sir Thomas and Lady Abney. It was seemly that the non-juring Bishop Ken should find a home with a peer of the realm at Longleat, but 124 Dr. Watts found an even more congenial refuge at Theobalds and at Abney Park. There are few pleasanter stories than that of Lady Huntingdon’s calling upon Dr. Watts, when he said to her, ‘Madam, you have come to see me on a very remarkable day. This day thirty years I came hither to the house of my good friend, Sir Thomas, intending to spend but a week under his hospitable roof, and I have extended my visit to thirty long years.’ ‘Sir,’ said his gracious hostess, Lady Abney, ‘what you term a long thirty years’ visit, I consider as the shortest visit my family ever received.’

If the world had dealt a little less kindly with the poet, it might have been all the better for his poetry, which lacks the vigour, the martial music, the glorious enthusiasm of Luther and of Charles Wesley. He was, it is true, not without at least one coarse and bitter adversary—Thomas Bradbury, a Nonconformist minister of some fame and more notoriety; who seems, without any special reason, to have regarded Dr. Watts as a suitable mark for his vehement and vulgar abuse. He sneeringly forbade ‘Watts’s whims’[93] to be sung in his congregation, and charged the saintly poet with ‘burlesquing’ the poetry of the most High God. He led, if he did not initiate, the charge of Arianism. Had Watts been as ready for a theological fray as 125 John Wesley, or even John Fletcher, Bradbury would have had judgement without mercy. But Watts’s letters in reply to these reiterated accusations are models of Christian controversy, or rather of Christian remonstrance. Their last encounter was at a meeting where Watts’s feebleness made it difficult for him to make himself heard. ‘Shall I speak for you, Brother Watts?’ asked Bradbury. ‘Well, you have often spoken against me,’ was the gently sarcastic reply.

Bradbury’s malice can have done Watts little real harm, except that of establishing the suspicion in a good many minds that he leaned to Unitarianism—a charge which has been repeated to our own day. The mild and colourless character of many of Watts’s hymns made them favourites with Unitarian editors of a former time; but the author of

is not to be claimed as Arian, Unitarian, or anything other than an evangelical believer.

Our concern is with Watts as a hymn-writer rather than as a theologian. He was the first man, able to write good hymns, who set himself seriously to secure freedom in worship. In the meeting-house at Southampton he wearied of the dull and halting verse of Barton, and was not slow to accept his father’s challenge to write something better. If tradition may be relied 126 on, his first hymn, written during the week and sung on the following Sunday, was that which he placed first in his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, with the title:

A NEW SONG TO THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN

This is far from being one of Watts’s best hymns, but it is vastly better than Barton’s best.

It is characteristic of Dr. Watts that in the preface to his Psalms he speaks courteously of his predecessors in the attempt to adapt the Psalms to modern use. He praises Sir John Denham, Luke Milbourne, Tate and Brady, and, most of all, Dr. Patrick, whose ‘chief excellency,’ he thought, was that ‘he departed further from the inspired words of Scripture’ than others had done. Watts’s hymns were published ten or twelve years before the Psalms, and in his preface he delivers a vigorous apology for what he felt to be a bold venture, but pays no compliment to predecessors. He could not say, like John Wesley, that but a small part were of his own composing, yet even his extreme modesty does not prevent his showing a quiet and most just confidence in his work as compared with what had been hitherto available. His picture of the public worship of his day may comfort us in regard to the attractiveness of modern services. He says—

He goes on to protest that it was ‘far from’ his ‘thoughts to lay aside the book of Psalms in public worship,’ which ‘is the most noble, most devotional and divine collection of poesy.’ At the same time he says—

Such a defence of Christian hymns is superfluous to-day, but it took many long years to convince the Churches that ‘When I survey the wondrous Cross’ was more suitable for use in Christian worship than Ps. cix.

When Watts’s victory was achieved it was only too complete. In the congregations of his own denomination it was counted almost an impiety to sing anything but his psalms and hymns. This extravagant and narrow loyalty to Watts naturally placed the Dissenting congregations at a great disadvantage—far greater than that which the Methodist societies suffered through the too exclusive use of Wesley’s hymns. The idea that one man can write the hymns of any Church or congregation is long since exploded; indeed, we go further, claiming that a good hymn belongs to Christendom. We do not ask what a man’s ‘denomination’ is before giving him a place in our hymn-books. Only the Romanists, and some of them faint-heartedly, now demand that the writer and the singer must belong to the same communion.

Watts has been at once unduly lauded and unduly depreciated. Keble spoke of him as ‘no poet,’ and this may be true of his ‘poems,’ but his greater hymns could only have been written by a poet of no mean order. Montgomery puts the case more justly when he calls Watts ‘one of the least of the poets of his country,’ but ‘the greatest name among hymn-writers.’[94] Professor Palgrave does Watts full justice—

The sacrifice of art to usefulness was much more deliberate in the case of Watts than of Wesley. Charles Wesley often wrote in haste, with the rush and glow of a present inspiration, with thoughts that must find expression, and which it was easier to utter in poetry than in prose. Watts designed his hymns for the service of the house of God, and had ever before him the dull man in the pew and the tiresome man in the singing gallery. ‘I have seldom,’ he explained, ‘permitted a stop in the middle of a line, and seldom left the end of a line without one; to comport with the unhappy mixture of reading and singing, which cannot presently be reformed.’ ‘The metaphors,’ he continues, ‘are generally sunk to the level of vulgar capacities. If the verse appears so gentle and flowing as to incur the censure of feebleness, I may honestly affirm that sometimes it cost me labour to make it so. Some of the beauties of poesy are neglected, and some wilfully defaced.’ Finally, he describes his work as ‘an attempt for the reformation of psalmody amongst the Churches.’ 131 In estimating Watts’s contribution to the hymn-book of the modern Church, this service must be gratefully recognized. It may seem to us that he stooped too much ‘to the level of vulgar capacities,’ but in this he had to consider what men were able to bear; and we must remember that even those of his hymns which were to perish in the using had their share in preparing the way for the ‘nobler, sweeter song’ in which the Church praises her Lord to-day.

When the Independent Churches began to seek a wider range of choice than Watts could afford, they proceeded by way of supplement, as the Methodists did until 1903. Dr. Thomas Gibbons, Watts’s affectionate but ponderous biographer,[96] issued one in 1769, and others followed in fairly rapid succession, amongst their editors being George Burder, Dr. Bengo Collyer, and finally Josiah Conder, whose book was prepared in 1833 under the direction of the Congregational Union.[97] When at length the Congregationalists began to compile completely new books, Watts naturally still exercised a preponderating influence—as in the excellent Leeds Hymn-book of 1853. But each successive 132 official or unofficial publication emanating from the Congregational Churches has been marked by a great reduction in the number of Watts’s hymns, so that the present Congregational Church Hymnal contains fewer hymns by Watts than were included by Dr. Martineau in his Hymns for the Church and Home. If we turn to the hymn-books of other Churches, the reduction in the number of hymns by Dr. Watts is even more striking; e.g. the Church Hymnary (Presbyterian) gives only nine, and Church Hymns only fourteen.

At present it would seem as though Dr. Watts were more honoured in the Methodist Churches than among his own people, the Methodist and the Primitive Methodist each giving a larger number of his pieces than either the Congregational or Baptist hymn-books. Probably the number of Watts’s hymns in common use will be further reduced. Some inferior compositions still hold their place. They are survivals of a time when the Church’s hymn-book was vastly poorer than it is to-day. But when the lowest point is touched, there must ever remain a number of imperishable hymns which will be sung in the Church of Christ as long as it is militant here on earth.

Watts’s hymns were greatly helped in public favour by the publication of his Psalms in 1719. The Dissenting Churches, for the most part, soon agreed with his own judgement that the two books were ‘such a sufficient provision for psalmody as to answer most 133 occasions of the Christian’s life.’ Long use had made psalm-singing as a distinct part of the service essential, and it was many years before the Dissenting Churches cared for a hymn-book which did not make the distinction between psalms and hymns. The place of honour, or at least of precedence, was given to the Psalms, and as far as possible every psalm was paraphrased.

Watts’s preface to The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament and Applied to the Christian State and Worship is a vigorous manifesto, and it may well have seemed to some men as audacious as many readers find Wesley’s famous preface. His chief contention was that Jewish psalms must be translated, paraphrased, or, to use his own word, ‘imitated’ in Christian language before they are fit for use in Christian worship. He specially emphasizes the small number of psalms sung at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and, gaining courage as he writes, adds, ‘Though, to speak my own sense freely, I do not think David ever wrote a psalm of sufficient glory and sweetness to represent the blessings of this holy institution.’

Acting upon this conviction Watts boldly departed from the ideal of most of those who have paraphrased the Psalter.

Not only does common sense confirm Watts’s general principle; his own success, partial though it was, justified the new departure, and from his day to ours the most useful and the most poetic versions of Psalms are those which ‘teach the author to speak like a Christian.’ Yet, if a psalm could be dealt with from the Old Testament standpoint without inappropriateness to Christian worship, Watts preferred to retain the original idea. Thus in all his versions of the 23rd Psalm he makes no reference to the Good Shepherd of the New Testament. His best version—and it is very good—is as suitable for the synagogue as the meeting-house.

The Methodist Hymn-book omits the last verse, which is given in most other collections—

It is a beautiful paraphrase of ‘Thy house for ever.’ He felt, however, that his experiment was so novel and so likely to provoke adverse criticism, that he continually explained or defended his versions in notes appended to the psalms, which form a sort of running commentary.

Watts’s Psalms mark the passage from psalm-singing to hymn-singing. Slowly but surely the distinction disappears from modern hymn-books, and psalm-versions take their place amongst ‘hymns.’ This was not Watts’s design, but it is a part of the success of his enterprise. If to-day we had to make choice of any one metrical version of the Psalter for use in Christian worship, it would be impossible to find anything better than Watts’s. Indeed, if feeble ‘aliters’ (to use Barton’s phrase) and poor verses were omitted, the result would show how near he came to achieving success.

It is difficult to overstate the service rendered to the worship of the Christian Church by Dr. Watts. As Lord Selborne says, ‘He was the first to understand the nature of the want,’ and he ‘led the way in providing for it.’ Yet it is easy to quote poor verses, to find lines that are intolerably flat. His rhymes are often either discordant in the extreme or lacking altogether. Sometimes he is too colloquial, as in

Perhaps no hymn-writer needs editing so much as Watts, and certainly none has been edited more skilfully. Not a few of his hymns owe their place in our hymnals to the judicious way in which they have been ‘improved.’ We cannot dispute Dr. Johnson’s criticism

Hymn-writers are in a special degree affected by their surroundings. There is an open-air life in many of the psalms attributed to David which is lacking in those—e.g. the cxix.—which belong to a more formal age. Watts was a student, a scholar, a recluse, an invalid, who yet came into frequent contact with the Church life of the Independents. He could not be coarse or fantastic, and he both consciously and conscientiously condescended to men of low estate. The sacrifice of his own taste to that of the unlearned reader was part of his offering to the Lord, and it did not cost him nothing. The pity of it is that he misjudged and under-estimated the intelligence of those who would use his hymns. It is but just to bear his self-imposed limitation in mind, yet 137 it must also be allowed that, like many a far greater poet—Wordsworth, for example—he did not know which were the superior and which the inferior pieces. He believed his Lyrics to be his best poetical work, and possibly this may have been the judgement of his friendly contemporaries; but the severer taste of later times has forgotten the Lyrics while treasuring the hymns.

Watts seldom writes without a consciousness of the congregation for whose use he intended his hymns. The story—probably true—that he undertook to write one every week for the Independent Chapel at Southampton explains the character of very many of them, and accounts at once for their strength and weakness. On the one hand, he avoided the tiresome verbosity of Tate and Brady and the halting rhythm of Barton and, on the other, he abstained from the ‘conceits’ which are the charm of Herbert and Vaughan, but which make many a lovely poem impossible as a hymn. The ease and simplicity of his best hymns, which no hymn-writer surpasses and few have attained, endeared them to ‘men of heart sincere,’ alike among the unlearned and ignorant and among men of culture. He has that sweet, plaintive undertone of perplexity concerning the mysteries of life and death which touches all thoughtful souls, and is so true to the inner life of one whose many infirmities made him die daily. He had in large measure the rich indwelling of the word of God without which a man may write hymns, 138 but can never be one of God’s great singers. His hymns are full of scriptural phrases, though less so than those of Charles Wesley, and he has many happy and instructive applications of passages both from the Old and New Testament. Take, for instance, one of his sacramental hymns, in which he uses the parable of the Great Supper as a type of the Supper of the Lord—an application singularly appropriate, though not often made.[100]

The ‘sacramentarian’ element is naturally absent from Watts’s twenty-five hymns ‘prepared for the holy ordinance of the Lord’s Supper,’ which are, with a few exceptions, much less solemn and impressive than those of Wesley. Two have, however, a permanent place among our Communion hymns. The seventh of the series, ‘Crucifixion to the World by the Cross of Christ’—

is so great a hymn, and consecrated by so many hallowed associations, that comment is superfluous and criticism impertinent. The third, ‘The New Testament in the Blood of Christ, or The New Covenant Sealed,’ is absent from the chief hymnals to-day with the exception of the Methodist, to which it was added in 1830. It begins—

Watts wrote no great festival hymns to be compared with ‘Hark! how all the welkin rings,’ or ‘Hail the day that sees Him rise.’ His best work is found in his hymns and spiritual songs, some of which are among the most spiritual and most scriptural ever written. The tone of triumph is comparatively rare, though now and again, as in ‘Join all the glorious names,’ he rises as high as ever Charles Wesley rose in his hymns for 140 ‘Believers rejoicing.’ Such are, ‘My God, the spring of all my joys’; ‘Come, we that love the Lord’; ‘Jesus shall reign where’er the sun’; ‘Come, let us join our cheerful songs.’

To Dr. Watts, with his delicate health and protracted sicknesses, songs in a minor key were peculiarly suitable, and some of his most precious hymns are those which speak of the life to come. He seldom writes of death as Wesley does, and such a line as

would have been impossible to him; but no Christian poet has touched the sorrows of our hearts more tenderly or comforted the bereaved more wisely than he has done in such a hymn as

has voiced the thoughts of myriads of anxious souls, to whom only ‘a prospect of heaven’ could make ‘death easy.’ Watts seldom, if ever, showed the ecstasy of Charles Wesley. He never sang

There are few more tender lines than the verse in his hymn for ‘The Death and Burial of a Saint’—

But Dr. Watts was not a man whose whole thought was centred on the world to come. After the fashion not only of his own time, but of the religious men of most times, he speaks slightingly of earth and its charms; but when he allows himself to dwell on its beauty and glory he writes, I think, with a clearer and more poetic vision than Wesley, as in his ‘Song to Creating Wisdom’—

The hymns of Dr. Watts are so well known that it is difficult to select any that would worthily represent him without repeating what is already familiar to every reader. ‘The Cradle Song’ is one of the most delightful lullabies ever written, and shows Watts in a charming and unexpected light.

From Isaac Watts we turn naturally to Philip Doddridge (1702-51), another name which is amongst the glories of the Nonconforming Churches, and of him also it may be said that every Christian Church would rejoice to have adopted him. He was the twentieth child of his parents, was all his life in delicate health, and died of consumption at Lisbon, where he was buried in the English cemetery. His life was happy and devout from the earliest days, when he learnt from his mother’s lips the Bible stories which were illustrated by the Dutch tiles in the fireplace in his childhood’s home in London—‘London! dear city of my youth!’ On his father’s side he was descended from a good stock 144 of English gentlemen, some of whom were men of renown in their own generation. His father was a tradesmen, but his grandfather was Rector of Shepperton until the Act of Uniformity made him a Nonconformist. His mother was the daughter of a Protestant refugee from Bohemia, whose Bible (Luther’s version) he kept as his most cherished possession. As a child he attracted the notice of the Duchess of Bedford, who offered to send him to Oxford or Cambridge, and to provide a living for him if he took orders in the Church of England. He declined the offer, though discouraged by the great Dissenter, Calamy, in his purpose of entering the Independent ministry. But his old friend and pastor, Samuel Clark, of St. Albans (author of Scripture Promises), encouraged him, bidding him come to his house and make it his home during his preliminary studies.

Like Watts, he was a scholar and a gentleman, and was revered and loved in all Churches. Doddridge was a man of broad views and wide sympathies, and was honoured by the enmity of Watts’s old adversary, Thomas Bradbury, whose ‘zeal and fury’ in opposing ‘Moravians and Methodists and all who will not go his length in putting them down’ he deprecated. Indeed, his sympathy with Methodism led less vehement Dissenters than Bradbury to remonstrate with him, and when he not only preached at Whitefield’s Tabernacle, but invited that great evangelist to preach in his chapel at Northampton, even moderate men in 145 his own communion thought he had given just offence to the Nonconformist conscience of the day. He found it necessary to explain and apologize for his patronage of the enthusiasm which sober Churchmen and Dissenters alike abhorred.

His hymns were often written to be sung in his own chapel at the Castle Hill, Northampton, and were upon the subjects of his sermons. Written on the same principle as Watts’s hymns, they belong to the same class; and while they are on the whole inferior to those of Watts, they make a distinct and very precious addition to our hymnals. There is less variety of theme, metre, and expression in Doddridge than in Watts, but he is rarely so completely on the level of the ‘vulgar capacities’ for whom his great predecessor had such a tender regard. His hymns are the prayers and praises of a saint, ‘they shine,’ as Montgomery said, ‘in the beauty of holiness,’ and some must live while Christianity endures.

He is like Watts also in his indebtedness to editors. The best known of the hymns that bear his name, ‘O God of Bethel,’ would make a fine specimen for a polychrome hymn-book, though I venture to suggest that no ‘higher critic’ could pick out the portions supplied by the various revisers if he were left solely to subjective considerations. Dr. Julian says that its authorship should be thus described—‘P. Doddridge, Jan. 173⁶/₇ Scottish Trs. and Paraphs., 1745; J. Logan, 1781; and Scottish Paraphs., 1781.’

No. XXXII JACOB’S VOW.

Another hymn, even better known and loved than this, at least amongst Methodist congregations, is—

This also has been edited to its advantage. It has been the birthday song of countless redeemed souls. Dr. A. B. Bruce says that St. Matthew’s feast, at which ‘a great company of publicans and of others sat down,’ ‘was a kind of poem, saying for Matthew what Doddridge’s familiar lines say for many another.’[104]

Contemporary with Watts and Doddridge, but having closer spiritual affinity with John Bunyan, was Joseph Hart (1712-68), whose hymns, with two or three exceptions, have almost disappeared from our hymnals, though in older books, and in Spurgeon’s Our Own Hymn-book, they are fairly numerous. To the first edition of his hymns he prefixed ‘a brief summary account of the great things’ God had ‘done for’ his ‘soul,’ which, but for its Calvinism, might have been written by one of the early Methodist preachers. Again and again this narrative recalls Grace Abounding, though Hart has little of the vigour, and none of the humour, of Bunyan. He was ‘born of believing parents,’ but after his conversion he ‘hasted to make myself a Christian by mere doctrine, adopting other men’s opinions before I had tried them.’ The result was, according to his own account, a deplorable fall into the prevalent Antinomianism, against which 148 Fletcher and Wesley wrote so energetically. After seven or eight years ‘in this abominable state’ he ‘began by degrees to reform a little,’ and in the week before Easter, 1757, he had ‘an amazing view of the agony of Christ in the garden,’ which affected all his after life. ‘While these horrors remained’ he found occasional comfort at Whitefield’s Tabernacle in Moorfields, or his chapel in Tottenham Court Road, but on Whit Sunday (which was also Charles Wesley’s Day of Pentecost), at the Moravian chapel in Fetter Lane, under a sermon on Rev. iii. 10, he felt ‘deeply impressed,’ and hastening home found himself ‘melting away with a strange softness of affection.’ His experience was that of Christian at the Cross, his ‘burden’ under which he was ‘almost sinking’ was immediately taken from his shoulders. ‘Tears ran in streams from my eyes, and I was so swallowed up in joy and thankfulness that I hardly knew where I was.’ After this ‘reconversion’ he had many Bunyan-like temptations, but walked humbly with God, and ministered till his death to the Independent church in Jewin Street.

His hymns are said, in the ‘advertisement’ to the edition published after his death, to describe his preaching exactly, and they are evidently the fruit of his own experience.

He had a small poetic gift, and some of his hymns, with their happy alliterations, quaint phrases, easy rhythm, and, above all, their simple piety, have charm and power. Dr. Johnson’s estimate of Hart may be inferred from a curious incident. ‘I went to church. I gave a shilling; and, seeing a poor girl at the sacrament in a bed-gown, I gave her privately half a crown, though I saw Hart’s hymns in her hand.’

A few other hymn-writers belong to the Dissenting Church of the eighteenth century, but they have passed or are passing from our modern hymn-books. Simon 150 Browne (1680-1732), pastor of an Independent church in Old Jewry, published in 1720 a supplement to Watts, which shows how early Watts began to be regarded as the standard hymn-book in Congregational Churches. There is a pathetic interest in the strange affliction from which he suffered. In 1723 he was attacked by highwaymen, and defended himself with such vigour that his adversary, when he released him, was found to be dead. Browne was overwhelmed with grief, and sank into a state of melancholy which was deepened by family bereavement. ‘He imagined that God had in a gradual manner annihilated in him the thinking substance,’ yet he continued his ministry, and wrote many books, including an exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians in Matthew Henry’s Commentary. His best-known hymn is still to be found in many hymn-books.

Its form is altered and improved, having passed through the hands of many editors.

He was also the author of a penitential hymn, which is much more impressive when given as Browne wrote it in the first person singular. In other respects editors have improved it by slight alterations.

Benjamin Beddome (1717-95) was for more than half a century a Baptist minister at Bourton-on-the-Water, refusing for the sake of his rustic flock the attractions of a call to more conspicuous pastorates. ‘I would rather honour God,’ he said, ‘in a station even much inferior to that in which He has placed me, than intrude myself into a higher without His direction.’ His hymns were written for his own congregation, and usually to suit his sermon for the day.

There is not much to choose amongst Beddome’s pious verses. The following lines are interesting since they may, perhaps, have suggested Montgomery’s well-known hymn:

To these clerical hymn-writers of the school of Watts must be added the name of Anne Steele (1716-78), daughter of William Steele, timber-merchant and Baptist minister at Broughton, Hants. Miss Steele is the first Englishwoman who takes a permanent place amongst hymn-writers. She has been called the Miss Havergal of the eighteenth century, and so far as popularity and piety are concerned the comparison is fair. She wrote under the name of ‘Theodosia,’ and her hymns were for a hundred years extensively used in Nonconformist worship, and several are to be found in Anglican hymnals.

She was so modest and devout, suffered and sorrowed so much, that one is glad to know that some at least of her songs will take their place among the permanent treasures of Christian song. Her hymns are generally improved by the omission of some verses, and by slight changes; but Miss Steele is never guilty of the clumsy and offensive phrases which mar so many contemporary hymns. Her best-known hymns are ‘When I survey 153 life’s varied scene,[107] and ‘Father of mercies, in Thy word.’

Here are a few verses from a hymn on the text, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also’ (John xiv. 19)—

Dr. John Ryland (1753-1825), one of the pioneers of the modern missionary revival, and a few others are still remembered as hymn-writers, but there is little distinctive about their poetry. Indeed one is compelled to admit that a very large portion of the hymns of the school of Watts are dull, formal, and prosaic. For the most part they were written to suit particular sermons, and the shades of the meeting-house are about them still. To many of them Montgomery’s criticism of Beddome applies: ‘His compositions are calculated to be far more useful than attractive.’

The ‘atmosphere’ was hardly likely to inspire 154 enthusiasm. The long struggle between King and Parliament, Catholic and Protestant was stilled, the Toleration Act (1689) had given to orthodox Nonconformists a religious liberty unknown before, and, though there were occasional fears lest the old, bad conditions should be revived, their freedom became gradually larger and more thoroughly established. Watts and Doddridge represent the best side of the Nonconformity which settled down after ‘the glorious Revolution’ into sedate, intelligent, unaggressive, and highly respectable Churches, rejoicing devoutly, but without enthusiasm, in the right to worship God in their own sanctuaries, and to ‘sit under’ the ministry of their own pastors. ‘Then had the Churches rest, and walking in the comfort of the Holy Ghost were multiplied.’ The high character and sound scholarship of the leading Nonconformist ministers compelled the respect and won the esteem of their episcopalian neighbours, with whom they lived in pleasant relationships. It was just the time for a quiet reform in modes of worship, and it was in the years between the Toleration Act and the Methodist Revival that the hymn, already known but not yet loved, won its way to a sure and increasingly honourable place in the service of the sanctuary. Had the hymns been more original and aggressive in tone, they would not so readily have won the ear and heart of Independent congregations at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

IV
Eighteenth-century Hymns

II.—Hymns of the Methodist Revival

The first Wesleyan hymn-book is earlier than the Evangelical Revival. When John Wesley sailed for Georgia, he took with him Herbert’s Poems, Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, and John Austin’s Offices. From these and some other books he prepared ‘the first hymn-book compiled for use in the Church of England.’[108] It was published at Charlestown in 1737, and is entitled, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns. The book is a ‘Christian week’ rather than a Christian year, being divided into three sections—for Sunday; for Wednesday and Friday; for Saturday. It is in many respects a most interesting volume. There is little trace of ‘catholic’ doctrine, unless it be in the verses taken from Austin’s Office of the Saints, and there is less of sacramental teaching than in the present Methodist Hymn-book.

Of the seventy hymns half are by Dr. Watts, and amongst these are his version of Ps. c, with Wesley’s famous first lines—

and the cxlvi., which Wesley repeated with his dying breath. Seven hymns are by John Austin; six are moderately successful attempts to make some of Herbert’s matchless poems available for use in public worship. The Wesleyan portion of the book consists of five hymns by Samuel Wesley, senior; five by Samuel Wesley, junior; and five translations from the German by John Wesley himself. Charles Wesley’s hymns are conspicuous by their absence. Probably the explanation is that, as he had already sailed for England, his MSS. were not at his brother’s disposal.

In 1738, on his return to England, John Wesley published another small hymn-book, with the same title and a similar arrangement, though the contents are different. This is, I think, the only one of his many hymn-books in which Ken’s hymns are included. In 1739 the brothers issued their first joint publication, ‘Hymns and Sacred Poems, published by John Wesley, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Charles Wesley, M.A., Student of Christ Church, Oxford. London. Printed by William Strahan, and sold by James Hutton, bookseller, at the Bible and Sun without Temple Bar; Mr. Bray’s, a brazier, in Little Britain, M DCC XXXIX.’ In this volume Charles Wesley’s first published poems appeared, and from this time he is the recognized poet of the Revival.

Charles Wesley was born at Epworth Rectory on 157 December 18, 1707. Notwithstanding poverty, debt, difficulty, and persecution, there was probably no more truly Christian home in England. The cultivation of personal religion and simple faith in God found congenial soil here, and doubtless in other obscure country parsonages. The Rector of Epworth was a poet of some gifts, which the whole family inherited in greater or less degree. His eldest son—sixteen years older than Charles—was a minor poet and hymn-writer, and the younger members of the family grew up in an atmosphere which must have made it natural for them to write verses.

We have, however, no indication of precocious hymn-writing on the part of Charles Wesley, nor, indeed, of any poetic composition till he was seven-and-twenty, when he writes to convey a protest against his sister’s marriage. Probably he did not discover his special talent till he was in Georgia, where the Governor’s wife wrote, ‘Mr. Wesley has the gift of verse, and has written many sweet hymns, which we sing.’[109]

But if Charles Wesley wrote little poetry before his American mission, he had received much of the training which was in due season to yield such abundant fruit. The gracious influences of the Lincolnshire rectory, of the Oxford Methodists, of his Moravian fellow passengers, all helped to mould his fervent spirit. The poet within him could not long be silent, and had 158 already awoke when he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, 1738. This was the time of his evangelical conversion, when he passed out of the state of the anxious and conscientious servant into the glorious liberty of the child of God. From that time the word of Christ dwelt in him richly. ‘The wealth of God’[110] was bestowed upon him, and out of the abundance of a heart enriched by the indwelling word he poured forth psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in an almost ceaseless stream. Had Charles Wesley never passed through this experience he would have been one of our greatest ecclesiastical hymn-writers, and would have ranked with Heber and Keble, but there would have been no distinctively Methodist hymnody, and the Evangelical Revival would have been immeasurably poorer. Moreover, he did very much to preserve the standard of good taste, as well as the fervour of religious feeling, in primitive Methodism.

Charles Wesley would probably have accepted Keble’s judgement as to the value of ‘a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion,’ but his standard allowed a much wider range and warmer glow to feeling than was possible to the poet of the later Oxford Movement. Both the Wesleys shrank with the instinct of the scholar and the gentleman from extravagance and vulgarity. Their energies were often devoted to restraining the exuberant manifestations of the fervour of their converts; and though they dared not deal too strictly with what they believed to be indications of genuine spiritual emotion, they deprecated undue excitement, and regarded hysterical testimonies in a very different light from that in which Edward Irving viewed the speaking with tongues.

If Charles Wesley impressed himself upon the Methodist Revival to its great benefit, the Revival in its turn most advantageously affected his hymn-writing. In many of his poems it is easy to trace the influence of the Anglican Prayer-book or the Moravian prayer-meeting, 160 but the typically Methodist hymns show little trace of either; they are songs of the open-air service or of the class-room. Beecher’s statement that Charles Wesley’s ‘hymns are only Moravian hymns re-sung’ is more than a gross exaggeration.

In the early days of Methodism, Charles Wesley was as energetic and as successful an evangelist as John. He loved the stir, the tumult, the triumph of those great outdoor gatherings, where testimony must be borne before mobs who might at any time endanger the property and even the lives of preacher and hearers. In this regard the poet of the Evangelical Revival had a great advantage over the poet of the Tractarian Movement. Keble is one of the singers of the country parsonage. At Fairford and Hursley he found, as Cowper at Olney,

but Charles Wesley was moved to his highest flights of praise by hard-won victories amongst his wild hearers in Cornwall, or Moorfields, at Kingswood, or Walsall. The depths of his soul were moved when he saw the first signs of penitence in the unwonted tears which cut white channels in the begrimed faces of the colliers, whom he taught to sing

Nor must we overlook the influence of the Methodist class-meeting upon Charles Wesley’s hymns. That institution was of the essence of Methodism. It provided a ‘Holy Club,’ or a number of holy clubs, in every place where converts had been gathered. True to his mission as the poet of Methodism, he provided hymns for the Societies in their private meetings as well as in their vast evangelistic gatherings. The hymn-book naturally begins with the section headed ‘Exhorting and Beseeching to Return to God,’ but the majority of the hymns are for the penitent, the mourner, the believer, and for the backslider—the man in whom old habits have proved too strong, who has wandered back to sin, but longs to turn to God again. Charles Wesley shared with John the pastoral oversight of the converts, often spending many weeks in Dublin, Newcastle, or Bristol, or passing rapidly through Cornwall or the Black Country, not only preaching the gospel, but carefully examining, encouraging, and sifting the societies. The class-meeting gave the distinctive tone to Methodist devotion, and Charles Wesley was quick to sympathize with the varying moods of religious experience related by the members. His hymns were often written for use by the Society in its stated gatherings or by Christian friends meeting socially in each other’s houses. In every revision of the Methodist Hymn-book it has been recognized that ample provision must be made for such occasions, and that hymns might be very useful and, in 162 fact, extensively used though never heard in public worship.

The Wesleys were singularly open to impressions from those whom they met, or whose books they read. Anglican, Moravian, Mystic by turns, they only gradually developed into Methodists. In their first joint publication they note that ‘some verses ... were wrote upon the scheme of the Mystic divines’ whom they ‘had once in great veneration, as the best explainers of the gospel of Christ.’[113] George Herbert, John Norris (that other less famous parson of Bemerton), Henry More, and such German hymn-writers as Freylinghausen, Christian Friedrich Richter, and W. C. Dessler, were their first masters of Christian song; but Charles Wesley soon found his own wings, and ceased to belong to any school of poets, though to the end traces of other men’s writings are to be found—amounting occasionally to actual verbal quotation, e.g. from Milton, Young, Tate and Brady.

It is not possible to assign dates for the composition of many of Charles Wesley’s hymns after the early years of the Revival, except those called forth by some special occasion, such as the ‘Earthquake Hymns,’ and those for the troubled days of the Insurrection of 1745. At such times the hymns must have been written as a kind of task-work, and the result is rarely more than commonplace. The poet seemed to think it his duty, as the laureate of Methodism, to provide suitable hymns 163 for the special services rendered necessary by stirring events, and usually wrote one or two in each of the favourite metres. These were issued in small pamphlets at a few pence, and no doubt sold very extensively, as did John Wesley’s prose tracts, through which he ‘unawares became rich.’

It is difficult for a Methodist preacher of the fourth generation, whose earliest and most sacred associations are hallowed by memories of Wesley’s hymns, to attempt an impartial, not to say a critical, survey of them. If, then, I seem to place too high an estimate on the Wesley poetry as compared with the hymns of others, I trust it may be credited rather to early training and inherited affection than to denominational partiality.

It may at once be granted that Charles Wesley wrote far too easily and too diffusely to secure permanent remembrance for the majority of his hymns. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, might disappear without serious loss to the spiritual and devotional life of the Church. It may be admitted, further, that he did not know which were his best and which his worst productions, and that John Wesley’s editing might with advantage have been more severe. The printing-press was dangerously convenient to Charles Wesley, and the certainty of extensive sale for everything he published, combined with the enthusiasm with which their people received what the brothers wrote, either in prose or verse, presented a temptation to rapid and frequent publication 164 which few poets could resist. Moreover, much that he wrote was designed for immediate use, and had to be written, printed, published ere the occasion passed. Yet it is probable that not much would have been gained by elaborate revision. Charles Wesley was too tender-hearted to treat his literary offspring as David treated the Moabites, measuring two lines to put to death and one full line to keep alive, though both he and Dr. Watts might not unwisely have adopted some such heroic measure.

His hymns were often written at white heat, but they underwent constant revision by their author, and generally they had a further revision by his brother. The poet himself records eight revisions of his Short Hymns on the Gospels and Acts, which he noted were ‘finished April 24, 1765,’ and revised for the last time May 11, 1787.

‘Some bad, some mean, some most excellently good.’ The judgement is just, though we who are accustomed 165 to our richer and more varied hymn-books should probably place not a few in a fourth class—certainly not ‘bad’ or ‘mean,’ yet hardly ‘excellently good.’

In the Methodist Hymn-book 429 hymns are attributed to Charles Wesley; in the hymnals of other Churches there are to be found a number which are unknown in Methodism. It is safe to say that of Charles Wesley’s hymns about 500 are living still.

The first great service Wesley’s hymns rendered to Christian song was to raise the standard of feeling in matters of practical religion. John Wesley’s emendation of a line of Doddridge’s may illustrate the influence of Methodist hymns upon religious emotion. Doddridge wrote—

Wesley changed ‘pleasure’ into ‘rapture’ in the hymn, and Methodism raised Christian emotion from the quiet satisfaction of Watts, Doddridge, and the elect souls who kept alive the faith during the drab years which preceded the Revival, to the ecstatic gladness of those to whom that great movement brought the brightness of a morning without clouds. The largest section of the hymn-book was headed ‘For Believers Rejoicing.’ No other Christian poet ever sang such songs, for no other has ever known the joy of the evangelist as Charles Wesley knew it.

Joyousness was the natural result of the gospel he preached. It was the good news of the assurance of personal salvation. Here John Wesley’s emendation of one of Watts’s famous hymns may serve as an illustration. Watts wrote—

Wesley shows the difference between Methodism and Calvinism by the change of a word—

The Methodist doctrine of Assurance, the revival or rediscovery of the doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit, gave to Christian experience a confidence which was more joyous than that of the ‘elect.’ The Wesleys never slurred the need of repentance—deep, poignant, practical; but there is a great gulf between the comparatively brief pangs of the Methodist penitent and the habitual depression of the devout Romanist ever searching through the dark places of the heart to find matter for confession. The shades of the prison-house did not linger long around the emancipated soul. 167 Coming out of the gloom into the sunshine the road wound

The redeemed of the Lord returned to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy upon their heads. Notwithstanding all that may be said, and, to some extent, with justice, of the terrors, even the horrors, of early evangelical preaching concerning death, hell, and judgement, the Methodist hymns brought into Christian worship a brighter and more trustful tone than it had known for many generations. The Revival brought back the golden days, the joy of heart, which characterized the Apostolic Church, and the German Protestants at the Reformation. At the time of the Revival the Church of England, though largely Arminian in doctrine, was so incapable of fervour, so afraid of zeal, that it had practically no power over the masses, whilst by the classes Christianity was, as Bishop Butler said, regarded ‘not so much as a subject of inquiry,’ but ‘now at length discovered to be fictitious.’

In the Establishment there was hardly spiritual life enough to put real vigour even into religious controversy. Butler’s Analogy is typical of the position of the ecclesiastical leaders of that day. They were content if they could demonstrate that the balance of probabilities was in favour of Christianity, and did not even desire to be anointed with the oil of gladness above their fellows.

The most earnest and aggressive of the Nonconformists were stanchly Calvinistic, and, by their most cherished beliefs, were precluded from the magnificent visions of a redeemed world, which were at once the inspiration and the attraction of Methodist preaching.

Altogether outside theological controversy, and, for the most part, uncared for by the religious people of the day, lay the masses, ignorant, degraded, despised, who neither gave, nor were expected to give, heed to things higher than the needs of the ‘mere animal.’ Of them Charles Wesley only too truly said—

Very surely, though very slowly, the glad evangel of the hymns which offer pardon and holiness and heaven to all won its way in the Churches. It is one of the most precious fruits of the Revival that now hardly any Church can forbear to sing them. Nor is it too much to say that Methodist hymns, even more than Methodist teaching, broke down the Calvinistic idea of the Church—

Again, John Wesley’s hymns gave a great impulse, and added a great sanction, to the expression of personal experience in hymns. They were unfettered by what has been well described as the ‘old traditions of reserved and reticent worship.’[114] For good or ill, there is little of reserve or reticence in Charles Wesley’s hymns.

Many poets of the sanctuary have felt that the most sacred experiences of the penitent sinner and of the sanctified believer were not to be put into words, that to utter them was to expose to the coarse breath of the world what must perish in the very act of expression. It was not without an effort that Charles Wesley broke through this ‘reserve;’ yet he did, and that not only from a sense of duty, but from a conviction that to be silent would be a cowardly yielding to the temptation to shun the reproach of Christ.

Moreover, many of Charles Wesley’s hymns—especially the more personal—were intended to be sung ‘secretly 170 among the faithful,’ rather than in the congregation. They were written for the family gatherings of ‘the household of the faith,’ and thus were free from the restraints which might be necessary in compositions intended for larger and less sympathetic assemblies.

Wesley’s hymns represented and, to a considerable extent, created the specific Methodist type of religious thought, emotion, and expression. They were, also, the vehicle by which doctrine was conveyed to the minds of the uneducated masses. The great truths which it was the mission of Methodism to teach are conspicuous in the Methodist hymns. Justification by Faith, the Witness of the Spirit, Universal Redemption, Entire Sanctification, are all taught in Charles Wesley’s remembered hymns as they are in John Wesley’s forgotten tracts. If the hymns have ceased to be peculiarly Methodist, it is because Christian experience and teaching have been so largely influenced by them.

It is impossible not to compare Charles Wesley with his great predecessor, Isaac Watts. The day has gone by in which rival camps or choirs seek to exalt the one by disparaging the other. As we have seen, Watts’s Psalms and Hymns were taken by the Wesleys on their mission to Georgia, and it can never be forgotten that, with his dying breath, John Wesley quoted the hymn which, from those early days, had been included in the hymn-books prepared by him for congregational use.

Watts was less careful of the technique of his poetry than Charles Wesley. His rhymes are often very bad, and occasionally are altogether forgotten, and this is true of hymns whose intrinsic value is such that they retain, and are likely to retain, their place in our hymn-books. Charles Wesley is not without sin in this regard, but a really bad rhyme is comparatively rare in his best compositions. He has less of poetic imagery than Watts, and has not so keen an eye for the beauties of the natural world. Charles Wesley never wrote a hymn that, in its own way, compares with

nor do I know any verse of his which equals in its rich, strong monosyllables, Watts’s

Wesley was apt to use long and awkward words, sometimes of his own coining, rarely adding to the force, and always detracting from the practical value of the hymn.

It must also be admitted that Charles Wesley wrote some verses the taste of which is dreadful, though he never approaches the execrable coarseness of some Moravian hymns, or of the lines which Walter Shirley transfigured into ‘Sweet the moments rich in 172 blessing.’ Both Watts and Wesley had a quiet rather than a keen sense of humour, but they had little of that appreciation of the comic which is so acute in our own time.[117]

Charles Wesley rarely, if ever, reaches the depth of prosaic commonplace which marks many of Watts’s hymns. He had a more sensitive ear and a more cultivated taste, and, what is perhaps more to the point, he had a faithful, though affectionate and admiring, critic in his brother. When John Wesley said of Charles that his least praise was his talent for poetry, he meant, not to disparage his hymns, but to bear the highest testimony possible to the gifts and graces of his mind and character.

In considering somewhat in detail the hymns of Charles Wesley, it is convenient to treat of them in the classes into which they may be broadly divided. But even so it is obviously impossible to glance at more than a small number of his poems.

1.—Hymns of the Christian Year

The idea of an elaborate classification according to the Church seasons, so usual in modern Anglican hymnals, had not yet become popular. Bishop Ken’s 173 Hymns for all the Festivals of the Year[118] (published in 1721, ten years after his death), the precursor and, to some extent, the inspiration of the Christian Year, was not intended for use as a hymn-book. Wither’s Hymns and Songs of the Church (1623) provided for all the chief festivals, saints’ days, and other occasional services. About forty years later (1661) Dr. Eaton, Vicar of Bishop’s Castle, Salop, published The Holy Calendar, but his poems were not intended to be sung. The Wesleys issued a number of pamphlets containing hymns for the great festivals, and it would not be difficult to select from their various publications a ‘Christian year,’ in which every hymn was suitable for public worship. But the pieces would need to be gathered, for the brothers did not contemplate the use of their hymn-books in Church services; they were designed for the preaching-house, the open-air service, and the class-meeting. The Nonconformist Churches had adopted the custom early in the century, but in the Church of England hymn-singing was still, and for many years after, an irregularity, if not an offence.

It was published in 1739, and is not impossibly one of the ‘many sweet hymns’ which were sung in the 174 household of General Oglethorpe. Whitefield made some popular alterations, and included it in his Collection, in 1753. In 1782 it found a place in the Prayer-book, after the new version of the Psalms. It was omitted from Wesley’s Collection, but was inserted in the supplement of 1830—nearly a century after its composition.

Of Charles Wesley’s hymns on our Lord’s Passion, the finest are those beginning

is, owing to its cheerful metre, hardly suited to the solemn services of Good Friday, and was intended for the open air. It was headed ‘Invitation to Sinners,’ and was used by Whitefield with great effect when preaching at the Market Cross, Nottingham, and elsewhere.

John Wesley appointed many fast days, and was careful to fix them on Friday, but the observance of Lent does not seem to have been enforced, or even strongly recommended, in the Methodist Society. Hymns for saints’ days and for the minor festivals are unknown to the Wesley poetry.

2. Hymns on the Lord’s Supper.[121]

This pamphlet contains 166 hymns, many of which are admirable and very close paraphrases of passages in Brevint’s Christian Sacrifice, but others are independent of that devout treatise. Many lend themselves readily to use in ‘catholic’ services, and have often been quoted as indicating high sacramentarian views.[122]

On the other hand, such verses as the following must be taken in an entirely evangelical sense—

In these paraphrases there are naturally expressions which represent Brevint and not the Wesleys, except in so far as they indicate a general approval of his teaching. The hymns which most closely follow the treatise are often the least happy. Yet, when every deduction is made, this little book is one of the most edifying of devotional preparations for the Communion.

These hymns have had a permanent influence upon Methodist worship. Many of them were probably suggested by the Order of Administration in the Book of Common Prayer, the most beautiful of all the Anglican services. Both the brothers had a profound reverence for the Holy Communion, as the supreme act of Christian worship, and constantly impressed upon Methodists the duty of its regular observance. Never at any time was there a danger of the Methodist Societies cutting themselves off from the Catholic Church by neglect of the Sacraments, or of their becoming an exclusively evangelistic organization on the plan of the Salvation Army. This pamphlet, of 178 which many editions were issued during the lifetime of John Wesley, shows how serious a view they desired their people to take of the value of this sacrament, whilst its great popularity suggests that the intelligence of the Methodists of a hundred and fifty years ago was very much above that with which we are accustomed to credit them. The republication of Brevint’s Treatise, in a small series of devotional manuals, edited by Dr. George Osborn, did not revive interest in it, as it might have done had a judicious selection from the hymns been included.[123]

Several hymns familiar to us in other sections of our hymn-books were written for, or included in, this series. The prayer for the Church militant, with its remembrance of and thanksgiving for those in trouble and for those who have ‘departed this life in Thy faith and fear,’ probably suggested the hymn—

The thought of communion with the Church triumphant was very precious to Charles Wesley, and there is a most beautiful and solemn appropriateness in the lifting of the eyes as well as of the heart, when, having claimed in faith the forgiveness of sins, we take our unchallenged place at the table of the Lord. The Holy Communion includes fellowship with those who have ‘crossed the flood’ and are for ever with the Lord.

Nor is the other aspect of the communion of saints forgotten. It is often easier for earnest souls to claim fellowship with the white-robed company of heaven than with those on earth who are divided from them by divergencies of doctrine and practice. But if, on the one hand, the Eucharist has been a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to theologians and ecclesiastics, on the other it is the bond of union between all ‘holding fast the Head.’[124] The true evangelic and the typically Wesleyan position is well stated in the verse—

This is the attitude our Church has consistently adopted. We do not claim exclusive privileges or profess that our boundaries are the walls of that city 180 of God which lieth four square. We are but ‘part of His Church below,’ but we are a part, and in obedience to our dying Lord’s command ‘we thus our right maintain.’ What matter though some deny the validity of our ‘orders,’ the efficacy of our sacraments, our title to a place in the Holy Catholic Church? They may drive us from their local altars, but they cannot exclude us from the Lord’s table. They may deny us a place in that family for which our blessed Lord was content to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men. What then? We do not deny theirs.

This is a note too seldom heard in Communion hymns. I do not remember to have found it so clearly put anywhere else, though Major Turton’s prayer for unity comes graciously near to it.

The sacramental character of the Lord’s Supper as the sign and pledge of the believer’s consecration to the service of Christ is represented in the hymn beginning—

which in some of its verses suggests the prayer known as the First Thanksgiving,[127] though it is based upon a beautiful paragraph of Brevint’s.

A few hymns under the heading ‘After the Sacrament’ form an unimportant supplement, but the long series really ends with a joyous song well-suited to be the happy close of the solemn commemoration of the sacrifice of Calvary and the renewal of the Christian’s oath of allegiance

This final note of glad thanksgiving reminds us that in our Communion Service the ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ immediately precedes the Benediction.[128]

3. Hymns of the Calvinistic Controversy.

From these Communion hymns we pass to a series of a very different type. The story of the Calvinistic controversy—which seemed to show that a theological fountain could at the same time send forth sweet water and bitter—belongs to Church history, not to hymnology. Yet we cannot pass it over, for none of the hymns of the Wesleys meant so much as those which proclaimed the glad tidings of a free and full salvation. The controversy was civil war, a strife among brethren, and it is good to know that the love of Whitefield and the Wesleys was able to bear, though not without terrible strain, even this sore trial. From that great controversy we inherit the true eirenicon, the agreeing to differ, which is the best possible solution of many religious disputes. Whitefield and the Wesleys finally agreed to differ and continued to love. But for a time there was ‘a sharp contention so that they parted asunder one from the other.’

In 1740 John Wesley published, after some hesitation, his sermon on ‘Free Grace,’ and added a long, dull hymn by his brother on ‘Universal Redemption.’ In the same year the brothers issued a second series of Hymns and Sacred Poems, which contained this and other pieces, setting forth in the most emphatic terms the Arminian doctrine, and condemning in even more emphatic terms all who believed in what Calvin had 183 called ‘decretum horribile.’ Whitefield was shocked by the Wesleyan doctrine itself, and was beyond measure distressed by what he saw must lead to a breach between himself and his dearest friends. His love and sorrow come out most attractively in his letters.

John Wesley’s sermon carefully avoided reference to his friend. Whitefield, however, felt in honour bound to state his own views and to ‘answer’ Wesley’s sermon. To this reply he added a poor poem by Dr. Watts, which was intended to balance Charles Wesley’s hymn. Here are two of Watts’s verses—

After this the battle became fast and furious. The two pamphlets of Hymns on God’s Everlasting Love[130] were issued in 1741, and Whitefield was in despair. He 184 writes: ‘Dear brother Charles is more and more rash. He has lately printed some very bad hymns.’[131] From Whitefield’s point of view they were undoubtedly very bad, and even justify his charge that the Wesleys ‘dressed up’ the doctrine of election in ‘horrible colours.’ On the other hand, these hymns contain some of the finest specimens of evangelic hymn-writing to be found in the Wesley poetry.

They may be readily divided into two classes, the one vigorous and often bitterly satirical onslaughts upon the Calvinistic position, which are more in the style of ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ than in that of ‘Jesu, Lover of my soul,’ the other containing the proclamation of the glad tidings of universal redemption. Both elements are often found in the same composition. This is true of the first of the hymns, a portion of which has been used in Methodist congregations for more than a century and a half, and retains its place in the new hymn-book. I print some verses with the original italics, indicating its polemic purpose.

In other hymns he employs the most biting, taunting sarcasm. It is difficult to suppose that these were ever sung even in the thickest of the fight; but they were sown broadcast (price fourpence), and were, no doubt, read with ecstatic delight by those who were on the Wesleys’ side in the great controversy. It is easy at this distance of time and circumstance to condemn the vehemence of the language used on both sides, especially in the later and more acrimonious stages of the controversy. But this was one of ‘freedom’s battles.’ It was magnificent, and it was war. To the Wesleys the doctrine that by the arbitrary decree of God—the God of love!—children were born to a doom which they could neither escape nor deserve was hateful, blasphemous, impossible. If this were indeed the truth of God, what gospel was there to preach? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die and meet the inevitable 186 doom. Nor could they tolerate what seemed to them the smug satisfaction of ‘the elect,’ to whose certainty of salvation the equal certainty of the damnation of the reprobate added a pleasing flavour. They would not accept salvation on such terms. ‘Take back,’ Charles Wesley cries indignantly,

With a true controversial instinct, the Wesleys fastened upon Calvin’s phrase ‘decretum horribile,’ and, preferring to transliterate rather than to translate, turned again and again to rend it.

A poem describing the possibilities of evil in the human heart and mind comes to a climax thus—

Again, in a lighter but still intensely earnest vein, he caricatures his adversaries’ teaching—

This effusion ends in a higher strain, with a dedication of his own life to the proclamation of universal redemption—

John Wesley tried in his brief tract on the Calvinistic Controversy[134] (1743) to make peace with Whitefield, and some of his concessions are surprising—indeed, he afterwards retracted them. But Charles, who at this time was in the full glow of his early evangelistic 188 triumphs, and who was much less of a theologian than his brother, felt that he was engaged in a holy crusade. He tried to write calmly, he prayed for grace to speak tenderly of those who were erring from the truth he held so dear, but—well, he could not keep silence.

In one of these hymns—a portion of which remains in the Methodist Hymn-book—he prays—

These verses might be headed ‘A Prayer before Controversy,’ but it is a shock to the reader on turning the page to find that the next verse shows how soon he descended from this high level.

The controversy was renewed thirty years later with vastly greater bitterness, and with much more personal feeling.

John Fletcher parted in 1771 from his Trevecca students like the saint he was, for he could no longer hold his place when other Arminians were discharged. ‘I cannot give up the possibility of the salvation of all any more than I can give up the truth and love of God.... I left them all in peace, the servant, but no more the president of the college.’[136]

The love of Whitefield and the Wesleys was of the kind which many waters cannot quench; but when Madan, Romaine, Hervey, and Rowland Hill heaped upon John Wesley’s venerable head torrents of vulgar abuse—abuse absolutely impossible, inconceivable in our milder mannered age[137]—Charles felt that there was a point beyond which even Christian charity could not decently go. His refusal to write Hervey’s epitaph is worthy of a Christian gentleman:

The flowing tide, however, was with the Methodists, and though the fight was long, and the victory was not wholly won in their day, these hymns rendered an inestimable service to the cause of religious freedom. It may be true that they represented Calvin’s teaching one-sidedly, and at times misrepresented it, but it 190 cannot be denied that they pictured current Calvinistic teaching accurately enough. The Wesleys saw clearly that, should belief in a limited redemption spread in their Society, they would but labour in vain and spend their strength for nought. They might have gathered little coteries of devout folk, strongly tinctured with what we now call Plymouth Brethrenism, but they could never have founded a great Church, whose chiefest glory should be its missionary enterprise both at home and in the ends of the earth. The mission of Thomas Coke more than a hundred years ago, the great city missions of our own time, the work of William Booth, of Hugh Price Hughes, and Samuel F. Collier, would have been impossible had they not been able to say anywhere and to all—

The Wesleys reached their doctrine of general redemption by two paths. In the first place, they had been trained in the school of Arminius and of Laud, and had been confirmed in the faith by their own careful study of God’s word. But it is abundantly evident that their own experience had led them to believe in the infinite mercy of God. Charles Wesley, especially, argued with the profound humility of the sincere penitent, that his own salvation, of which he had received the undeniable assurance, ‘the indubitable seal,’ on 191 Whit-Sunday, 1738, was itself convincing evidence of the good tidings he proclaimed.

This is a note which constantly recurs in the Hymns on God’s Everlasting Love—sometimes expressed quaintly and unpoetically, sometimes with a pathos truly sublime, as in these verses—

In this, as in other respects, the Wesleyan theology was characteristically Pauline. ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all men to be received that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.’

Hymns of this class have an important place in the story of the Methodist Revival, as well as in the Calvinistic controversy. The vehemence, the violence, with which the Wesleys asserted their doctrine was largely, if not entirely, due to their sense of what it meant to the vast crowds of neglected, ignorant, savage folk who listened with amazement to the messengers who proclaimed God’s love to them.

This was a new voice crying in the wilderness of dull religious mediocrity or of self-satisfied religious devotion, it was the clarion-cry of one that brought good tidings to the outcasts of Israel.

4. Hymns of the Methodist Evangel

From the first the Methodists made their own experience the starting-point of their preaching. John Wesley desired no help from any who had not ‘the witness in himself.’ His itinerants must set to their seal that God is true. ‘We are witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Ghost.’ This personal element, the testimony of the man who believed and therefore spoke, differentiated at once Methodist preaching from the cold impersonal moral essays of the parish church. But Methodist preaching would not have been what it was had John Wesley’s sermons rather than Charles Wesley’s hymns represented Methodism to the masses. John Wesley’s keen intellect held his deep religious fervour in check, but Charles took full advantage of the poet’s licence to say what was in his heart without reserve and without modifying explanations.

His hymns of invitation strike a new note. There is nothing to compare with them in earlier hymn-writers, and comparatively little in later. They are the battle-songs of an open-air preacher, and are borne on the wings of the tempest that raged around 194 the heroic little poet as he faced cheerily the rage or ridicule of the mob. His metres are bright and lilting, winning the ear of the simple and arresting the casual passer-by.

Only a preacher, perhaps only an open-air preacher, could have written such hymns. They are not hymns of the oratory, of the class-room, or the village church; but of that vast cathedral whose roof is the blue vault of heaven; they are songs of Moorfields, of Kingswood, of Newcastle, and of Gwennap. Perhaps of all Wesley’s hymns these are the most characteristically Methodist. Comparatively few are to be found even yet in any but Methodist books, but in them they hold an unchallenged place, and belong to the whole Methodist family, which has had many a quarrel in Conference, has been many a time by 195 schisms rent asunder, but has never faltered in its loyal and steadfast proclamation of the message of God’s everlasting love.

As a general rule each revision of a Nonconformist hymn-book renders it less distinctive of the denomination it represents, and this is, to some extent, true of the new Methodist hymn-book. It has lost the section with which Wesley’s book opened, ‘Exhorting and Entreating to Return to God,’ but it retains almost all the hymns. Modern writers have seldom succeeded in hymns of this type. A few, however, rank with the best of Charles Wesley’s, who himself never struck a note of yearning sympathy for the erring more true and tender than Faber in his ‘Come to Jesus.’

It is not one of the best signs of the times that hymns of invitation are now for the most part provided by American singers and are of the ephemeral class.

well illustrate the difference between the cheery, hopeful, out-door evangel of the Wesleys and the subdued earnestness of the pleading of the modern 196 Catholic or Anglo-Catholic missioner. I do not suggest that the comparison is to the advantage or disadvantage of either, but only indicate the difference of the tone of the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century mission hymns. In our day evangelism has lost much of its novelty, and men are less hopeful than they were of the world’s conversion. To the first Methodists it seemed as though any triumph was possible to such a gospel as theirs, and their battle-songs were all songs of victory.

Wesley’s hymns enshrine the history as well as the doctrines of Methodism, and few studies in Methodist hymnology are more interesting than that of the geography of the hymn-book. As to the local setting of ‘Lo! on a narrow neck of land’ there has been much controversy, but it undoubtedly belongs to Jekyl Island, and not to the Land’s End. Charles Wesley wrote to Lady Oglethorpe from Jekyl Island in 1736—

He did write a hymn at the Land’s End, but it is of quite a different type. It might have been written for St. Augustine of Canterbury on his landing at Ebbsfleet.

5. Hymns of the Methodist Society

The duty of a Methodist preacher was not simply to sow good seed broadcast, but to gather those who received the word into Societies, where they could be taught, trained, watched over. A large part of John Wesley’s itinerations were for the purpose of confirming and sifting the Societies. In many cases they might be described as Charles Wesley, who had an eye for the humorous side of people and things, describes the Newcastle converts, ‘a wild, loving, staring Society.’ But the converts who remained steadfast were soon led to an intelligent faith and a life of devotion such as is possible only to those who are taught by educated men or their pupils. The debt Methodism owes to Oxford culture is inestimable. The Wesleys were never discouraged by the ignorance of their hearers, but they were never content with it. They had profound faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as a teacher, and prayed, like St. Paul for his simple-minded converts at Philippi, that love might abound in good sense and good taste.[145]

To a generation brought up to regard Sankey’s Songs and Solos as the best possible hymns for mission-halls and open-air services, a study of Wesley’s hymns is a liberal education. For the most ignorant of the converts the hymns were the one and only means of culture. They could not read, much of the preaching must have been beyond their comprehension, but the hymns, read slowly, a line at a time, soon became familiar, and the favourite hymns sung over and over again in the house, the class-room, and the family circle, became a part of their very life. Methodist biography shows how the life and death of the saints has been cheered and sanctified by these spiritual songs.

The most important, and by far the largest, part of Wesley’s Collection was devoted to hymns of the Christian life.

It is divided into sections: For Believers Rejoicing, Fighting, Praying, Watching, Working, Suffering, Seeking for Full Redemption, Saved, Interceding for the World. It begins with his own translation of Johann Andreas Rothe’s great hymn

After these Moravian hymns are a number of Charles Wesley’s, which celebrate the joys of believers, for ‘How should not he be glad, whom the glad tidings have reached?’[147] It is often difficult to understand John Wesley’s principle of classification, but in this section almost every hymn of the seventy-five is obviously well placed under the title ‘For Believers Rejoicing.’ The notes of thanksgiving are very varied, from the calm confidence of ‘Now I have found the ground’ to the simple songs written for him ‘that in God is merry,’ such as

We cannot claim for these hymns that they introduce new songs to the Christian choir. Joy and gladness are common to all who have found salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, F. W. Faber, Frances Ridley Havergal, and many more have had ‘the high praises of God in their 201 mouth.’ From the days of the Hebrew psalmists until now the sense of infinite content which comes with the peace which passeth all understanding has been the theme of God’s singers. ‘He satisfieth the longing soul and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.’ Yet joyousness is a special characteristic of Methodist hymns, and especially of those which were written in the early days of the triumphs of the itinerant preachers. No hymns rise higher in their exultant rapture, none are more tenderly triumphant than the songs of Charles Wesley.

Bright and inspiring as these pieces are, they are in striking contrast with the hymns characteristic of minor religious movements, and justify John Wesley’s claim 202 that ‘in these hymns is no doggerel.’ That they are of unequal merit goes without saying, but it is remarkable how many of them are living hymns to-day. Religious feeling is no more healthy because it loves to pray for guidance ‘amid the encircling gloom,’ or to describe the hosts of the Church militant as ‘pilgrims of the night.’ A ‘sober standard of feeling’ must take into account that the darkness has passed and the true light now shineth.

Yet one who knows little of early Methodism would be surprised to find how ‘sober’ is the tone of most of the hymns provided for the people called Methodists. They are songs in which ‘calmly reverential joy’ is more often heard than ecstasy. It is instructive to turn from Mr. Lecky’s chapter on ‘The Religious Revival,’ in his History of England in the Eighteenth Century to Wesley’s hymns. The uninstructed reader of Mr. Lecky would expect to find here the turbid, involved, hysterical expression of a morbid fanaticism, but he would search almost in vain for illustrations of that side of the Methodist Movement. It is true that both the Wesleys were perplexed by the physical effects of their preaching, and were afraid to treat them as mere manifestations of hysterical excitement. But they dealt with them as St. Paul dealt with somewhat similar phenomena at Corinth, and carefully avoided encouraging such painful and inconvenient interruptions of their services. The hymn-book makes no provision for the nervously excited, and has no compositions of 203 the class characteristic of many ‘revivals’—such, for instance, as are found in Hugh Bourne’s Hymns for Camp Meetings, Revivals, etc. The novelty, the directness of the preaching, and, no doubt, the lack of education of many of the preachers naturally led to indiscretion in many places, especially in the early days of the Revival; but it is fair to judge the Wesleys’ own standard of religious emotion by their hymns rather than by the extravagances of their least intelligent helpers.

Charles Wesley’s hymn, ‘For the Fear of God,’ is a good example of the attitude of soul he desired for himself and for Methodists generally.

Perhaps there are few hymns quite of this type, but the subdued and subduing sense of the fear of God pervades many of Charles Wesley’s poems. He dwells much on ‘the mystic joys of penitence,’ as in his brief meditation on Ezek. xxxvi. 26, ‘I will give you an heart of flesh.’

a verse which reminds one of Cardinal Newman’s saying that true penitence never forgives itself. This, however, is not what Charles Wesley meant, for 205 he of all Christian poets best understood how truly the pardoned prodigal might make merry and be glad when he was safe in his Father’s house once more.

An important series of hymns—so important that it demands separate consideration—is that which is found in Sections vii.-ix. of the original hymn-book. They include nearly one hundred pieces, and from the days of John Wesley until the latest revision the section began with a hymn which is the most fitting introduction to the series, since it sets forth with great simplicity the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfection. Familiar as this hymn is to Methodists, it is worth while to quote it in full here—

This hymn is made up, as are many others, by joining together verses from the Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures. The first verse is suggested by Jer. xliv. 4: ‘Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.’ The second and third by Jer. xxxi. 33: ‘I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people.’

Another peaceful and attractive hymn on the same subject is based on Heb. iv. 9: ‘There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.’ Charles Wesley wrote twenty-seven verses; John Wesley selected eight, these are reduced to six in the Methodist Hymn-book. I am inclined to think that a further abridgement would have been still wiser. The four verses which follow are a beautiful meditation on the text—

The doctrine of Entire Sanctification, as it was believed and taught by the Wesleys, is set forth in the hymn-book with emphasis, but the expressions are rarely open to serious objection, nearly every phrase having Scriptural precedent. In early days Charles Wesley had often prayed for death, believing that through its gate alone could he find entrance into ‘the land of rest from inbred sin.’ In one of his first hymns, published in 1739, he had written—

But in later years he had outgrown this mood. John Wesley wrote No against the last line of the stanza, and in his hymn-book gave—

The brothers taught that sanctification was progressive, yet might be ‘cut short in righteousness,’ 208 a phrase which they often quoted. In one of the hymns for those that wait for ‘full redemption,’[151] Charles Wesley writes—

This doctrine of what has been called ‘the second blessing’ is often met with in Charles Wesley, but he used expressions which John disapproved, and would not repeat in his Collection, as in the second verse of the great hymn, ‘Love divine, all loves excelling,’ which reads—

The Wesleys’ teaching concerning sanctification had an immense influence upon Methodist life and thought. ‘The pursuit of holiness,’ to use Dean Goulburn’s phrase, was the daily interest and delight of multitudes of devout souls. No doubt in many cases there was more or less of morbid introspection, but the rich treasury of Methodist biography witnesses to the saintliness of those who made the search for ‘full redemption,’ or, as they delighted to say, ‘perfect love,’ the one serious business of life.

Important and influential as this section of Wesley’s Hymns is, not many of the best are found here.[152] The finest are John Wesley’s translations from the German but only a few original compositions are of marked value. Some exceptions, indeed, must be made, notably—

and there are many verses inspired by that thirst of the soul ‘for God, yea, even for the living God,’ which is characteristic of no one Church or age, but of all elect souls restless till they find rest in Him. The varying 210 moods of the seeker after God are impressively illustrated. Some of the hymns are of a solemn and even sombre type, while others are bright with assurance of the favour of God and the gladness of the redeemed. Here are a few verses from a

HYMN TO GOD THE SANCTIFIER

6. Hymns on Passages of Holy Scripture

Charles Wesley’s poetry is always sanctified by the word of God. In this regard he is unsurpassed, and I think unequalled, by any other writer. He thought and wrote in the language of the Bible, and constantly weaves into his hymns the words, phrases, incidents 212 of Holy Scripture. No one ‘spiritualized’ more boldly than he. Of this his most famous poem, ‘Wrestling Jacob,’ is the great example. Many other hymns illustrate the same power, e.g. this verse, which ‘spiritualizes’ Peter’s deliverance from prison—

His more formal paraphrases are often very fine, and are hymns of permanent worth. Such are—

Of course Charles Wesley wrote many Psalm-versions. Comparatively few are above the average, but there are some exceptions. Among these are the 48th—

Here the whole psalm, as it appears in the Poetical Works, consists of fourteen verses, most of them impossible for singing in a Christian Church, but there are four good verses, especially this, with its tender trustfulness that the humble seeker must at length find his Saviour—

The 23rd Psalm is also very beautiful, and is worthy to take its place amongst the many lovely renderings of this sweetest of the praises of Israel. I venture to quote the whole, as it is little known outside Wesleyan Methodism, and not too well known in our own Church. It is the 23rd Psalm read in the light of the tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.

Dr. Watts’s ‘grand design’ in his version of the Psalter was ‘to teach’ the ‘author to speak like a Christian.’ Charles Wesley took St. Augustine’s view, that we ought to hear the voice of Christ in all the psalms. His version of Ps. xlv. is typical of his attitude toward the Psalter as a whole.

In 1762 Charles Wesley took advantage of a time of physical weakness to write a large number of verses, forming a kind of running commentary on the Holy Scriptures. They are, for the most part, purely devotional; but the events of the time and, perhaps, of the day on which a poem was written are mirrored in some of the verses. In the preface he says—

On this point the brothers differed, and especially as to the method of treating those who discredited the doctrine by extravagance in teaching or by inconsistency of life.

The Short Poems account for the enormous number of Charles Wesley’s hymns. On the Old Testament he wrote 1,609, on the New Testament 3,491, a total of 5,100 poetical notes on the Holy Scripture. But very many consist of only one verse.[155] By skilful combination some very good hymns have been made, and in a few instances we come upon a complete hymn of great strength or beauty. Many of these are familiar in Methodist congregations, though probably few worshippers recognize the passages of Scripture which suggested the verses. The well-known hymn

is the poet’s meditation and prayer after reading Lev. viii. 35: ‘Therefore shall ye abide at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation day and night seven days, and keep the charge of the Lord, that ye die not.’ After reading Lev. vi. 13: ‘The fire shall 217 ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out,’ he prays

On the twenty-ninth verse of the same chapter, ‘Moses wist not that his face shone,’ he writes

As these verses are buried in the last four volumes of the Poetical Works, I venture to quote a few others which have, I think, some special value, reminding one at times of Herbert or Crashaw.

John Wesley lets this pass without note or comment, but when, on Num. xvi. 10, Charles wrote

Here our detailed consideration of Charles Wesley’s hymns must end, though there are many others over which one would be glad to linger. Some of the hymns 220 on Death and the Future Life are of great power, though some have lost and others are losing their hold upon Methodist worshippers. Charles Wesley’s view of death is well illustrated in these verses, which I quote the more readily because, to my regret, they are not found in the Methodist Hymn-book. If they could not often be sung in the congregation, there are times when they would speak the inmost feeling of the devout disciple.

This is not the tone of modern worship. It is open to the charge of that ‘other-worldliness’ of which our time is so impatient and knows so little, but it is the language of the disciples whom Jesus loves. ‘Having the desire to depart and be with Christ: for 221 it is very far better.’ ‘He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!’

After Charles Wesley, Methodism had no great hymn-writer, though Thomas Olivers (1725-99), one of the early preachers, wrote one of the finest of our hymns of adoration.

He was a man of considerable ability, but Wesley had more confidence in him as a corrector of errors of doctrine than of errors of the press. He left Toplady to be ‘corrected by one that is full his match, Mr. Thomas Olivers,’ but he rejected Olivers as assistant-editor of the Arminian Magazine, because ‘the errata are insufferable.’

‘The God of Abraham praise’ was published at Nottingham in a pamphlet of eight pages, with the title, ‘A Hymn to the God of Abraham. In three parts, adapted to a celebrated air, sung by the priest, Signior Leoni, &c., at the Jews’ Synagogue in London.’ There is only slight verbal resemblance between Olivers’ version and the Hebrew original.[156] He wrote a few other hymns, not to be compared with this, yet indicating considerable poetic power. One of them, ‘On the Last Judgement,’ was published at ‘Leedes.’ It contained twenty verses, and was afterwards altered, and enlarged to thirty-six verses, Scripture references being given in the margin of almost every line. Some verses 222 of this poem have been occasionally used in hymn-books, and Lord Selborne gave twelve verses in his Book of Praise. It is, however, little known. The following are among the best verses.

John Bakewell (1721-1819), a Methodist schoolmaster, wrote several hymns, and is widely known as the author of ‘Hail, Thou once despisèd Jesus.’[157] Benjamin Rhodes (1743-1815), converted under the preaching of Whitefield, and for many years a Methodist preacher, wrote one really fine hymn, ‘My heart and voice I raise.’ Another of the early Methodist preachers, John Murlin, ‘the weeping prophet,’ published a small volume of hymns, some of which are quite as good as most of the eighteenth-century songs.

IV
Eighteenth-century Hymns

III.—The Olney Hymns

The contribution of evangelical Churchmen, apart from the Wesleys, to the hymnody of the eighteenth century, is slight, with the important exception of the remarkable collection of hymns issued by William Cowper and John Newton, which takes its title from the little Buckinghamshire town in which Newton was for years curate for an absentee vicar.

Our little England has been the mother of so many famous sons that it often happens that some out-of-the-way village or obscure country town is rich in memories of the great and good, for

Such a spot is Olney, the town of Cowper and of Cowper’s Mary, of John Newton, and for a time of Thomas Scott, of whom Newman speaks as ‘the writer who made a deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe 225 my soul.’[158] Where William Carey, after some hesitation on the ground of his slight abilities, was ‘allowed to go on preaching,’ and finally sent forth to the ministry by the unanimous vote of the Baptist Church, over which John Sutcliff presided. Where also Dr. H. J. Gauntlett, when a boy of ten, was organist at the parish church.[159]

The Olney hymns are at once the ‘monument’ of ‘an intimate and endeared friendship’ and of a memorable literary partnership. ‘The old African blasphemer’ must have felt it even more a matter of thankfulness that he found himself collaborating with William Cowper than that he should become minister of the nearest church to the Mansion House. John Newton’s romantic story is too well known to be repeated here. He is a unique figure in the Christian choir, and the story of our hymn-writers would be vastly poorer if his life were omitted.

Influenced, as he gladly recognized, by the mother who died when he was a boy of seven, his soul lay open to intellectual and spiritual impressions, even in the midst of his wanderings and sins. Euclid, as well as Thomas à Kempis, shared in the saving of his soul and kept him from sinking to the level of his companions and oppressors. His hair-breadth escapes were so many and so remarkable that he might well regard them as interpositions of Providence, indicating 226 that he was ‘a chosen vessel’ whom God had designated to special work when his hour should come.

Among the many interesting men who occupy secondary places in the religious life of the eighteenth century, he is one of the most interesting and attractive. The promise of his childhood blighted by the death of his mother, his restless, roving, adventurous manhood, his pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, his seven years’ faithful love for Mary Catlett, thoughts of whom were never absent from his mind for an hour amidst all his ‘misery and wretchedness,’ the unegotistic frankness of his Authentic Narrative, his profound and thankful modesty,

his genius for friendship, his good-humoured perplexity as to his proper theological and ecclesiastical affinities, his ready wit and manly tenderness, unite to make John Newton’s a name over which one may well linger.

He was a Calvinist for the same reason that the Wesleys were Arminians. They were convinced that only a love divine which included every soul of man could have stooped to them. Newton believed that only God’s determinate counsel could have set such wandering feet as his upon the rock and established his goings. To such elect souls the divers ways of contradictory theologies blend in the one path which leads the sinner to the Saviour. ‘The views,’ he says, ‘I 227 have received of the doctrines of grace, are essential to my peace, and I could not live a day or an hour without them.’ He found them ‘friendly to holiness,’ and it was not in him to be ‘ashamed of them.’ One of his favourite stories was of an old woman near Olney, whose views on predestination suited him exactly. ‘Ah! I have long settled that point; for if God had not chosen me before I was born, I am sure He would have seen nothing in me to have chosen me for afterwards.’ But we can well believe that he was not a satisfactory Calvinist from the ‘highest’ point of view. ‘There were two sorts of Calvinists at Olney,’ he said, ‘and they always reminded me of the two baskets of Jeremiah’s figs.’

His Churchmanship was like his Calvinism, convinced but liberal, almost easy-going. He writes to his friend, William Bull—

In truth, he also was one of those whom any Church might gladly have adopted. He would have been thoroughly happy and at home amongst the best of the Dissenters, he would have been an ideal Methodist, and his Narrative would have given an added glory to the Lives of Early Methodist Preachers; but, notwithstanding the difficulties which delayed his taking orders, he was in his right place as a parish clergyman, and had no reason to complain that he was not appreciated in the Establishment. His Apologia shows that when he desired to enter the ministry, Dissenters were quite as much afraid of him as Churchmen, and were as unwilling to ordain him as the archbishop himself.[160]

He entered the Church without any special prejudice in its favour, but his conviction that he had taken the right step grew stronger year by year. His defence of the Prayer-book against the criticism of the Dissenter who availed himself of Watts’s Psalms and Hymns is as effective as it is witty, and is enforced by a characteristic anecdote of a preacher who used to compose hymns line by line as he announced them from the pulpit.

Newton’s charity went a good deal beyond that of the ordinary evangelical of his own and of many a later day. In the Apologia he expresses with vigour his conviction that ‘the Lord has a people’ among the members of the Roman and Greek Churches.

Newton was not one of the great men of his age, but he is remarkable, if not pre-eminent, for the naturalness with which he speaks the common tongue of the children of God. Father Faber, in the preface to his Hymns, bears a somewhat reluctant witness to this.

If Faber deprecated the ‘spell’ of the Olney hymns, it is fair to remember that Newton concludes his defence of devout Catholics by saying, ‘However, I desire to be thankful that I am not a Papist.’

In 1764 the difficulties which beset his entrance to the ministry ended, and he was ordained by the Bishop 230 of Lincoln to the curacy of Olney, which had been secured for him by the Earl of Dartmouth,[161] a devout and liberal Churchman, commemorated in Cowper’s lines—

Newton was nearly forty when he entered upon his first clerical employment. A few months after his coming to Olney, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin stayed with him at the vicarage for about six weeks, and from that time they were bound together by the ties of a deep affection. Newton recognized with his usual shrewdness how much he was inferior to his friend in intellectual capacity, but he was able to give to the sorely tried poet, in his fits of depression, much comfort and a very patient friendship. When in 1773 one of Cowper’s worst attacks came on, he went to the vicarage and remained there for more than twelve months. It was no light trial to Newton, but he said, ‘I think I can hardly do or suffer too much for such a friend,’ and ‘upon the whole’ he was not weary of his ‘cross.’ It has sometimes, most ungenerously, been charged against Newton that his influence tended to produce, or to aggravate, the religious melancholy of the poet, but Cowper’s malady had been very pronounced long before 231 Newton met him. Richard Cecil, and more recently Canon Overton, have defended Newton against this accusation. Cowper’s morbid depression must have been much more trying to Newton than Newton’s humble, cheerful faith could have been to Cowper. Indeed, his playful poems addressed to John Newton and his wife and to their common friend, ‘the smoke-inhaling Bull’—the Independent minister of Newport Pagnell, whom Cowper calls ‘a man of letters and of genius.... but he smokes tobacco—nothing is perfect’—sufficiently show how genial and even jovial was their friendship. The fable that Nonconformist ministers and Evangelical clergymen are either rank hypocrites or intolerable dullards, though it had, and perhaps still has, the support of many great authorities, is only believed in circles profoundly ignorant of them.

Yet Newton must have been greatly indebted, especially as a hymn-writer, to Cowper. His hymns were all written during his residence at Olney, and he had intended that his share in the volume should have been much less than Cowper’s. Indeed, when his friend’s ‘long and affecting indisposition’ occurred, he laid the project aside for some time. In the end the collection appeared with sixty-eight of Cowper’s and two hundred and eighty of Newton’s. Of Cowper’s hymns, some few had been written before he went to Olney, e.g. ‘The Happy Change’ and ‘Retirement.’

Cowper is the one great hymn-writer who ranks 232 with the greater poets. Montgomery, Heber, Milman, all wrote ‘poems,’ but their enduring poetic monument is in their hymns. Had Cowper never written a hymn, he would have had fame sufficient as a poet; had he never written a ‘poem,’ he would still have lived through the ages as the writer of immortal hymns. Lord Selborne says that Cowper’s contributions to the Olney collection ‘are, almost without exception, worthy of his name’; but, as a fact, many of them are prosaic and feeble, apparently written as task work, perhaps to meet a challenge of Newton’s, or to follow a particular sermon. Cowper’s choicest hymns are too well known for quotation—

Like Watts, Doddridge, Beddome, and many others, Newton wrote his hymns for use after preaching or for some special occasion, such as the opening of a room at the Great House for prayer-meetings and children’s services. It was for this event that Cowper wrote

I do not suppose that the Olney hymns were often selected as a hymn-book for congregational use. The range of subjects is too narrow, and is so largely affected by the circumstances of composition, the sadness of Cowper’s prolonged illness, and the needs of the rustic worshippers, that it is, as a whole, more suited to private devotion than public worship, though from it may be gathered some of the most beautiful of the songs of Zion.

From twelve to twenty of the Olney hymns have won a permanent place in our hymn-books, but what is left is very far from being ‘empty chaff well meant for grain.’ Indeed, there are very few hymn-books of the eighteenth century so interesting as this. When you have picked out of Watts or Doddridge their best hymns, you find it a wearisome and profitless task to plod through the remainder. An outrageous rhyme is 234 a pleasing break in the dull monotony of the sentiment, but the Olney hymns, even at their feeblest, have life and vigour, and are often provokingly easy to remember. Their influence on modern hymnody has been all in favour of the expression of personal, individual experience, in which regard they may not unfairly be compared with many of the sublimest Psalms.

In Cowper’s verses there are often references to his own depressed and anxious state of mind, and pathetic prayers for deliverance or suggestions of comfortable thoughts.

THE CONTRITE HEART

THE WAITING SOUL

PRAYER FOR PATIENCE

Cowper’s hymns are not all the voice of the penitent or of the anxious believer. He shared Newton’s opinion as to the classification of Calvinists, and two of his compositions evidently refer to the second basket of figs. They illustrate Hazlitt’s criticism, ‘His satire is excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of the gentleman and the honest indignation of the virtuous man.’[162] The following verses are a good example of his satire.

A LIVING AND A DEAD FAITH

This is not a favourite strain of Cowper’s. His hymns are nearly always the expression of personal emotion or experience. We may close our quotations from his Olney hymns with one which expresses, in his own way, the common yearning of all who love our Lord Jesus Christ.

LONGING TO BE WITH CHRIST

Newton’s contribution to the Olney hymns is considerable both in quality and quantity. His preface disarms criticism.

It is quite refreshing to find a hymn-writer who describes himself thus. They have often been modest men and women, but have had a fairly good idea of the value of their own compositions.

Newton’s hymns are, even more than those of Watts or Doddridge, pastoral hymns. Other men wrote for the congregation, he wrote for his own particular congregation, and very often with a special reference to one member of it. We know that his sermons were suggested in this way. If ‘Sir Cowper’ had a bad fit, or the Vicarage maid, Molly, was ‘perplexed and tempted on the point of election,’ the kind-hearted pastor had a sermon and a hymn, suited to their ‘state,’ ready on Sunday.

Many of Newton’s pieces express much more of Cowper’s experience than of his own. In such lines as the following is not his eye upon 239 the sad figure in ‘the poet’s corner’ in the Great House?

That is what he has to say of ‘Confidence’ from Cowper’s point of view. When he speaks for himself he adopts a different tone.

Perhaps it was with Cowper in his mind he wrote that beautiful and touching hymn for private devotion, 240 which has been often most unjustly censured—‘’Tis a point I long to know.’ Newton, like Bunyan, knew how sincere a pilgrim Mr. Little Faith was, and each in his own way sought to comfort him. There is good robust common sense in the prayer of the last two verses. In strength and beauty it does not compare with Cowper’s hymn on the same text, ‘Lovest thou Me?’ which Mr. Gladstone reckoned one of the three greatest English hymns; but it belongs to the Christian treasury, and has brought help to many.

The tenderness of ‘the old African blasphemer’s’ heart is nowhere more touchingly illustrated than in his version of Isa. liv. 5-11, which must surely have been written for Cowper, since it quotes and emphasizes the words of his own great hymn. It has five eight-line verses, and is headed ‘To the Afflicted, Tossed with Tempest, and not Comforted.’

Richard Cecil says that Herbert was a ‘favourite’ of Newton’s, and there are not wanting reminiscences of Herbert in the Olney hymns, though Newton had little of Herbert’s ingenuity or power, and he says in a few plain words what Herbert weaves into a quaint poem, bright and ever-memorable with some ‘conceit’ such as he only conceived. If we set Newton and Herbert side by side, the comparison is, of course, all in favour of Herbert. Herbert speaks to himself and to God in what is an unknown tongue to many a good plain Christian. Newton wrote for his simple labouring folk at Olney; he is the poet of the rustic prayer-meeting. Bemerton and Olney were both villages in the land of Beulah, but there is a difference in the 242 dialect, which is easily accounted for when we remember the contrast between the life of Herbert and of Newton. When they passed through a similar spiritual experience they described it in very different fashion, but, though there are diversities of gifts, there is the same Spirit; there is the same self-distrust, self-abhorrence; and there is the same calm acceptance of the great salvation and its joys. George Herbert tells his deepest, sweetest experience in the final poem of The Temple.[163] Newton tells his story in simple, homely verse that is not poetry, but is prayer and praise expressed in natural rhythm.

IV
Eighteenth-century Hymns

IV.—Addison, Toplady, and Others

A few other hymn-writers of the eighteenth century remain to be mentioned. The first writer is of a very different class from those of the later years. In 1712 Joseph Addison published six hymns in successive numbers of the Spectator. One was by Dr. Watts; the others were undoubtedly his own, though the authorship has been claimed for others. The hymns themselves are the work of a devout man of letters, and, without being exactly ‘popular,’ have been and still are extensively used. They have the easy grace of Addison’s prose-writings, and his name made them at once acceptable to all classes. They belong to no school, and are used by all the Churches.

The six hymns are—‘The Lord my pasture shall prepare’; ‘When all Thy mercies, O my God’; ‘When Israel, freed from Pharaoh’s hand’ (Watts); ‘The spacious firmament on high’; ‘How are Thy servants blest, O Lord’; ‘When rising from the bed of death.’

John Cennick (1718-55) had much of Newton’s simplicity and sincerity, though he had not his touches of genius or any trace of the old sea-farer’s raciness. Cennick was ‘found’ by John Wesley at Reading, in 1739, and was one of his earliest lay-preachers. But he adopted Calvinistic views, and soon left the Methodists and attached himself to Whitefield, whom he served as a brother beloved for several years. He bore reproach, violence, hardship, with the courage which characterized the itinerants of that day of either school of theology. He separated from Wesley in 1741, from Whitefield in 1745, and found a more congenial home among the Moravians. He was ordained a deacon, and ministered in London and Dublin. He it was who earned for Protestants of the Methodist type the nickname of ‘swaddlers,’ so long common in Ireland. ‘A name given to Mr. Cennick, first by a Popish priest, who heard him speak of a Child wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and probably did not know the expression was in the Bible, a book he was not much acquainted with.’[164]

Cennick was vacillating, and apparently easily influenced by stronger minds than his own, but he was not able to keep up a quarrel, and, ten years after his defection from Wesley, wrote him an affectionate letter, in which he wishes ‘heartily that Christians conferring together had hindered the making that wide space between us and you.’ Whitefield, though he had 245 suffered a larger defection from his Society than Wesley, bore Cennick no ill will, but kept up an affectionate correspondence with him to the end. ‘My dear John,’ he wrote in 1747, ‘I wish thee much success, and shall always pray that the work of the Lord may prosper in thy hands.’[165] Cennick continued his abundant labours till 1755, when he died in London in his thirty-seventh year.

but there is very little trace of Cennick’s hymn in Charles Wesley’s. Canon Ellerton calls the hymn ‘a recast by Charles Wesley,’ and adds, ‘Cennick’s hymn is poor stuff compared to that into which Wesley recast it, putting into it at once fire and tunefulness.’ This, however, is an inaccurate statement of the facts. Probably Cennick’s hymn suggested Wesley’s, but this is the only share Cennick had in it.

Cennick’s hymn was published in 1752, Wesley’s in 246 1758. In 1760 Martin Madan pieced together six verses, five (with some alterations) from these two hymns, and one from another of Wesley’s. Neither Cennick’s original nor Madan’s can be compared with Wesley’s fine verses, which are best left as he wrote them.[166] The following is Cennick’s original—

Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-78) was a devout clergyman, converted through the preaching of a Methodist in Ireland. His ‘Arminian prejudices’ received an ‘effectual shock’ in 1758. His ministry at Broad Hembury, and in the French Reformed Church, Leicester Fields, was greatly valued, and his sincere piety impressed all who knew him.

He was one of the most violent opponents of Wesley and Fletcher in the Calvinistic controversy, and expressed himself in unmeasured terms. He was a good man, with deep convictions and narrow views. Yet he touched human hearts as few other hymn-writers have ever done. To have written ‘Rock of Ages’ would have been fame enough for a much greater man than Toplady. It appeared in a curious and unpromising setting. Toplady was editing the Gospel Magazine, and in 1776 published a Spiritual Improvement of a Catechism on the National Debt, in which he strives to estimate the number of individual sins a man 248 may be expected to commit in the course of his earthly life.

Toplady wrote a good many hymns, but no other compares with this great universal prayer, probably the best-known and best-loved hymn in the language. He was essentially a Methodist, his Calvinism being, one might almost say, accidental. His hymns have the tone and even the mannerisms of Charles Wesley.[168] Many of them are good devotional reading. The following verses will remind many readers of some well-known lines of Charles Wesley—

In no part of the kingdom was the Evangelical Revival more influential than in Wales. Whitefield, Howell Harris, and, perhaps more than all, Lady Huntingdon, were the controlling minds, and they led the people of the Principality to the Calvinistic rather than to the Wesleyan Methodists. The quaint poetry of Vicar Rees Prichard’s Welshman’s Candle and the Psalms of Archdeacon Prys seem to have been the songs of the Welsh Church until William Williams of Pantycelyn arose—a great light, well worthy to be called the Watts of Wales. His father was deacon of an Independent Church, which at one time met ‘in a cave during the hours of twilight,’ for fear of their enemies. Williams himself was studying medicine, and had no thought of the ministry. One Sunday morning, as he passed through Talgarth in Breconshire, he went into the parish church. After the service the congregation gathered in the churchyard, and Howell Harris, standing on a tomb-stone, preached with the Holy Ghost and with power. That was the hour of Williams’s conversion. He prepared for the ministry of the Established Church, and was ordained deacon in 251 1740. He acted as curate of two small parishes for three years, and then, drawn into the current of the Revival under the influence of Whitefield, David Rowlands, and Howell Harris, he became an earnest evangelist, travelling throughout the Principality. His hymn-writing is said to have been occasioned by a challenge of Howell Harris to the Welsh Calvinistic preachers to write better hymns than their congregations then possessed. He wrote hymns by the hundred, and they won an immediate and enduring popularity in Wales. ‘What Paul Gerhardt has been to Germany, what Isaac Watts has been to England, that and more has William Williams of Pantycelyn been to Wales.’[169] He was a great favourite with Lady Huntingdon, at whose suggestion he prepared a volume of hymns for Whitefield’s Orphan House. In this work, entitled Gloria in Excelsis, some of his best hymns appeared. In modern hymn-books he is known by two hymns—

It is probable that the English version of his greatest hymn was written by himself, and this seems to indicate that he suffers in translation, for none of the English versions of his other poems is to be compared with this. Mr. Garrett Horder thinks that ‘Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah’ has been largely supplanted by 252 ‘Lead, kindly Light,’ though the most recent hymn-books do not sustain this criticism. Keble re-wrote, but failed to improve it; and the same may be said of those who have made minor alterations. It is, and is likely to remain, one of the great songs of the Christian pilgrim in his progress from this world unto that which is to come.

Mr. Elvet Lewis has given several translations of hymns hitherto unknown to English people, which are good reading, though perhaps none are likely to attain extensive use. Here are two verses in Williams’s favourite metre—

Here are two more in another metre, and with the cheery rhythm of John Newton—

Williams had the spirit of devout enthusiasm which characterized the Revival; his missionary hymns, though not among the best, are among the earliest of that class, and he had the rapt devotion to his Lord which is ever the inspiration of the true hymn-writer.

V
Nineteenth-century Hymns

I.—Anglican Hymns

The hymns of the eighteenth century are almost without exception by writers of the Dissenting, Methodist, or Evangelical schools. In the nineteenth century the tide turns, and though the Nonconformists are not without hymn-writers of distinction, the great hymns are by Anglicans. Henry Francis Lyte in the first half of the century, Bishop Bickersteth, Charlotte Elliott, and Miss Havergal in the second, represent the Evangelical school. Heber was a typical Anglican, but he was not of the Tractarian type, and died before the publication of the Christian Year. Keble and Newman were the poets of the Oxford Movement, and gave a distinctive tone to much of the later Church hymn-writing; but Heber, more than any other man, did for the Church of England what Watts had done for the Nonconformists.

Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was a scholar and a gentleman, his churchmanship was unimpeachable, and 255 his life and death alike served to win acceptance for hymns whose intrinsic worth must have secured the widest recognition. His hymns, like those of Herbert, Keble, and many of our sweetest singers, are hymns of the country parsonage, and seem all to have been written whilst he held the family living of Hodnet, to which he was welcomed by the people as ‘Master Reginald.’ He was little better satisfied with Tate and Brady than Watts had been with Barton, and at one time contemplated using the Olney hymns in his church. Then he projected a more ambitious scheme, and hoped, with the help of Milman, Southey, and Walter Scott, to provide a book which might, perhaps under episcopal sanction, become the authorized hymnal of the Church. But he felt the proposal a bold one, and tried to prepare the way by the publication in the Christian Observer of a few hymns which he described as ‘part of an intended series appropriate to the Sundays and principal holy days of the year, connected in some degree with their particular collects and gospels, and designed to be sung between the Nicene Creed and the sermon.’ Like other reformers, he indulges in criticisms of the hymns then in use, and is especially severe in censuring those which address our Lord ‘with ditties of embraces of passion.’ The hymn-book was duly compiled, and specimens were submitted to Bishop Howley in the hope that he might give it an episcopal benediction. It is curious to note the apologetic tone in which Heber writes.

The Bishop criticized freely, generally approved and advised the completion of the project; but Heber was called to Calcutta, and the collection was not published until after his death. It contained fifty-seven hymns of his own, twelve of Milman’s, and twenty-nine others. His object had been to obtain ‘a well-selected and sanctioned book of hymns for the Church of England, to supersede the unauthorized and often very improper compositions now in use.’ He did not secure 257 this, but he prepared the way for something better, and may justly be regarded as the first of the modern Anglican hymn-writers. His best hymns are too well known to need comment, and of the rest comparatively few are of special value in public worship. His hymns owe more to the inspiration of the Gospels than the Psalms. The collect or gospel for the day often explains and throws new light upon a hymn, as in this for the Second Sunday after Trinity, the gospel being the Parable of the Great Supper. It is usually regarded as a Communion hymn.

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868), who died Dean of St. Paul’s, is famous as an historian rather than a hymn-writer, but his few hymns have a wide popularity. In

he has shown how fine and true a hymn may be, though it departs from recognized devotional form. It is 258 a meditation of a highly rhetorical kind, and apostrophizes but does not address our Lord. By some editors this is regarded as fatal to its inclusion in a collection of hymns, but the common judgement of Christian congregations is right. It has proved itself a hymn in spite of all rules, and is an excellent spiritual song for Palm Sunday.

In the year (1827) of the publication of Heber’s Hymns, written and adapted to the Weekly Church Services of the Year, Keble issued anonymously the most influential devotional work of the nineteenth century, The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holy Days throughout the Year. Like Ken’s festival hymns, it was not a hymn-book, and was not meant for use in Church services, though from a few of the poems verses may be taken which make hymns of the very best type. Pusey regarded it as ‘the real source of the Oxford Movement,’ of which Newman also thought Keble ‘the true and primary author,’ though he ‘ever considered and kept’ July 14, 1832, the day when Keble preached his sermon on ‘National Apostasy,’ ‘as the start of the religious movement.’ Of the Christian Year Newman says, ‘Keble struck an original note, and woke up in the hearts of thousands a new music, the music of a school long unknown in England.’ But the teaching of the Oxford Movement was rather latent than patent in the Christian Year, and it would be a great mistake to regard it as influencing that religious revival or even 259 the English Church alone. On the other hand, Hurrell Froude feared that the authorship of the Christian Year would be attributed to a Methodist.[172] It was as important an element in the Movement as Charles Wesley’s hymns were in the Evangelical Revival. In each case the influence extended far beyond those who claim the poems as their special heritage.

Keble regarded the Church as in a state of desolation, decay, and apostasy. He knew nothing of the glorious optimism of the Wesleys, who saw everywhere signs of the speedy triumph of the gospel and the coming of Christ’s kingdom. They sang

They saw in the ingatherings to their scattered Societies the assurance of abounding blessing

Yet, when he forgets the depression of the time, and turns to the consolations of eternity, he shows how firmly he believed his own motto, ‘In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’ He has the sure trust and confidence of all God’s chosen, and at times kindles into holy rapture. The prevailing tone, however, is of sadness—the depression of the saint, not the perplexity of the doubter.

In 1839 Keble published, also anonymously, his metrical version of the Psalms. He had intended it to be a substitute for Tate and Brady, and had hoped to secure episcopal sanction for its use in the dioceses of Oxford and Winchester. It is, however, more interesting from the standpoint of the expositor than the hymnologist, very few of its versions being adapted to congregational use. The Lyra Innocentium, published anonymously in 1846, is vastly inferior to his great work, and has little to recommend it to those who are not in sympathy with the High Church Movement.

After Heber and Keble all that there was of justice in Montgomery’s sarcastic complaint, that hymns had been written by ‘all sorts of persons except poets’[174] is 261 gone. They were poets first, hymn-writers afterwards. Keble’s greatest hymn is taken from his ‘Verses for Evening,’ which begins as a poem, and rises from meditation to praise and prayer. The earlier verses are not suitable for a hymn-book, but the beauty of the later lines is only fully realized when they are remembered.

There is surely no more beautiful illustration of the way in which the Christian rises from Nature up to Nature’s God.

As in the case of so many hymns, the part is greater than the whole. The six verses universally selected are not improved by the addition of others—though they have much to commend them.

John Henry Newman (1801-90) belongs to Anglican hymn-writers in virtue of his ‘Lead, kindly Light,’ though it may almost be described as his farewell to the Church of England. It marks at least the beginning 262 of his long-drawn-out parting from the Establishment. Few hymns have won a wider popularity, and no doubt it has done much to accustom Nonconformist Churches to sympathize with the poetic and emotional side of the Oxford Movement. This hymn and the Christian Year made absolute want of sympathy with the new devotion impossible. Moreover, the tone of perplexity, the confession of bewilderment, the sense of ‘encircling gloom,’ fell in with the prevailing spirit of religious emotion. To many men of his own school the hymn meant something very different from what it means to the average worshipper, who finds in it a comfortable sedative for vague religious depression. I confess that personally the hymn does not seem to me as great as its reputation, but it has brought help and comfort to myriads. Dr. Wm. Barry says—

Newman’s other great hymn, ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height,’ which owes its popularity largely to Mr. Gladstone’s affection for it—though it is in itself a fine hymn—belongs to his Romanist days.

There was room for the new teaching. Perhaps Methodism was a little too buoyant, Evangelicalism too contented, and the Church was ready for a fresh upheaval.

Coincidently with the rise of the Oxford Movement came, as we have seen, the rolling away of the reproach of hymn-singing. Even the strongholds of the Establishment capitulated, and hymns formed an important part in the new propaganda. Stanch Churchmen had disliked hymn-singing. To quote Canon Ellerton—

The Evangelicals adopted the custom easily, and with delight. Cowper, Newton, Toplady, Hervey, Watts, Doddridge, and even Wesley, were no strangers to them. But for the Calvinistic trouble, they all minded the same things. They had no difficulty in regard to fellowship with Nonconformists in worship or in work. It has been the fashion to disparage the Evangelicals, and to regard the ‘Clapham Sect’ as a coterie of ill-informed, self-satisfied Pharisees; but for solid, practical Christianity it would be difficult to find any ‘school’ that outrivals them. The ‘Clapham Sect’ knew little 264 and cared less for priestly rights or the niceties of ritual. They may have been slack in the observance of fast and vigil, but they kept the fast of God, breaking the bonds of wickedness and letting the oppressed go free. The men who were the backbone of the anti-slavery movement, who were nursing fathers to the Bible Society, and established the Church Missionary Society, were not narrow-minded bigots, but held the true Catholic Faith concerning the kingdom of God.

Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847), whose highest preferment was the Perpetual Curacy of Lower Brixham, ranks, as a hymn-writer, with Ken and Keble. While ministering to his ‘dear fishermen,’ he wrote many a lovely hymn, and one of unsurpassed beauty. ‘Abide with me’ was his swan-song. He died, like Toplady, of consumption, and felt the pain and pathos of death in the prime of life. In a most tender poem he has recorded that common but infinitely pathetic grief. It is interesting to contrast the subdued sadness, the patient submission of Lyte with the triumphant ecstasy of Toplady’s ‘Deathless principle, arise.’

This was the view of death taken by the Evangelicals in the eighteenth century. The gospel of the great Revival brought life and immortality to light, robbed death of all its terrors, and made heaven seem, even to young men, far better than earth. The nineteenth century had not the glowing rapture of the earlier time. Moreover, its interest in works of Christian philanthropy, its awakening to the great missionary call, made the life and work of the day infinitely important and interesting. Christian men began to realize that heaven lay beyond the golden glory of the sunset sky, and felt, with those of the older dispensation, that it was a calamity for the sun to go down while it was yet day. Lyte felt with Anne Brontë—

Lyte’s sorrow was not that he feared to change the earthly for the heavenly, but that he longed to have done enduring work e’er the night fell.

Was ever faithful prayer more abundantly answered? ‘He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest it, even length of days for ever and ever.’

Christopher Wordsworth (1807-85), Bishop of Lincoln, nephew of the poet, was of set purpose a writer of hymns for congregational use. He taught that hymns should express the feeling of the Church, and not of the individual worshipper. He thought it ‘inexpressibly shocking’ that ‘Jesu, Lover of my soul’ should be sung in Westminster Abbey, at least, so I understand his reference to ‘a large, mixed congregation in a dissolute part of a populous and irreligious city.’[178] His hymns are objective, and the best—e.g. ‘O day of rest and gladness,’ ‘See the Conqueror mounts in triumph’—are very fine. Bishop Wordsworth did not ‘translate any ancient hymns, but attempted to infuse something of their spirit into’ his own.

The Holy Year was a distinct contribution to the literature of the Anglican Revival. Very inferior in strength and beauty to the Christian Year, it was more useful to editors of hymn-books, and it helped to concentrate interest upon the selection of hymns suited to the Church year. Bishop Wordsworth kept closely to the Prayer-book ideal of devotion, and some of his 268 less-known poems are illustrative of its special teaching. A good example is the hymn for the Second Sunday in Advent, which he inscribed, ‘Christ ever coming in Holy Scripture.’

But the Anglican hymn-writers of the nineteenth century are too many for detailed comment in my 269 fast-failing space. It is a glorious choir, including Joseph Anstice, who had so powerful an influence over Mr. Gladstone in his Oxford days;[179] Dean Alford, Dr. Monsell, Sir H. W. Baker, Dean Stanley, Bishops Mant, How, and Bickersteth, Canon Bright, Godfrey Thring, Canon Ellerton, S. J. Stone, Canon Twells, Laurence Tuttiett, S. Baring-Gould, among the clergy; Mrs. Alexander, Charlotte Elliott, Frances Ridley Havergal, Sir R. Grant, W. Chatterton Dix, among the laity.

Sir Henry Williams Baker (1821-77) wrote the lovely sacramental version of Ps. xxiii.: ‘The King of love my Shepherd is.’ One verse he repeated with his dying breath—

He is one of the simplest and most attractive of hymn-writers, and the inclusion of his hymns in Nonconformist hymnals is a great gain. His greatest service to Anglican hymnody was the editing of Hymns Ancient and Modern—a truly epoch-making (or perhaps epoch-marking) book.

While Baker was at work in his Herefordshire vicarage, John Ellerton (1826-93) was writing hymns 270 and essays on hymns in his rural or semi-rural parsonages. Ellerton had a rare gift in writing for special occasions. His great funeral hymn, ‘Now the labourer’s task is o’er,’ has a sombre strength which is full of comfort and trust. ‘Behold us, Lord, a little space’ is an ideal hymn for a week-day service, and ‘In the Name which earth and heaven’ is the grandest of all hymns for the laying of the foundation-stone of a church.[180] Without being a High-Churchman, Ellerton was a thorough-going Anglican, and his poetry has the restraint, the good taste, and the dignity which beseem a great Church.

S. J. Stone (1839-1900), unlike most clerical hymn-writers, was not a country parson, though his best hymns were written before he began his work in East London. But even in its dreary wastes he found the true poetry of life, and some of his obscure parishioners at Haggerston are richly shrined in his memorial verses. I feel all the more moved by the triumphant tones of ‘The Church’s one foundation,’ all the more tenderly impressed by ‘Weary of earth, and laden with my sin,’ when I remember how dear to his heart were the struggling, toiling masses of his dull East London parish. His best hymns are well known, so I quote a sonnet which expresses his love for those who live in the crowded city.

From Windermere, To the Congregation and Children of St. Paul’s, Haggerston.

Bishop Bickersteth demands mention, not only for his own beautiful hymns, but for his successful editing of the Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer. Edward Bickersteth’s Christian Psalmody was, in its day, one of the best and most catholic hymnals. In the Hymnal Companion, his son provided for a later generation the more complete and worthy hymn-book which the growth of hymnody made possible. Of Bishop Bickersteth’s own hymns, a few are amongst those universally accepted. His Communion Hymn, to the regret of many, is absent from the Methodist Hymn-book.

This aspect of the Lord’s Supper, the proclamation of the Lord’s death ’till He come,’ must ever be present to the mind of the devout communicant. The hymn—especially in its last verse—is full of the gracious, subdued trustfulness which befits the Christian as he commemorates the Atoning Sacrifice and looks 273 forward to glad, eternal communion with those who have gone before, when once again our Lord Himself shall break the bread and drink the wine with His disciples in the Father’s kingdom.

Dean Stanley (1815-81) was not a poet, though he wrote the best English hymn on the Transfiguration. I mention him here, however, to quote some verses of his stirring national hymn, worthy of a Dean of Westminster. It is of a type that, I think, ought to be represented in our hymnals, and especially those intended for school use. Why should not such hymns as this and Mr. Gill’s ‘Lift thy song among the nations’ stir and consecrate the patriotism of our up-growing girls and boys? Dean Stanley’s hymn is very long. I quote less than half. In the Westminster Abbey Hymn-book it is assigned to the Accession.

Of the eighteenth century, Miss Steele and Mrs. Barbauld are almost the only women whose hymns survive to-day. In the nineteenth century, however, there are not a few women whose songs are likely to endure. Charlotte Elliott, Cecil Frances Alexander, Anna Lætitia Waring, have written immortal hymns, and it will be long ere Frances Ridley Havergal is absent from the songs of the Church. It is safe to 275 prophesy that ‘Just as I am,’ ‘There is a green hill far away,’ and ‘Father, I know that all my life,’ will be sung through many generations—as long, indeed, as English Christianity endures.

Charlotte Elliott (1791-1871), who belonged to a famous evangelical Church family, is one of many who learnt in suffering what she taught in song. Her greatest hymn, ‘Just as I am,’ was first published in the Invalid’s Hymn-book (1836), and, without her knowledge, was reprinted and widely circulated. In no other hymn has the sinner’s way to the Saviour been made more plain. Through the penitential self-despair of its earlier verses countless numbers of the weary and heavy-laden have found rest unto their souls, and entered into the joyous confidence of its closing lines. Wordsworth’s daughter, Dora, received the hymn in her last illness, and her husband wrote to the authoress, ‘At least ten times that day she asked me to repeat it to her,’ and every morning she asked for it again till the end came. After her death it formed part of her mother’s ‘daily solitary prayer.’

Miss Elliott is the truest and the best representative of the early evangelical Church hymn-writers. Many of her little-known hymns are very beautiful. I quote two pieces, notwithstanding a breath of Calvinism in them both, for it is a Calvinism that has good Scripture warrant.

The following lines are evidently in part suggested by her own great hymn. The text is ‘Into Thine hand 277 I commit my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth’ (Ps. xxxi. 5)—

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-79) was full of the gladness of God’s chosen, and her songs illustrate Faber’s verse—

After her conversion she knew nothing of Wesley’s experience of the ‘howling wilderness’; to her the night was never dark, as it was to Newman, and she was never far from home. Her hymns overflow with exultant faith.

It would, perhaps, be unsafe to predict that any of Miss Havergal’s hymns will rank among the songs that cannot die, but they will certainly be long loved and sung. Her consecration hymns, especially ‘Lord, speak to me that I may speak,’ are solemn and impressive, and are, perhaps, her best. But her triumphant songs are often very fine, though they are not always well sustained. Her Advent hymn has the triumphant rapture of the soul that goes out to meet her Lord.

Cecil Frances Alexander (1823-95) may almost be called the first writer of real children’s hymns. Dr. Watts was not happy in his Divine and Moral Songs, and some of Charles Wesley’s most horrible verses are to be found in his Hymns for Children. It is true that Watts wrote some simple lyrics which seem to have suited our prim little ancestors, and that Charles Wesley wrote ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,’ but even the manners and beliefs of the devout souls of that time cannot altogether excuse some of his hymns, which must have frightened many a poor little Methodist out of his wits.

Anne and Jane Taylor’s Hymns for Infant Minds are too infantile, though they served their generation well, and led on from Watts to Mrs. Alexander. The Taylors had a happy knack of conveying Scripture history and teaching in simple verse. I do not know a better definition of repentance than—

But Mrs. Alexander combines with the winsome simplicity which charms and instructs a little child, the power to speak to the child in the heart of the man. Never has the gospel story been told to children and to child-like souls more attractively than in ‘Once in royal David’s city’ and ‘There is a green hill far away.’ Since our Church hymnals began to include 280 a section for children, Mrs. Alexander has been a large contributor. Even yet, when we have a considerable number of good children’s hymns, there are none better than hers. Of course she wrote other hymns, but these are her glory, her most precious contribution to the hymn-book of the modern Church. ‘Her character,’ says Archbishop Alexander, ‘was based and moulded upon the best teaching of the original Oxford movement,’[184] but she had little sympathy with mere ritualism. Well known and loved as many of her hymns are, her collected Poems include, among the less familiar pieces, much of value and interest. She made for the Irish Church Hymnal a fine translation of the Breastplate of St. Patrick, a hymn which belongs to the Celtic, not to the Roman Church.

To these hymn-writers we may add the poetesses Christina G. Rossetti and Jean Ingelow. Miss Rossetti wrote very little that is really adapted for use in public worship. There is much, however, to justify the inclusion in a hymn-book of such verses as, ‘None other Lamb, none other Name,’[186] though they are more fitting for private prayer than for social worship. The same is not equally true of Miss Ingelow’s poem, ‘And didst Thou love the race that loved not Thee?’ for the verses usually selected form a true hymn. The last verse is—

Of laymen I can mention only a few names here. Mr. W. Chatterton Dix has written more good hymns than those known to our hymn-books. Francis Turner Palgrave (1824-97), whose Treasury of Sacred Song is our best anthology, also wrote hymns which, it seems to me, deserve a wider use than they have attained. His best-known hymn, without being of 282 the popular type, is of the class which is appreciated by many in these days of perplexity and unrest.

Other hymns by Professor Palgrave are, ‘O thou not made with hands,’ ‘Star of morn and even,’ ‘Thou that once on mother’s knee.’

I close this section of my lecture with a few verses which have, as far as I know, not yet found a place in any hymnal. They are from a Communion hymn by Mr. Gladstone. They may rightly be included in the hymns of the Anglican Revival.

‘Mr. Gladstone’s mind and heart,’ says Mr. G. W. E. Russell, ‘were already attuned to the new teaching, and prepared to receive it, even though he had not paid much attention to the controversy. It was in 1836 that he wrote his hymn on the Holy Communion.’ Mr. Russell gives the following verses—

It is at once necessary and almost superfluous to say that I know how much has been left unsaid, how many names there are deserving mention, how many hymns that might be referred to, but in such a fruitful land the gleanings are richer than the vintage of former years.

V
Nineteenth-century Hymns

II.—Free Church Hymns

As we have seen, the honours of hymn-writing during the period referred to are undoubtedly with the Anglicans, though Heber and Keble belong to an earlier time. But this sweeping assertion of Mr. Llewellyn Davis ought to have been impossible if he had remembered Horatius Bonar, certainly one of the greatest English hymn-writers. There are also George Rawson, T. T. Lynch, T. H. Gill, George Matheson, and, every Methodist would add, William M. Bunting.

It must be remembered also that the Free Churches were already rich in hymns when the nineteenth century 286 dawned, whilst the Tractarians had to make, translate, or borrow from the Nonconformists, hymns for their special needs. Methodism had an ample supply of hymns for such Church festivals as it desired, and the observance of festivals and other ecclesiastical occasions was only gradually adopted in the older Nonconforming Churches. When at length they felt the need for such hymns as form the characteristic portions of Anglican hymnody they were already to hand; and after the first natural prejudice against everything that savoured of the ritualistic movement had passed away, they found hymns intended to be the exclusive property of the Anglicans admirably suited to their own newly awakened Church consciousness. There is something delightful and even amusing in the readiness with which such hymns as ‘The Church’s one Foundation’ and ‘Onward, Christian soldiers’ have been adopted by all the denominations. The Baptist and the Bible Christian sing with as simple confidence as the highest of Anglicans:

They may have different thoughts as to Apostolic Succession, but as long as we believe that where 287 Christ is there is the Church such hymns belong to all.

But though Nonconformity was rich in hymns and could take without scruple many of the Anglican songs, the nineteenth century was very far from being altogether barren in regard to the Free Churches.

Two hymn-writers mark the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century—James Montgomery and Thomas Kelly. They lived, it is true, into the second half of the last century, but their hymns are an aftermath of the Evangelical Revival. The later Oxford Movement did not affect them, and their songs might all have belonged to the earlier period, save for the missionary enthusiasm which inspires some of their best efforts.

James Montgomery (1771-1854) was the son of a Moravian minister, who died in the West Indies whilst the poet was at school. He was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, lived for a time in Ireland, and having been educated at the Brethren’s school at Fulneck, after a few unsuccessful experiments, settled to work at Sheffield as assistant to the editor of a local newspaper. He was a man of strong convictions, and did not hide his light under a bushel. He was rewarded by two terms of imprisonment, which he turned to profitable account by writing poems. His was the usual fate of honest men persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Montgomery’s name is one of the chief glories of this city,[191] where he wrought 288 with head and heart and hand for freedom and for righteousness. ‘The Climbing Boy’ is a memorial of his part in the great philanthropic movements of which Lord Shaftesbury was the leader. ‘The West Indies’—a poem which has lines here and there which Cowper or even William Watson might have written—celebrates the time

‘Greenland’ commemorates his inherited love of missions, and the curious ‘Thoughts on Wheels’—a satire upon State lotteries—reminds us that Montgomery anticipated the Daily News in refusing to insert advertisements of a ‘national nuisance.’ We are accustomed to think of Montgomery as a gracious Moravian poet, whose most appropriate place was the platform of a Methodist missionary meeting, but he passed through storm and tempest, through privation and struggle, to the peaceful haven of his later years. Montgomery was a Moravian all his life, a Methodist the greater part of it, and a Churchman toward the end. Once again, we may say, ‘Such he was as every Christian Church would rejoice to have adopted.’ Indeed, through its hymn-book, every Church has adopted him, and in some of the best modern collections Montgomery is more often heard than Watts.[192]

Montgomery cherished no illusion as to his poetic powers. He hoped that his Poems might be read for a generation, but that his Hymns would be his lasting memorial. ‘The World before the Flood’ and ‘The Wanderer in Switzerland’ are forgotten, and little likely to be revived; but such hymns as ‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed’ and ‘For ever with the Lord’ will be sung through the centuries.

The first of these is not only Montgomery’s finest psalm-version, but an unsurpassed rendering of a triumphant Messianic psalm. It owes something to the instinctive wisdom with which the best verses have been selected, and to a few editorial touches.[193] One can well imagine the thrill with which it was heard in Pitt Street Chapel, Liverpool, when the author recited the hymn at the close of a missionary speech, and how Adam Clarke rejoiced to add this magnificent rendering of the 72nd Psalm to his Commentary. It is, I think, a finer and a much closer rendering of the ‘Psalm for Solomon’ than Watts’s great version. When urged by Dr. Clarke to attempt a complete version of the Psalms, Montgomery said that he feared to touch the harp of Zion. He did, however, paraphrase 290 about fifty or sixty psalms with more than average success.

It is sometimes said that ‘Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire’ is not ‘in the true sense’ a hymn, but this is to take too narrow a view of the term. It excellently illustrates the way in which devout meditation ends in prayer. Had the last verse been omitted, it would have been a religious poem, not a hymn, but this throws upon all that precedes it the light of devotion. Each verse looks forward to the last—

It is superfluous to refer to all Montgomery’s contributions to our hymn-books, but we must ever gratefully remember such pieces as his Communion hymn

It is remarkable that editors should have thought it necessary to meddle (as indeed Montgomery himself did) with the second line of this verse, thinking it ‘unscriptural,’ although the very word ‘pray’ is taken from the lips of our Lord.

and a solemn meditation on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection, rising at the last into actual prayer—

In Montgomery, as in all great hymn-writers, the word of Christ dwelt richly, and his songs are full of the thoughts and phrases of the Psalter and the New Testament. Some of his sacred poems, though unsuitable for congregational singing, are good devotional reading. I quote one such, which seems to me to deserve something better than the place he gave it in the Appendix to his Poetical Works.

CHRIST THE PURIFIER

Thomas Kelly (1769-1854), who was in Ireland what Williams of Pantycelyn was in Wales, wrote nearly 800 hymns, the vast majority of which belong to the same class as the masses of the forgotten hymns of pious Dissenting pastors in the eighteenth century. They are often redeemed from absolute dullness only by his love for curious rhymes, e.g. ‘hers is’ and ‘mercies.’ He illustrates abundantly how easy it is to have rhyme and rhythm without a suggestion of poetry, as in this verse—

It is amazing that a man who could at times write so well should, as a rule, write so feebly. Yet Kelly’s hymns have had a great popularity, and a few are firmly fixed in all our hymn-books. His best are—‘Look, ye 293 saints, the sight is glorious,’ ‘Through the day Thy love hath spared us,’ ‘We sing the praise of Him who died,’ ‘The Head that once was crowned with thorns,’ and that most inspiring and comforting missionary valediction, ‘Speed Thy servants, Saviour, speed them.’

Josiah Conder (1789-1855) was a poet and an expert editor. His Congregational Hymn-book (1836) marks a new era in the devotional service of Nonconformity. He was in some cases a grievous sinner in regard to alterations, and was often very unhappy in his emendations.[194] Some of his original poems are very beautiful, especially his short hymns and his versions of Prayer-book collects, e.g. ‘Bread of heaven on Thee I feed,’ and the beautiful paraphrase of the Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity, with which the Methodist Hymn-book closes. Conder belongs to both centuries. His hymns are often of the dull didactic type of the earlier time, but he caught something of the spirit of the later day. Of his longer hymns the following is a good specimen. It is found in many hymnals.

Thomas Toke Lynch (1818-71), an Independent minister, whose delicate health often interrupted his labours, published in 1855 a little book of poems which roused an extraordinary storm. It is difficult to understand how such an inoffensive book as The Rivulet could make any great sensation, but the theological mind was more sensitive, if not more restless, than it is to-day. The ‘Rivulet Controversy,’ in which the redoubtable Dr. John Campbell was the prime 295 mover, is long forgotten, but a few of the hymns survive. The best known is, ‘Gracious Spirit, dwell with me.’[195] Lynch is an important contributor to Congregational and Baptist hymnals, but he is practically unknown to Anglican books, and is not represented in the Presbyterian Church Hymnary.

Lynch was of the new and broader school of thought, and his hymns, which he is said to have designed as a supplement to Watts, are of an entirely different cast from those of the earlier day, though their teaching is familiar enough in our time. I make a brief quotation, which is more likely to be welcome to-day than it was half a century ago.

George Rawson (1807-89) has won a wider recognition than any other English Nonconformist hymn-writer of the century, except Montgomery. He was a solicitor in Leeds, and took part in the preparation of the Leeds Hymn-book. His Communion hymn, ‘By Christ redeemed, in Christ restored,’ his Evening hymn, ‘God the Father, be Thou near,’ and his Litany of the Holy Spirit, ‘Come to our poor nature’s night,’ are his most beautiful contributions to our hymnals, but several of his less-known poems are bright, simple, and melodious. His version of Ps. lxxxiv. would have been better known if Lyte’s had not been written.

Thomas Hornblower Gill’s (b. 1819) is a very distinct voice in the choir. He will, I fear, have but a small place in the hymn-books of the future, though there is an individuality and force in many of his hymns which make them singularly attractive. Unfortunately, he often uses an unusual word or phrase which diverts the worshipper’s mind from what is said to the 297 form in which it is expressed. Again, he is too fond of the epithets ‘dear’ and ‘sweet,’ which is the more to be regretted, as his hymns are never what Wesley called ‘namby-pambycal,’ but have a fine, robust tone, and often a stirring rhythm. He has much of the Puritan spirit. One of his best hymns, ‘Lord, in the fulness of my might,’[196] has for its text Cromwell’s saying, ‘How good it is to close with Christ betimes.’ In the Congregational and Baptist books Mr. Gill is largely represented. I hope the inclusion of a few of his hymns in the Methodist Hymn-book will make him known to a still wider circle. I have marked many of his hymns for quotation, for they have been dear to me from my boyhood, when I made acquaintance with them through George Dawson’s hymn-book. Those I quote are chosen, not because they are specially suitable for use in public worship, but because there is so much of force and freshness in both thought and expression. The hymn on ‘Free Grace’ has also a motto from Cromwell—‘I have had plentiful wages beforehand, and I am sure I shall never earn the least mite.’

My last quotation is made for the sake of its quaint, sturdy, half-humorous Independency. The text is, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’

which is based on the text, ‘He hath not dealt so with any nation. Praise ye the Lord.’[197]

A few other hymns by English Nonconformist writers may be found, some, e.g. Thomas Binney’s ‘Eternal Light,’ being of a very high order. Mr. Spurgeon wrote a good many hymns and psalm-versions, but they are not likely to be widely used. One, intended as a paraphrase of Ps. xli., might, perhaps, find a place among hymns of Philanthropy, where our hymnals are still weak.

Bernard Barton (1784-1849), the Quaker poet, is best known by his hymn on the Holy Scriptures—‘Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace.’ To my mind 301 his best hymn is the bright song of the Christian soldier.

Methodism has not in later days been rich in hymn-writers. After Thomas Olivers there is but one great name, that of William M. Bunting (1805-66). Little as he is known outside his own Church, his hymns are amongst the best loved and best used in Wesleyan Methodism. I cannot but think that some day he will be recognized as one of the glorious choir of the universal Church. He was an extremely delicate man, and his natural bent was pensive and self-depreciatory. He once said to a friend, ‘There is one thing I shall miss in heaven, the mystic joys of penitence.’ His great penitential hymn,

even if it be thought too personal for use in public worship—I do not think it is—might well be placed among hymns for private devotion. In the services of a minister’s ‘quiet day’ it would be most impressive.

though not a direct prayer, is a long meditation, the kind of spiritual song which ought to be in all our hymn-books. His Baptismal hymn is very fine.

It is one of the strongest if not the tenderest of hymns for infant baptism, and will bear comparison with Dean Alford’s, ‘In token that thou shalt not fear,’ with this advantage, that it is not addressed to the infant, but to Him whose Name is named upon it.

William Morley Punshon’s (1824-81) Sabbath Chimes suffered from comparison with the Christian Year, but his hymns for Sunday morning and evening—especially 303 the latter—are not unworthy of a place amongst the many good hymns we include under this heading. Both are wisely shortened in hymn-books. Some readers will be glad to see the following verses from the Sabbath Evening hymn as they were originally published, though I do not suggest that the familiar cento is not better for use in the congregation.

The Methodist Hymn-book contains contributions from several Methodist writers new to our authorized hymnal. Of those still living I will say nothing, but I cannot pass over the name of James Smetham (1821-89), whose tender, solemn lines, ‘While ebbing nature grieves,’ though they may rarely be sung in public, will be prized by many. Another of his hymns is in a different key. It is, perhaps, more suitable for congregational use—

The weakness of this hymn lies in the word ‘rushing’ in the fourth verse, which breaks in upon the quietness and confidence of the poem.

Mark Guy Pearse has written several good hymns for children. They are, as Dr. Julian says, ‘of exceptional merit.’ Four are in the Methodist Sunday School Book. His Christmas carol, ‘The fierce wind howls about the hills,’ has a quaint, old-world simplicity and ruggedness that is both picturesque and affecting. His most carefully wrought hymn is a beautiful song of praise. The first two lines in each verse are its special charm. Many readers will be glad to see it here, though it is well known in Methodist Sunday schools.

Benjamin Gough (1805-77) was a local preacher and a very minor poet, yet he is not the least of Methodist hymn-writers. He was an echo, not a voice, but won much wider acceptance than most of the later Methodist poets. Dr. Littledale included a number of his hymns in the People’s Hymnal, and he is represented in several good hymn-books both in this country and America. His best hymns are ‘Awake, awake, O Zion’ and ‘Uplift the blood-stained banner.’

Though the English Free Churches are poor in hymn-writers, the balance is amply redressed in Scotland. Horatius Bonar (1801-89) is one of the great singers of the century, and some of his hymns, e.g. ‘I heard the voice of Jesus say,’ are surely immortal. He rightly named his poems ‘hymns of faith and hope’; they look for and haste unto the coming of the Day of Christ. His Communion hymn, ‘Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face,’ and ‘A few 307 more years shall roll,’ with some others, are in all great collections. Few modern books have less than ten of his hymns, and many have from twelve to twenty. He was also a successful translator, though his fame rests on his original hymns. If I quote few of his verses, it is only because they are so well known. The Second Advent filled a large place in his thought and teaching. The following lines, to which he prefixed a quotation from St. Augustine, ‘The world has grown old,’ are very characteristic—

Fewer and less easily adapted to congregational use are the sacred songs of Dr. George Matheson, whose best-known hymn is probably the most widely appreciated of any written in the last quarter of a century. It must be familiar to most readers, but as it is not found in the Methodist Hymn-book, I give it here—

Very different are his verses on Brotherhood, which are not on the ordinary lines of a hymn, but make an excellent song for a gathering of working-men, for a temperance meeting, or for ‘united’ gatherings of many kinds. It is at least thoroughly modern.

Dr. Walter C. Smith’s is not a familiar name in our hymn-books. Only editors who are willing to leave the beaten track will find his poems ‘true hymns.’ The Baptist Church Hymnal, which is perhaps the most catholic and the most literary of our modern books, gives six of his hymns, while the Presbyterian and the Methodist have none. But many of his poems are good hymns, though perhaps they appeal to a limited circle. His Thoughts and Fancies for Sunday Evenings has long stood close to my study chair, and I do not think there is any book (except George Herbert) I have so often read after the day’s work is done. His hymns have the true patience and the happy trustfulness which are the strength and inspiration of Christian service. Here are three verses from the poem on Ps. cxviii. 1—

My next quotation is well worthy of a place beside Bishop Bickersteth’s ‘Come ye yourselves apart,’ and with the most impressive and consoling of hymns for Christian workers.

To these quotations—and they are few compared with those I would like to make—I must add Dr. Smith’s singularly solemn and beautiful prayer, which in the Baptist Church Hymnal is appointed for the close of the Communion Service. It is unique among sacramental hymns.

From these great Scotch hymn-writers I turn for a moment to the Unitarian contribution to the Church’s hymn-book. Here it must be said that the best comes to us from America, where the Unitarians claim Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Samuel Longfellow, and Samuel Johnson. In England we have Sir John Bowring (1792-1872); and Sarah Flower Adams (1805-48), whose ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’ has a sure place among the best-loved hymns. Mrs. Adams also wrote two beautiful little hymns suited for the close of service, each beginning, ‘Part in peace,’ and was an important contributor to W. J. Fox’s Hymns and Anthems for the use of the South Place Religious Society, one of the most curious of modern hymnals. Mr. Page Hopps has written some good hymns, which are widely used. His child’s prayer, ‘Father, lead me day by day,’ is beautiful in its strong simplicity. Dr. James Martineau wrote a few hymns which I cannot but think are included in evangelical hymn-books more out of respect for their author than for their actual 314 devotional or poetic value. The best known is ‘Thy way is in the deep, O Lord.’ I quote one less often found—

V
Nineteenth-century Hymns

III.—Roman Catholic Hymns

English Romanism has shared in the revival of hymnody, and has been greatly enriched by the men who, to quote Mr. Moorsom’s delightful record of Faber, ‘left the Church of England for the Roman schism in England.’ From Austin to Faber, Romanism has hardly any English hymn-writers. Some of the Latin hymns by English writers have an alluring rhythm, the ideal tone of a Christmas carol. It is easy to understand how popular they might be in the vernacular. Here is a bright lilting verse from a thirteenth-century hymn:

Richard Crashaw (d. 1650) was a poet, but scarcely a hymn-writer, though from his ‘Hymn of St. Thomas’ a good cento may be made.

Robert Southwell (d. 1595) did not write so good a hymn as this, but several of his very striking poems are included in the Arundel book—‘The Burning Babe,’ ‘New Prince, new Pomp,’ ‘A Child my choice.’

Early in the nineteenth century efforts were made to 317 provide English hymn-books for Romanists. Father Haydock (1823) even adapted some of the hymns of Wesley, Watts, Montgomery, and other Protestants, but the effort does not seem to have been appreciated.[203]

Frederick William Faber (1814-63) did for English Romanists what Watts had done for Nonconformists more than a hundred years earlier. He is the Watts and Wesley of Romanism. Faber ‘went over’ in 1846, after a brief ministry in the Anglican Church. He lamented that Catholics had not ‘the means of influence which one school of Protestantism has in Wesley’s, Newton’s, and Cowper’s hymns, and another in the more refined and engaging works of Oxford writers.’ As ‘an English son of St. Philip’ Neri, he claimed to be following in the steps of that ‘right merry saint’ in his attempt to provide ‘English Catholic hymns fitted for singing.’ ‘St. Philip devised a changeful variety of spiritual exercises and recreations, which gathered round him the art and literature, as well as the piety of Rome, and was eminently qualified to meet the increased appetite for the word of God, for services in the vernacular, for hymn-singing and prayer-meetings.’ These last words have a fine Methodist flavour, and increase one’s sympathy with their writer. But it must be admitted that Faber was a thorough-going Romanist. He believed that ‘God raised up our dear and blessed Father, St. Philip ... just as the heresy of Protestantism 318 was beginning to devastate the world.’[204] Faber’s hymns must not be judged simply by our Protestant versions, but we may be thankful that he gave a new and better tone to the hymn-singing of the Roman Church. His best hymns, with their exquisite yearning tenderness, are so dear to us that there is no need to speak of them; they speak the language of the Christian heart, and he who sings thus sings the Holy Spirit’s song.

It must be admitted, however, that we have taken the best of Faber into our hymnals, and the residue is not—from the Protestant standpoint—of great value. What one may call the lighter songs of Roman Catholic psalmody are so little known to us that I quote, as a favourable illustration of a class of hymn that bulks largely in Romanist books, two verses of Faber’s song for St. Patrick’s Day. One can readily imagine that such a hymn would be popular in Ireland, and serve to keep alive the legend of St. Patrick.

Edward Caswall (1814-78), who resigned his Anglican living in 1847, was received into the Roman Church in 1850. He is a more successful translator than composer, his best original hymn being ‘Days and moments quickly flying.’ His translations from the Latin and German are in all our hymnals.

Romish hymnals contain many prayers for the reconversion of England. There is something pathetic in such lines as these in a hymn of Father Potter’s—

But if our Romish brethren sing thus, why should not 320 we teach our children Mr. Gill’s stirring hymn, which includes the lines

One turns from the study of Romish hymn-books with a sense of having travelled in a far country, where yet there is much to remind one of the home-land. There is a great gulf, as we thankfully acknowledge, between even the High Anglican and the Romanist—a considerable portion of the Romish hymn-book is, and we trust ever will be, impossible to the bulk of English Christians. On the other hand, one can neglect the chaff and gather golden grain, for saintly Romanists have a genius for devotion. It is much to be wished that the readiness with which we have adopted hymns from Roman Catholic sources had been reciprocated. But almost all the great English hymns are missing from Catholic hymnals. The Arundel editors admit translations by Dr. Neale, and even Miss Winkworth, but no original hymns save those by writers of their own faith. Mr. Tozer, in his Catholic Hymns, includes Charlotte Elliott’s ‘Thy Will be done,’ and gives the author’s name, but I am afraid he did not know she was a Protestant—though I hope he did.

Naturally, Faber and Caswall are the chief contributors; and books that contain their hymns and those of Matthew Bridges, Adelaide Anne Procter, and 321 J. H. Newman, cannot be without much spiritual wealth. The two collections I have named give a very hopeful impression concerning the future of Roman Catholic hymnody; though they are practically innocent of Protestant hymns, they contain many which are Catholic, and not Roman. Indirectly, the use of such books must prepare the way for a greater freedom in worship and a nearer approximation to the general company of believers.

Here our study must perforce break off, for the limits assigned to my lecture have been already exceeded. Several important subjects must be omitted. American hymns take a comparatively inconspicuous place in our Church hymnals, but have a large space in collections of songs for mission services and undenominational gatherings.

Translations from the Greek, Latin, and German furnish many of our finest and most popular hymns. 322 In regard to modern hymn-books, the German are the older, and indeed many of the Latin hymns are actually of a later date than those of Luther and even Paul Gerhardt. John Wesley’s intercourse with the Moravians introduced him to the German hymns, and his translations are almost as important a feature in our hymn-books as Charles Wesley’s original compositions. Miss Winkworth’s Lyra Germanica is one of the great devotional works of the nineteenth century.

The Oxford Movement drew attention to the hymns of the Greek and Roman Churches, and Hymns Ancient and Modern popularized many hymns suitable to the worship of all the Churches. Bishop Mant, Isaac Williams, Edward Caswall, and Dr. Neale led the way in translating these hymns into English verse, and they quickly secured a large place in hymn-books. Not only have they great historic interest, but they give us some of the sublimest and the sweetest of our hymns of penitence and praise, ranging from the solemn tones of the ‘Dies irae’ to the lovely lyrics of Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Jesu, the very thought of Thee.’ No survey of the hymn-book of the modern Church can be complete without reference to them, but I am compelled to pass them by with only this brief mention.

CONCLUSION

Our study of English hymns has carried us through three centuries and a half—from the rough, halting lines of Coverdale to the smooth and easy rhythm of the hymn-writers of to-day.

From Sternhold and Hopkins to the modern hymn-book is a long and delightful journey. ‘I envy not in any mood’ the man who finds in devotional poetry only matter for criticism. If it be true that the heart makes the theologian, it is more true that the heart makes the hymnologist.

The earlier stages of our study may yield little actual fruit in the shape of hymns which a modern editor would delight to add to his hymn-book. But it yields much in the way of inspiration, bringing us into communion with men like Herbert, Donne, Sandys, Vaughan, and, in his measure, Wither—men who might have lived the courtier’s life had they not chosen to serve the King of kings. So far as their poems are concerned, it is a mere accident that Herbert and Donne were in orders. They are not clerical hymn-writers, but, like others of their school, are poets of the 324 inner and individual life. They touch our hearts, not because they have written what expresses the common need of a congregation, but because they speak in graceful form what most of us can feel but could never put into words. Campion and the two Austins represent the devout laymen of the professional class—men who might, if they pleased, have been mere men of the world. It would be quite possible to discuss English hymns with scarce a mention of such names, but, it seems to me, that in losing them our study would lose its richest charm.

Ken may be considered the first of the Anglican, Mason of the Evangelical, and Watts of the Dissenting hymn-writers. They wrote, not simply for their own delight or relief, but for the sake of others. Ken had no immediate successors, though he is the founder of the school of Heber, Lyte, Keble, and Ellerton. Mason’s immediate successors were Shepherd, Newton, and Cowper; Watts was the first of a long succession of the later Puritans.

It is usual to call the eighteenth century the golden age of hymn-writing; but I am not sure that this will be the final verdict. I confess that in many respects I find both the earlier and the later period more attractive. If we leave out of the account Wesley’s hymns, many of which owe their long use in the Methodist Churches to other than poetic considerations, the vast majority of the eighteenth-century hymns have disappeared from modern use. It is interesting to compare 325 the hymn-books of 1750-1850 with those issued within the last twenty years. Rippon’s Selection, in its various editions; Collyer’s Hymns; Dobell’s New Selection of Nearly Eight Hundred Evangelical Hymns; Bickersteth’s Christian Psalmody; and Snepp’s Songs of Grace and Glory, compared with the most recent hymn-books, show not only what great additions have been made to the treasury of Christian song, but how many hymns once regarded as almost indispensable are now forgotten, and are never likely to be revived. The formal, didactic, preaching hymns, so popular a hundred years ago, have been steadily losing ground. They not only fail to touch the heart of present-day worshippers, they have no element of distinction, nothing that could or should give them a permanent place in the songs of the Church of Christ. Hymns of the period before Watts are much more common in twentieth-century hymn-books than in those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the hymns characteristic of the eighteenth century are rapidly disappearing. They were written to meet the needs of the Dissenting meeting-house and the Evangelical Revival. But among them are many which voice the experience, ‘not of an age, but of all time’; they speak the language of the soul that seeks and finds and follows the Saviour.

Nineteenth-century hymns were largely affected by the great Anglican Revival—a much wider term than ‘the Oxford Movement.’ The best known and loved of the 326 hymns of the last eighty years are those which, in one way or other, emphasize the idea of the Church, which help the worshipper to realize that he belongs to that Holy Church which, throughout all the ages and in all lands, acknowledges God to be the Lord. It is one of the unexpected and undesired fruits of the Anglican Revival that every denomination now claims its place in an undivided Church. The longing for unity which led the Tractarians first to look and then to move toward Rome, led the Free Churches to reconsider their own position, and to seek for a larger and more scriptural conception of the Church. A narrow Calvinism had, on the one hand, kept many coldly isolated from their brethren; and, on the other, a narrow fervour, a too literal belief that Methodism, and Methodism alone, was Christianity in earnest, made others keep themselves warm by their own firesides, under the impression that their neighbours sat by cold hearths or crouched over smouldering embers. For this estrangement of brethren, the earlier hymn-books are to some extent responsible. The spirit of Christian charity, of genial mutual appreciation, has wonderfully developed since denominational hymn-books became shining evidences of unity in diversity. Some of Wesley’s earlier hymn-books illustrate this, and it is to be regretted that he did not make a more liberal use of the work of other men when he issued his final hymn-book for the people called Methodists. The earliest great catholic Collection with which I am 327 acquainted is the Moravian book of 1754.[206] Disfigured as it is by a number of the bad Moravian hymns, it yet deserves a place—considering the time at which it was issued—beside Palgrave’s Treasury of Sacred Song. It was a by no means unsuccessful effort to do for the Moravians of the mid-eighteenth century what the Methodist Hymn-book has done for our own Church at the beginning of the twentieth century. It gathers into one volume most of the best hymns of other Churches, while preserving those peculiarly suited to the needs and tastes of its own members.

In this regard the hymn-books of the Methodist and of the Anglican Church represent a different type from those of the principal Nonconformist Churches. The latter include very little that is distinctive of the Churches for whose use they are prepared. Where they differ it is usually a matter of taste, not of doctrine. The Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregational books might be used by any or all of these Churches. And there is much to be said in defence of the elimination of denominational characteristics.

On the other hand, there is, I believe, more to be said in favour of the hymn-book which is designed to aid the Church in its specific work and teaching. It would be impossible to exaggerate the influence of Wesley’s Hymns upon the Methodist Churches. And 328 there can be no question that Hymns Ancient and Modern has had an immense influence, both for good and ill, upon the Anglican Revival. It was originally issued in 1861, when the Movement was taking firm hold of the clergy, and beginning to change the whole tone of the teaching and the whole spirit of public worship in hundreds of parishes. Its success was enormous, only paralleled by that of Watts and Wesley. The title was in itself a confession of faith in the new Movement. The first edition was, in comparison with the popular hymnals of the Evangelicals, a marked advance toward High Church worship; but it is very modest and tentative when compared with its latest edition. I say nothing of its doctrine, for I have no space for criticism. I commend the principle upon which the work was done—the education of the worshipper in the faith and practice which the compilers believed to be most truly in accordance with the Divine ideal of the Church.

On the same general principle the Methodist Hymn-book has been compiled. It is made, not for other people, but for ourselves. Some friendly critics see, ‘with a scornful wonder,’ the number of Charles Wesley’s hymns which still survive, and talk of superstitious reverence for a name. But they do not understand that these hymns, perhaps especially those which are unknown to other Churches, enshrine what we regard as most precious in Methodist life 329 and teaching. From a literary or poetic point of view, it may be that our hymn-book is inferior to the Baptist, the Presbyterian, and the Congregational, and perhaps especially to such a book as Mr. Horder’s Worship-Song. But the hymn-book of a living, working Church should not be constructed on purely literary lines. It is not a treasury of religious poetry, not a sacred anthology, but a book of common prayer and praise, for use in particular congregations.

Next to Hymns Ancient and Modern the most influential of nineteenth-century hymn-books is Sacred Songs and Solos, the chief memorial of the mission of Moody and Sankey. They introduced the lighter ephemeral songs which suited large undenominational gatherings, and caught the ear and reached the heart of the man and the child in the street. I cannot regret that few of these ditties find their way into Church hymnals; yet I am not ashamed to admit that in many an East End meeting I have been thankful for ‘Sankey’s Hymns.’ In any review of English hymns this popular collection cannot be overlooked.

I have spoken of the advantage of diversity in Church hymnals, but there remains a further and very interesting question. How far does the study of hymns and hymn-books encourage the hope of a reunion of hearts in the Church of God, rent, as it now is, by many unhappy divisions?

In an Appendix I give a list of nearly a hundred and 330 sixty hymns, which are found in the four representative Non-episcopal hymnals and in one or both of two representative Anglican books. These hymns are the foundation material of what may be called the hymn-book of the modern Church. Canon Ellerton said, ‘The study of Nonconformist hymn-books does not encourage me in any hopes of what is sometimes called Home Reunion.’ My own study of modern hymn-books leads to an opposite conclusion. It is a commonplace of hymnology that in all good hymn-books you find contributions from men of widely different theological schools. But it is not in the fact that the choir of the Church includes Watts, Wesley, Heber, Montgomery, Newman, Keble, Lyte, Charlotte Elliott, Mrs. Alexander, Faber, S. J. Stone, Caswall, Bonar, Rawson, Neale, and others, that I see the most hopeful sign. A still more notable and instructive sign of the times is that alike in the most familiar and in the most solemn moments of life we draw nigh to God with the same words. Our morning and our evening hymns, our Christmas carols and our Easter anthems, are one. In the time of utmost need we turn to the Saviour with the same cry—

Our battle-songs, our penitential prayers, our hymns of adoration, are the same. We even tell the story of our conversion in the same words—

Even more impressive is the fact that in the Holy Communion the same hymns are sung in the great cathedral, where men kneel before the high altar, and in the homely village chapel, where simple folk sit down at the Lord’s Table. Charles Wesley the poet of Methodism, Doddridge the Nonconformist pastor, Montgomery the Moravian bookseller, Rawson the Congregational lawyer, Bonar the Scotch Presbyterian, Bickersteth the Anglican bishop, are the writers whose hymns are common to all Englishmen as they break the bread and drink the wine in memory of their Redeemer’s death.

And when, wearied of earth and longing to depart and be with Christ, we lift our eyes to the eternal city, our Father’s house on high, the hymns of St. Bernard of Cluny or of Samuel Crossman are on the lips of all—

There are many times when, amid the strife of tongues, we feel that reunion is a dream never to be fulfilled; but already we have found common ground in lowly ministries to the poor and the distressed. And they who are labourers together in the humblest and divinest tasks, also join in the songs which, even on earth, none but the redeemed can sing. In the service of love, in the prayer of penitence, and in the sacrifice of praise, we are already one in Christ Jesus.

Our goal, too, is the same, our diverse ways converge as we draw nearer to God and Heaven. ‘Many ways have one end.’

APPENDIX

The following hymns are in the Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian Hymn-books. They are also in Hymns Ancient and Modern, or Church Hymns. Hymns which are in Hymns Ancient and Modern, but not in Church Hymns, are marked *; those in Church Hymns, but not in Hymns Ancient and Modern, are marked †.

FOOTNOTES

[1]James Martineau, vol. ii. p. 99.

[2]Christian Year (Fifth Sunday in Lent).

[3]Ibid. (Preface).

[4]‘The general Church histories mostly neglect or ignore hymnology, which is the best reflection of Christian life and worship.’—Schaff: Mediaeval Christianity, ii. 403. See also Lilly’s Christianity and Modern Civilization, ch. v., ‘The Age of Faith.’

[5]Church Hymns (revised edition, 1903). A new edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern is being prepared.

[6]Ordained.

[7]John Ellerton: Principles of Hymn-book Construction, p. 228.

[8]Keble’s Occasional Papers and Reviews, 1877, p. 92. This essay, a review of Josiah Conder’s Star in the East, was published in the Quarterly Review, 1825. The quotation from Burns will remind many readers of Keble’s own lines (Third Sunday in Lent)—

There’s not a strain to Memory dear,

Nor flower in classic grove,

There’s not a sweet note warbled here,

But minds us of Thy love.

[9]The words rendered ‘meditation’ in these verses are not the same. The one perhaps suggests the devout meditation which is murmured half aloud, the other silent converse or communing with oneself.

[10]Lightfoot’s Colossians.

[11]Trench’s Synonyms of New Testament.

[12]Εἰς τὸ τέλος ἐν ὕμνοις, ψαλμὸς τῷ ’Ασάφ, ᾠδὴ πρὸς τὸν ’Ασσύριον.

[13]Neh. ix. 5.

[14]Ps. xxii. 3 (R.V.), margin.

[15]Isa. lx. 18.

[16]Cf. Jer. xlix. 25.

[17]Cf. Eph. v. 20: εὐχαριστοῦντες πάντοτε.

[18]Heb. xiii. 15.

[19]C. G. Rossetti.

[20]C. Wesley.

[21]The Holy Year, pp. xxxii., xxxiii.

[22]The Hymn Lover, p. 146.

[23]Hymns of the Christian Church and Home (Preface).

[24]Longfellow’s The Singers.

[25]Herbert’s A True Hymn.

[26]Cary’s Dante, Par. xiv.

[27]There is an article in the Journal of Sacred Literature for July 1864, on ‘Eccentricities of Hymnology: Early Moravian Hymn-books,’ which gives abundant illustrations to justify Southey’s statement that ‘the most characteristic parts of the Moravian hymns are too shocking to be inserted here’ (Life of Wesley).

[28]‘Viatrix,’ in an article on ‘The Tramp Ward,’ in the Contemporary for May 1904, says, ‘I have discovered that this (“Lead, kindly Light”) and “Abide with me,” with “Jesu, Lover of my soul:” are tramps’ favourites.’

[29]Matthew Arnold’s Progress. These lines were altered, much for the worse, in later editions.

[30]Martineau’s Hymns for Church and Home (Preface).

[31]Ps. lxxxi. 1 (P.B.V.).

[32]St. Augustine on Ps. lviii.

[33]Ps. lxviii. 20 (R.V.), ‘God is unto us a God of deliverances.’

[34]Exod. xv. ‘The song is, of course, incorporated by E from an earlier source, perhaps from a collection of national poems.... Probably, however, the greater part of the song is Mosaic, and the modification or expansion is limited to the closing verses; for the triumphant tone which pervades it is just such as might naturally have been inspired by the event which it celebrates.’—Driver’s Literature of the Old Testament.

[35]Wordsworth’s Ode to Duty.

[36]Edward Irving’s The Book of Psalms, Works, i. p. 410.

[37]Cheyne.

[38]Cheyne.

[39]Kirkpatrick’s Psalms (Cambridge Bible).

[40]Irving’s Introduction to Horne’s Psalms, Works, vol. i. p. 416 (slightly abridged).

[41]The Holy Year, p. xxxviii. The Bishop refers in a note to ‘one modern hymn, beginning, “My God, the spring of all my joys,” and consisting only of twelve (sic) lines, in which the pronouns I and my occur no less than eleven times.’ He might have added that in the twelve lines of Ps. xxiii. personal pronouns occur seventeen times, and that ‘My God’ occurs fifty-eight times in the Psalter.

[42]There are, of course, Psalms of the Old Testament not included in the Psalter admirably adapted for Christian worship. See Part II. of Dr. Barrett’s Congregational Church Hymnal.

[43]‘We have been especially glad to mark the essentially metrical structure of the Lord’s Prayer in St. Matthew’s Gospel, with its invocation, its first triplet of single clauses, with one common burden, expressed after the third but implied after all, and its second triplet of double clauses, variously antithetical in form and sense.’—Westcott and Hort, Introduction, p. 320.

[44]W.H., Introduction, p. 320.

[45]‘Adfirmabant autem, hanc fuisse summam vel culpae suae vel erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo, quasi deo, dicere secum invicem.’—Pliny, Ep. x. 97.

[46]Eusebius: Ecclesiastical History, x. 28 (Bohn’s translation).

[47]Eusebius, vii. 24.

[48]Confessions, ii. pp. vi., vii.

[49]Trench’s Sacred Latin Poetry, pp. 81, 82.

[50]‘Most old MSS. read munerari. The common reading, “in gloria numerari,” does not appear to be found in any MSS., but is in many (not all) printed editions of the Breviary from about 1491 onwards. Mr. Gibson suggests that it is not so much due to the natural confusion of letters as to the well-known words added by Gregory the Great to the canon of the Mass in electorum tuorum jubeas grege numerari.’—Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 1121.

[51]Cf. Pss. xxxiii. 22; xxxi. 1; lxxi. 1 (P.B.V. & R.V.).

[52]Hutton’s English Saints, p. 208.

[53]The Sarum Breviary reads, Et nox fidei luceat.

[54]Mone’s Hymni Latini, i. 381.

[55]Masters, 1852.

[56]Church Hymns, 586, Cædmon, Tr. R. M. Moorsom; 212, Bede, Tr. C. S. Calverly.

[57]Coverdale’s Remains (Parker Society, 1846). The original is a German hymn beginning Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ. Miss Winkworth, in her Chorale Book, described it as anonymous, but Julian ascribes it to Johannes Agricola (1492-1566). Miss Winkworth’s translation begins, ‘Lord, hear the voice of my complaint,’ Rev. A. Tozer-Russell’s, ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, I cry to Thee.’

[58]Miller’s Singers and Songs of the Church.

[59]‘We mention the name of Clement Marot, important here chiefly for the influence he might have had. For he translated the Psalms into French verse, put them to tunes, and set the Court singing them. Let us think for a moment what England owes to those sweet and simple hymns which it is our godly fashion to sing in the churches and in the homes from earliest childhood, and which form a link to connect our religion with our daily life. Let us only try to think what we should be without these. And then give praise to Marot, for it was he who gave to France what should have been the foundation and beginning of a national book of praise and service of song, had not the bigots, the stupid mischievous bigots, stopped the singing because they pretended to see heresy in the words—David’s words. And France is without hymns to this day.’—Besant’s Essays and Historiettes, ‘The Failure of the French Reformation,’ p. 78.

[60]A full and interesting account of the Old Version is given in Julian. Holland’s notices of these writers are also good.

[61]Wode or wood, Anglo-Saxon = mad, violent.

[62]‘This literary curiosity occurs at the end of a book entitled, A godly Medytacion of the Christian Soule, &c., compyled in Frenche, by Lady Margarite, Quene of Naverre. This psalm is reprinted in Park’s edition of The Royal and Noble Authors of Great Britain.’—Farr’s Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Parker Society), 1835.

[63]Pight = pitched, laid.

[64]This hymn appeared in Bickersteth’s Christian Psalmody in three verses, of which Miller says, ‘two stanzas bear no resemblance’ to Sandys’s original. The Methodist Hymn-book cento is much nearer to Sandys, though it has many variations.

[65]Farr’s Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. The poem has ten verses. Most are unsuited for congregational use, as may be judged from the following lines:—

The carrion crow, that loathsome beast,

Which cries against the rain,

Both for her hue and for the rest

The devil resembleth plain:

And as with guns we kill the crow,

For spoiling our relief,

The devil so must we o’erthrow

With gunshot of belief.

[66]Palgrave’s Treasury of Sacred Song, p. 333. Palgrave gives five of his poems.

[67]Condor gives three verses, but the third is very inferior to these. The two I quote are included by Professor Palgrave and Mr. Quiller-Couch in their anthologies. Conder apparently did not know the author’s name. He took the verses from an ‘old collection.’

[68]From a MS. in the British Museum. Cf. the very full and interesting article in Julian, p. 580.

[69]Life of Ken, ii. p. 201.

[70]Altered later to ‘I wake, I wake.’

[71]Altered to ‘void of.’

[72]Plumptre’s Life of Ken, vol. ii. p. 268.

[73]Plumptre’s Life of Ken, vol. ii. p. 288.

[74]Christian Psalmist, Preface, xviii.

[75]Preface to Austin’s Devotions, Edinburgh, 1789.

[76]Dictionary of Hymnology, Article: ‘Roman Catholic Hymnody.’

[77]Arundel Hymns, 77.

[78]Poems (1872), p. 62.

[79]I quote Austin’s text. Wesley’s changes do not improve it.

[80]This hymn is from the Office for Monday Lauds.

[81]From Farr’s Select Poetry of the Reign of James I.

[82]Presbyterian Hymnal, 531.

[83]Ken’s hymn for St. Matthew’s Day was edited by Bishop Walsham How, and in that form appears in Hymns Ancient and Modern, and in Church Hymns.

[84]Worship Song, 15; School Hymns, 6.

[85]There is a good sketch of Wither in Willmott’s Lives of the Sacred Poets, and an excellent biographical introduction by Mr. Edward Farr in The Hymns and Songs of the Church (Library of Old Authors). Both these volumes give striking portraits, the latter one of the poet in his twenty-first year, surrounded by the punning motto, ‘I grow and wither both together.’

[86]Barton did not always reach so high a level. One of his versions of the ‘Te Deum’ is in this fashion—

The blest Apo-

stles glorious company,

Do praise Thy ho-

ly Name continually.

[87]Religio Medici.

[88]The best illustration is the hymn beginning

Saviour, if Thy precious love,

Could be merited by mine.

No. 37 in the first edition of Wesley’s Hymns, No. 24 in the last. I am sorry it was omitted from the Methodist Hymn-book.

[89]There is a delightful chapter on George Herbert in Lady McDougall’s Songs of the Church.

[90]Introductory Essay, by J. H. Shorthouse, to Unwin’s facsimile reprint of The Temple.

[91]Julian, ‘Psalters, English,’ p. 919.

[92]The story of the Scotch psalms and paraphrases I must leave. It is well told in outline in Julian. The Scotch version has few literary or poetic graces, but it has held the heart and guided the mind of many generations, to whom it has been infinitely more precious than the smoother and more poetic verses of Addison, Heber, and Keble could ever be.

[93]This small witticism was repeated by Romaine in the preface to his Treatise on Psalmody, though he had the good sense to strike it out of his second edition, at the request, it is said, of Lady Huntingdon.

[94]Preface to Christian Psalmist.

[95]Treasury of Sacred Song, p. 349.

[96]Watts has been unfortunate in his biographers. Mr. Paxton Hood’s book is lively and interesting, but its style is amazingly slovenly. Here is a curious sentence: ‘His daughter and sole heiress, Margaret, married Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, so the estate descended to the Howard family, and became the Duke’s place; he lost his head; passing to his eldest son, he sold it in 1592 to the mayor, corporation, and citizens of London.’ The writer adds, naïvely, ‘This is a singular piece of history’ (p. 55).

[97]Julian, Article: ‘Congregational Hymnody.’

[98]Preface to Psalms. Dr. Martineau justified his own editing of Watts’s hymns by this sentence. ‘Every adaptation of a Jewish psalm to Christian worship affords an instance of theological adaptation; and the same rule which is applied to Dr. Watts’s hymns when their Trinitarianism is expelled, Watts himself has systematically applied to David’s writings, in reforming and spiritualizing their Judaism.’—Preface to Hymns for the Christian Church and Home.

[99]Lives of the Poets.

[100]One of Wesley’s Communion hymns begins—

Come to the supper, come,

Sinners, there still is room.

[101]The hymn has seven verses. It is given with slight alterations, and the omission of one verse in Barrett’s Congregational Church Hymnal, 497.

[102]Henry Ward Beecher included this song in his Plymouth Collection.

[103]Julian, p. 831.

[104]The Training of the Twelve, p. 24.

[105]‘Joseph Hart,’ by the late Rev. B. A. Gregory, M.A., City Road Magazine, December 1876.

[106]Poems by Theodosia, vol. ii. (1780).

[107]Often begins in hymn-books with the third verse, ‘And O [Father] whate’er of earthly bliss.’

[108]Julian, p. 332.

[109]Telford’s Charles Wesley, p. 245.

[110]Cf. Lightfoot’s Colossians, i. 27, iii. 16.

[111]Green’s History of the English People.

[112]Short Hymns, 2 Tim. i. 7.

[113]Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739).

[114]Church Hymns (1903), Preface.

[115]This verse is from the ‘hymn on my conversion,’ mentioned by C. Wesley in his Journal, May 23, 1738. It was written at Mr. Bray’s, Little Britain. Five verses are in the Methodist Hymn-book, 358.

[116]Watts wrote ‘very.’ ‘Every’ is Wesley’s emendation.

[117]I quote the following verse as an illustration: in doing so there is no risk of spoiling a hymn dear to anybody:—

Exempted from the general doom,

The death which all are born to know;

Enoch obtained his heavenly home

By faith, and disappeared below.

[118]Reprinted by Pickering in 1868 as ‘Bishop Ken’s Christian Year.’

[119]These hymns are in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739). The Epiphany hymn is in Church Hymns, 115, with alterations.

[120]Cf. Paradise Lost, bk. 1.

That with reiterated crimes, he might

Heap on himself damnation.

I cannot refrain from saying how much I regret the omission of this hymn from the Methodist Hymn-book. It is retained by the American Methodist Episcopal, Primitive Methodist, and others, though the Primitive Methodist most unfortunately changes ‘flaming’ into ‘loving’ eyes in verse 3, apparently overlooking the reference to ‘His eyes were as a flame of fire.’

[121]Hymns on the Lord’s Supper, by John and Charles Wesley, presbyters of the Church of England. With a preface concerning the Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice, extracted from Dr. Brevint, Bristol. Printed by Felix Farley, M DCC XLV.

[122]Canon Carter’s Altar Hymnal has eight of Wesley’s hymns. He also ascribes to C. Wesley Miss Leeson’s translation of Victimae Paschali.

‘Christ, the Lord, is risen to-day,’

Christians, haste your vows to pay.

[123]The whole book was reprinted, in 1871, with Wesley’s Companion for the Altar (extracted from Thomas à Kempis), and an Introduction by Mr. W. E. Dutton, under the title, The Eucharistic Manuals of John and Charles Wesley. Mr. Dutton’s design was to show that ‘the Wesleys held opinions and taught doctrines now known as Catholic, yet far in advance of the times in which they lived, and very different from the doctrines taught by that body of men now called by their name.’ I may also mention another interesting book, now out of print, Mr. Warrington’s Echoes of the Prayer-book in Wesley’s Hymns.

[124]Col. ii. 19.

[125]Methodist Hymn-book, 729.

[126]Hymns Ancient and Modern, 553. Altar Hymnal, 151.

[127]Cf. ‘And here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies;’ with verse iv., ‘Take my soul and body’s powers,’ Methodist Hymn-book, 562.

[128]‘The ordinary position of the ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ in ancient liturgies was at the beginning, not at the end of the office. It so stood in our own Liturgy down to 1552, when it was placed at the end of the service.... It may be truly said that there is no Liturgy in the world which has so solemn and yet so magnificent a conclusion as our own.’—Proctor and Maclear’s Introduction to the Book of Common Prayer.

[129]Tyerman’s Whitefield, vol. i. p. 465.

[130]Poetical Works, vol. iii.

[131]Tyerman’s Whitefield, vol. i. p. 478.

[132]The hymn has seventeen verses, some of which are, as Whitefield says, ‘very bad.’ Methodist Hymn-book, 65.

[133]Wesley Poetry, vol. iii. p. 60.

[134]Works, vol. xiii.

[135]Poetical Works, vol. iii. p. 78; Methodist Hymn-book, 435.

[136]Tyerman’s Wesley’s Designated Succession, vol. i. p. 88, 89.

[137]Cf. Tyerman’s Wesley and Horne’s History of the Free Churches.

[138]Poetical Works, vol. iv. p. 446.

[139]Ibid., vol. iii. p. 23.

[140]Poetical Works, vol. iii. p. 21.

[141]Ibid., vol. iii. p. 73.

[142]Telford’s Charles Wesley, p. 245.

[143]Poetical Works, vol. v. p. 133.

[144]Methodist Hymn-book, 366. Wesley himself closed this hymn with Ken’s doxology.

[145]Cf. Phil. i. 9.

[146]I am inclined to think there is a reference here to the ἀγρἁμματοί καὶ ἰδιῶται of Acts iv. 13.

[147]Trench’s Notes on the Parables.

[148]Charles Wesley wrote favour. John Wesley improved both the sense and sound by changing the word to mercy.

[149]Poetical Works, vol. x. p. 57. Charles Wesley wrote bleeds; the change to grieves was made in John Wesley’s hymn-book.

[150]Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 50.

[151]Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749); Poetical Works, vol. v. p. 306.

[152]Wesley included forty-nine hymns under the heading, ‘For Believers Groaning for Full Redemption,’ and twenty-six under the heading, ‘Believers Brought to the Birth.’ These sections were, later, united under the title, ‘Seeking for Full Redemption.’ The Methodist Hymn-book has forty-four, of which thirty-seven are Charles Wesley’s, three translations by John Wesley, two by Miss Havergal, one by Dr. Bonar, and one by T. Monod.

[153]Methodist Hymn-book, 905.

[154]Ibid., 88.

[155]The hymn, ‘When quiet in my house I sit,’ Methodist Hymn-book, 264, is made up of Nos. 300-303 in the Short Poems.

[156]Julian, p. 1149.

[157]Julian, p. 478, thinks that Bakewell wrote a very small portion of this hymn. Some readers will be interested to know that more than thirty years ago a great-grandson of John Bakewell’s was selling newspapers in the streets of a town in the North of England—friendless, homeless, ragged, and in delicate health. He came to The Children’s Home, and grew up worthy of his remote ancestors. He became an architect, and did some excellent work, but died in early manhood of consumption.

[158]Apologia.

[159]See Wright’s Town of Cowper.

[160]John Wesley was very indignant at the refusal of ordination to John Newton, but was probably too loyal to the Church to suggest his becoming a Methodist preacher.—Journal, March 20, 1760.

[161]It was to the first Lord Dartmouth that Ken, on the recommendation of Pepys, became chaplain in the Tangier Expedition of 1683. His character may be judged from a letter, in which he writes that he has ‘to answer to God for the preservation of so many souls He hath been pleased to place under my care.’—Plumptre’s Life of Ken.

[162]Hazlitt’s English Poets, p. 123.

[163]Supra, p. 111.

[164]Wesley’s Journal, May 25, 1750.

[165]Tyerman’s Whitefield, ii. 174.

[166]Julian, p. 681, gives the three versions.

[167]Julian, p. 971. The three-verse cento, dear to Methodists, is slightly varied from that of Thomas Cotterill, of Sheffield.

[168]In early hymn-books there is often confusion between Wesley and Toplady. At the end of his reprint of Toplady’s Poetical Remains, Sedgwick gives a list of seventeen hymns of Charles Wesley’s, attributed to Toplady.

[169]Elvet Lewis’s Sweet Singers of Wales, p. 29.

[170]Lewis’s Sweet Singers, ch. iii. There are other Welsh singers included in this little book who deserve to be more widely known, but my limited space does not allow further quotation.

[171]Smith’s Heber, p. 84.

[172]It is curious how widespread the fear of Methodism was. Crabbe added to his beautiful and touching lines, beginning

Pilgrim, burthened with thy sin,

Come the way to Zion’s gate,

a note explaining that it had been suggested to him that ‘this change from restlessness to repose in the mind of Sir Eustace is wrought by a Methodistic call.’ He protests, however, that ‘though evidently enthusiastic in respect to language,’ they ‘are not meant to convey any impropriety of sentiment.’

[173]Advent Sunday.

[174]This was written in 1825, two years before the publication of Heber’s Hymns and of the Christian Year.

[175]Barry’s Newman, pp. 51, 52.

[176]John Ellerton, p. 185.

[177]Lyte wrote some verses, ‘The Dying Christian to his Soul,’ which are in a much more triumphant strain, but they are not equal to Toplady’s poem.

[178]Holy Year, xi. Dr. Wordsworth was then (1862) Canon of Westminster.

[179]‘Conversation of an hour and a half with Anstice on practical religion, particularly as regards our own situation. I bless and praise God for his presence here.’—Morley’s Gladstone, vol. i. pp. 55, 56.

[180]It is omitted from the Methodist Hymn-book. It was No. 990 in the former book, and is in the Presbyterian (469) and Baptist (641).

[181]This hymn is not in Hymns Ancient and Modern, but it is in Church Hymns, Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregational, Horder’s, Primitive Methodist, and many other hymn-books.

[182]Westminster Abbey Hymn-book, 288; Young People’s Hymnal, 161.

[183]Michael Bruce’s ‘Ode to the Cuckoo.’

[184]Preface to Poems, p. xviii.

[185]The hymn has seven verses, Poems, p. 59.

[186]Methodist Hymn-book, 520.

[187]Congregational Hymnal, 127; Baptist Hymnal, 128.

[188]The last lines differ from the usual version. The change was made by Professor Palgrave himself, and, at his wish, the verse was given in this form in the Young People’s Hymnal.

[189]The Household of Faith, p. 8.

[190]‘The Church, Dissent, and Nation,’ National Review, July 1903.

[191]This lecture was delivered in Sheffield.

[192]Cf. Church Hymnary (Presbyterian), Church Hymns (S.P.C.K.), Westminster Abbey Hymn-book.

[193]The most important of these is in the last line. Montgomery wrote first, ‘His name—what is it? Love.’ He was, of course, dissatisfied with this anti-climax, and altered the line to ‘That name to us is Love.’ But the change in Hymns Ancient and Modern (said to be Keble’s) is a great improvement, ‘His changeless name of Love.’ It is remarkable that Montgomery did not include this hymn in his Christian Psalmist.

[194]He made a most unpoetic recast of Wesley’s ‘All ye that pass by’; but in the Index he is too honest to give Wesley’s name, and (I presume) had too much self-respect to give his own. Many alterations in hymns make one sympathize with Miss Ailie’s notice, ‘Persons who come to steal the fruit are requested not to walk on the flower-beds’ (Barrie’s Sentimental Tommy).

[195]A verse of this hymn is omitted in the Methodist Hymn-book. The hymn is, I think, improved by the omission.

Silent Spirit, dwell with me,

I myself would quiet be;

Quiet as the growing blade

Which through earth its way has made;

Silently, like morning light,

Putting mists and chills to flight.

[196]This hymn is usually rearranged in our hymn-books. Our first verse is sixth in the original.

[197]The only collection in which, so far as I know, this hymn has been included, is the Young People’s Hymnal. It is an excellent school-hymn.

[198]Our Own Hymn-book, 41. The hymn has six verses. The Baptist Hymnal gives a hymn of Spurgeon’s for an early morning prayer-meeting (633).

[199]This verse is given in Horder’s Worship-Song ad in the Primitive Methodist Hymn-book.

[200]Hymns of Faith and Hope. First Series.

[201]Arundel Hymns. Tr. Father O’Connor from the Latin—

Angelus ad Virginem

Subintrans in conclave

Virginis formidinem

Demulcens inquit, Ave!

[202]Crashaw’s English Poems (Tutin’s edition), vol. ii. 60. I have made two slight changes to suit the metre or indicate the connexion of thought. The poem has fifty-six lines.

[203]Julian, p. 975 (‘R. C. Hymnody’).

[204]Faber’s Hymns, Preface.

[205]Arundel Hymns, 145.

[206]A Collection of Hymns of the Children of God in all Ages, From the Beginning till Now. In Two Parts. Designed chiefly for the Use of the Congregations in union with the Brethren’s Church. London. Printed, and to be had at all the Brethren’s Chapels. M DCC LIV.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Hymn-Book of the Modern Church: Brief studies of hymns and hymn-writers

THE HYMN-BOOK OF THE MODERN CHURCH

PREFACE

CONTENTS

THE HYMN-BOOK OF THE MODERN CHURCH

INTRODUCTION

I A True Hymn

II Hymns of the Bible and the Early Church

SABBATH HYMN

LITERATURE

III Early Modern Hymns

I.—Sixteenth Century

THE LAMENTATION OF A SINNER

PSALM XIV

PSALM XIX

PSALM XCIII

III Early Modern Hymns

II.—Seventeenth Century

FROM DEATH TO LIFE

MORNING

EVENING

ST. MATTHEW’S DAY

THE GIFT

A GENERAL SONG OF PRAISE TO ALMIGHTY GOD

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER

LOVE

PRAISE

THE CALL

BEGGING

HYMN FOR ADVENT; OR CHRIST’S COMING TO JERUSALEM IN TRIUMPH

IV Eighteenth-century Hymns

I.—The School of Watts

A NEW SONG TO THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN

No. XXXII JACOB’S VOW.

IV Eighteenth-century Hymns

II.—Hymns of the Methodist Revival

1.—Hymns of the Christian Year

2. Hymns on the Lord’s Supper.[121]

3. Hymns of the Calvinistic Controversy.

4. Hymns of the Methodist Evangel

5. Hymns of the Methodist Society

HYMN TO GOD THE SANCTIFIER

6. Hymns on Passages of Holy Scripture

IV Eighteenth-century Hymns

III.—The Olney Hymns

THE CONTRITE HEART

THE WAITING SOUL

PRAYER FOR PATIENCE

A LIVING AND A DEAD FAITH

LONGING TO BE WITH CHRIST

IV Eighteenth-century Hymns

IV.—Addison, Toplady, and Others

V Nineteenth-century Hymns

I.—Anglican Hymns

From Windermere, To the Congregation and Children of St. Paul’s, Haggerston.

V Nineteenth-century Hymns

II.—Free Church Hymns

CHRIST THE PURIFIER

V Nineteenth-century Hymns

III.—Roman Catholic Hymns

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX

FOOTNOTES

GENERAL INDEX

INDEX OF HYMNS AND VERSES

Transcriber’s Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

THE
HYMN-BOOK OF THE
MODERN CHURCH

I
A True Hymn

II
Hymns of the Bible and the Early Church

III
Early Modern Hymns

III
Early Modern Hymns

IV
Eighteenth-century Hymns

IV
Eighteenth-century Hymns

IV
Eighteenth-century Hymns

IV
Eighteenth-century Hymns

V
Nineteenth-century Hymns

V
Nineteenth-century Hymns

V
Nineteenth-century Hymns