Arthur E. Gregory

“ Teach our faint desires to rise
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.’
Quench then the altar-fires of your old gods,
Quench not the fire within. [29]
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Nay, rather, if we find no ‘minstrel rapture’ for the praise of the Most High, may we not ask with Charles Wesley—
Why breaks not out the fire within,
In flames of joy, and praise, and love? ”

“ 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.
Saviour, for Thy love we praise Thee,
Love that brought Thee down to earth;
Like the angels we would praise Thee,
Singing welcome at Thy birth;
Let Thy star, through all our gloom,
Guide us to Thy manger home.
Saviour, for Thy life we praise Thee,
Life that brings us from the dead;
Like the children we would praise Thee:
Lay Thine hands upon our head. ”

“ Lie plain before its view.
Motions and thoughts, before they grow,
Thy knowledge doth espy;
What unborn ages are to do
Is done before Thine eye.
Thy wisdom which both makes and mends
We ever much admire;
Creation all our wit transcends,
Redemption rises higher.
Thy wisdom guides strayed sinners home,
’Twill make the dead world rise,
And bring those prisoners to their doom,
Its paths are mysteries.
Shepherd’s poems were called ‘Penitential Cries,’ and were published with Mason’s Songs of Praise in 1693. His best-known hymn begins
Alas, my God, that we should be
Such strangers to each other! ”

“ But none are so suitable to the homely pathos and majesty of the English Liturgy; none are so adapted to the character which the English Church has aimed at forming, the sweet reserve, the quiet thoroughness, the penitence which is continuous without being unhopeful. They are lines which the child may repeat without the painful sense that they are beyond him, and the man without the contemptuous sense that they are below him. They appeal to the man in the child, and the child in the man. They are at once a form of devotion, a rule of life, a breath of prayer, a sigh of aspiration. ”

“ Charles Wesley, a Christ Church student, came to add sweetness to this sudden and startling light. He was the ‘sweet singer’ of the movement. His hymns expressed the fiery conviction of its converts in lines so chaste and beautiful, that its more extravagant features disappeared. The wild throes of hysteric enthusiasm passed into a passion for hymn-singing, and a new musical impulse was aroused in the people which gradually changed the face of public devotion throughout England. ”

“ To praise the Lamb who died for all,
The general Saviour of mankind.
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Thy undistinguishing regard
Was cast on Adam’s fallen race:
For all Thou hast in Christ prepared,
Sufficient, sovereign, saving grace.
Jesus hath said, we all shall hope,
Preventing grace for all is free:
And I, if I be lifted up,
I will draw all men unto Me.
Arise, O God, maintain Thy cause!
The fulness of the Gentiles call:
Lift up the standard of Thy cross
And all shall own Thou diedst for all. [132]
In other hymns he employs the most biting, taunting sarcasm. ”

“ Matthew’s Day, one verse of which would reconcile the least ecclesiastical of us to the observance of saints’ days—
There are in this loud stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime;
Who carry music in their heart,
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart;
Plying their daily task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Worker of all things good,
O glorious Life of all
That on their Maker call,
Christ Jesus, hear!
. . . . .
Our holy tribute this,
For wisdom, life, and bliss,
Singing in chorus meet,
Singing in concert sweet,
The Almighty’s Son.
We, heirs of peace unpriced,
We, who are born in Christ,
A people pure from stain,
Praise we our God again,
Lord of our Peace!
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. ”

“ 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
Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracles of God,
but by the dull canals of Babylon, where the exiled 35 people wept when they remembered Zion. ”

“ Josiah Conder included one in the section for Private Worship of the Congregational hymn-book, 1836. [67]
Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore,
Never tired pilgrim’s limbs affected slumber more,
Than my wearied sprite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast.
O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest!
Ever blooming are the joys of heaven’s high Paradise,
Cold age deafs not there our ears nor vapour dims our eyes:
Glory there the sun outshines, whose beams the Blessed only see. ”

“ Have we not as good cause for praise as they for prayer?
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. ”

“ 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:
A solemn reverence checks our songs,
And praise sits silent on our tongues.
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’ ”

“ 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. ”

“ While we sing the praises of our God in His Church, we are employed in that part of worship which of all others is the nearest akin to heaven, and it is pity that this, of all others, should be performed the worst upon earth. The gospel brings us nearer to the heavenly state than all the former dispensations of God amongst men. And in these last days of the gospel we are brought almost within sight of the kingdom of our Lord; yet we are very much unacquainted with the songs of the New Jerusalem, and unpractised in the work of praise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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:
Let Madan or Romaine record his praise,
Enough that Wesley’s brother can forgive. ”

“ 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.’
It is as though, building an altar to the living God, he would observe the Levitical precept, and rear it of unhewn stones, upon which no tool had been lifted. ”

“ 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
O what shall I do My Saviour to praise,
So faithful and true, So plenteous in grace,
So strong to deliver, So good to redeem
The weakest believer That hangs upon Him! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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,
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Holy Spirit! pity me,
Pierced with grief for grieving Thee,
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. ”

“ Martineau is the ablest apologist for fervour in religious poetry.
The editor of a hymn-book will not think it necessary to graduate the fervour, the imaginativeness, the grandeur of the compositions admitted into his volume, by the cold, level, and prosaic condition of mind which may possibly prevail among some who use it. Thus, to damp the fire down to the temperature of the fuel, seems to offer but a small prospect of kindling anything. We must not thus forgo the glorious power which art exercises in worship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
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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. ”