Edmund S. Lorenz

“ Others find their means of voicing what they feel totally inadequate. The hymns they sing and appropriate to themselves unstop their silent tongue. High tides of spiritual blessings, times of refreshing when Christ is near to the soul, hours of privilege when the whispering of the Holy Spirit is heard, victories over fierce or subtle temptation when God’s grace proves sufficient, moments of God’s overshadowing presence when the whole world is transfigured, and a thousand other marvelous experiences in the Christian life—all call for hymns to express them. ”

“ That the truth of the Bible should be able to take Newton, the slave driver, and make of him a minister of God, not only himself writing such hymns as “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” “Glorious things of Thee are spoken,” or “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” but inspiring and encouraging the poor hypochondriac, William Cowper, so that from his heart should well forth the hymns, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” “God moves in a mysterious way,” and “Sometimes a light surprises,” is in itself one of the great evidences of Christianity. ”

“ Where a hymn has allusions not likely to be recognized by the average singer, they ought to be made plain. How many of the millions who have sung the well-known hymn, “Come, thou Fount of every blessing,” knew what the word “Ebenezer” signified? Striking phrases, packed with deep thought and feeling, like Matheson’s
“I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be,”
should have their treasures brought to light, lest the average churchgoer should overlook them. ”

“ There are moments in a service, unexpected episodes of an emotional character, climaxes of feeling in a discourse, when a verse of a 244 hymn sung by the congregation will exceed in impressiveness any oratorical outburst; if the minister can trust his memory, he can carry the faltering memories of his people and realize an effect otherwise impossible, not only not losing any momentum, as he would if it were necessary to refer to the hymnal, but indefinitely increasing it. ”

“ So far as hymn-writing is an art, the writer deals not with topography, but with the landscape: he sees, he feels, he sings. The difference in method is made inevitable by the variance of temperament of the two men, the diversity of gifts. But both methods are as valid as inevitable. Neither man is sufficient in himself as an observer or a reporter. It is the topography and the landscape together that make the country what it is. It is didactics and poetry together that can approach the reality of the spiritual Kingdom. ”

“ The hymn of adoration lifts the soul into a higher plane, into a contemplation of the glory and majesty of the infinite perfections of its God in which self is forgotten and a consciousness of the infinitude of divine beauty, nobility, and spiritual elevation remains to thrill the soul. ”

“ THE PRACTICAL USE OF HYMNS I. THE HYMN AS A MEANS TO AN END
While our discussion attempts to consider every phase of the Christian hymn, its chief interest to us lies in it as a means to an end. It may be a work of literary art, the expression of a noble genius admirable in itself; it may be an interesting epitome of some noble doctrine that calls for appreciation of its lucidity and comprehensiveness; but for us its primary quality must be its adaptation to meet spiritual needs, in other words, its usefulness in religious work. ”

“ Even allowing that there was an obligation to sing the Word of God, Watts denied that the metrical Psalm was the pure Word of God. The demands of meter and rhyme so refashioned and even mutilated the Psalms that they no longer were the words of the Scripture, nor even its ideas. Its inspiration suffered a total eclipse under the hands of the versifiers, and the metrical Psalm became a work of “human composure” with none of the vital spirit of the free hymn.
Watts could not understand why “we under the Gospel should sing nothing else but the joys, hopes, and fears of Asaph and David.” ”

“ That emotion may be mere earnestness, it may be satire, it may be satisfaction in contemplation of beautiful scenes, or satisfaction in ideas and memories, or displeasure at impressions painful or abhorrent. Few of us realize how unfailing is the flow of emotion in our minds responding to the world about us and in us.
To view life and the world through the eye of reason is valuable, of course; but if that vision lacks the support of the eye of emotion, it brings only a silhouette, without perspective, wanting a sense of reality. ”

“ We shall find the Hebrew voice of worship not only leading the songs of the Apostolic Church, but through all the succeeding ages sounding the controlling note of all Christian praise. David and the sons of Asaph led the choirs and congregations in chapel and church and cathedral as truly as they did those in the temple and synagogues. Christianity gave the Psalms a larger, more inspiring message and a more literary and more musical setting; but the thrumming of David’s harp has been heard through all the long centuries and is still heard around the world. ”

“ The hymns that would have satisfied literary critics would have required a spiritual delicacy and refinement, an elegance and artistry of phrase, a vagueness of religious idea devoid of genuine feeling, that would shut them out from use in the workaday world in which we live. To set aside the “good and useful purpose” acknowledged by Matthew Arnold in the consideration of the hymn is to ignore its whole reason for being, and, what is vastly more important, to ignore the deepest needs of the human soul. ”

“ If the people are submerged in indifference and stupor, he may treat the whole hymn in like fashion, verse by verse, always careful to make his few words count, for prolixity will defeat his purpose. He will be even more careful that there shall be a crescendo movement of increasing impressiveness and deepening feeling.
Such a jolt to the passive attitude of an unresponsive people, genially administered in a confident manner, and with sincere feeling, will waken the most indifferent congregation and avert the impending defeat. ”

“ The writing of the best hymns of the Christian Church was not a matter of ulterior purpose, any more than is the singing of the hermit thrush in the wilderness. They are the result of the urge for expression that lies back of all the best architecture, literature, and art of the human race. There is the vision, the sense of reality, the subjective response to truth, to beauty, and to exalted experiences that must find an objective bodying-forth in some appropriate form. ”

“ If a congregation is to sing a hymn, not thoughtlessly and mechanically, but intelligently and with feeling, it must be prepared for the devout exercise. It is the minister’s task to tune his people up for the individual hymn, and create the habit of finding meaning and genuine feeling in all the hymns they sing. Stupid singing is a habit: why not create a habit of singing thoughtfully and feelingly? ”

“ God has put into the throat of every member of this preacher’s congregation a marvelous musical instrument with a wide range of tones and of extremely appealing cadences, of great power to express the emotions of the heart of the singer, and to suggest and stimulate the feelings of the minds and hearts of the hearers: is the minister justified in neglecting the opportunity it offers to arouse and quicken the mental and spiritual natures of the people for whose religious life he is responsible? ”

“ The high peaks of religious experience which are most valuable as furnishing ideals and stimulus to the members of a singing congregation can be reached only by individuals, not by a mass of people. To restrict the expression of religious experience to that common to all Christians, would be to omit the most inspiring and helpful hymns, and keep our song service at a dead level of inferior value. ”

“ The great doctrines of Christianity loom up in their dignity and majestic sweep, in their adequacy to the highest and deepest needs of the human soul. The spontaneous hymn is but a cry of astonished delight, of exalted inspiration, of self-forgetful contemplation of the revealed glory, an instinctive appeal to other souls to share the rapture of the vision. ”

“ His study makes full recognition of the personal elements in hymn development. The singers whose vision of spiritual things is fresh and keen stand out in every age, expanding the permanent content of church hymnody.
Here is indeed a book which will set the Church to singing once more, in an effort to proclaim a new awareness of the presence of God—that same awareness which stirred the composers of our greatest hymns. Dr. Lorenz makes visible to us the golden stairway of great hymn writers, shining at every level of its ascent with the glory of the Christian faith. ”

“ Over three-quarters of a century ago, this lament was made by a prominent New England minister: “Many a man, who carefully interrogates his own experience, will confess that, while the voice of public prayer readily engages his attention and carries with it his devout desires, it is not so with the act of praise; that he very seldom finds his affections rising upon its notes to heaven—very seldom can he say at its close that he has worshiped God. ”

“ A service devoted to the worship of God, as manifested in His love, offers a wider range of possibilities. Is it the love manifested in the atonement? there may be the somber element of the crucifixion combined with its nobly elevated aspects; is it the love manifested to His children? there will be a chastened ecstasy in the hymns and prayers; is it the love that consoles and comforts? there will be the tender and sympathetic development of the theme—each will call for its own selection of hymns. As the last is perhaps the most difficult, let us see what program we should prepare for it. ”

“ The criticism often urged that Watts wrote too much cannot well be gainsaid, but the striking fact confronts us that most of the great hymns were written by men who wrote too much! The same is true of the composers of our greatest music, as, for instance, Mendelssohn and Handel. Much writing develops technic, ease, spontaneity, unselfconsciousness, that make the heights of feeling and expression more accessible. But what Watts needed was not so much to write less, but to have a competent editor like John Wesley to eliminate his vulgar and often grotesque lines. ”

“ Dr. Neale, out of scattered lines and phrases of the original, with additions of his own, constructed the wondrous mosaics which we delight to sing: “Brief life is here our portion,” “Jerusalem, the Golden,” “For thee, O dear, dear country.”
One thinks of Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) as the Aristotelian logician, the profound Augustinian theologian, the philosopher, the invincible protagonist of medieval orthodoxy, rather than as a hymn writer; yet some of our present day hymnals contain two communion hymns of profound thought and deep feeling written by him. ”

“ In many cases the very finest climax to a section of a sermon, or to the sermon itself, will be found in one or more verses of a hymn which brings the emotion of the theme to its high culmination. There is no lack of material; for the expression of every Christian doctrine that lends itself to lyric feeling there are intense and poignant phrases and lines steeped in transcendent emotion. Abstract truth has intellectual value of course, but has spiritual value only when transmuted into the gold of intense conviction in the heart of true believers. ”

“ But a hymn in which the hurried pulse and the throbbing heartbeat of deep human feeling can be felt is genuine literature, a revelation of human personality and of the collective life of which it is representative. ”

“ But if these purposes of the singing of hymns are to be realized and their values exploited, they must be properly employed. They must be made vital and their messages brought home to the hearts of the people. There should be no listless, merely formal singing of noble Christian hymns. There is unwitting sacrilege in doing that. The truth of God, the high experiences of his saints, are rendered unreal and lose their appeal—they become stale. ”

“ It may be the depressing sense of conscious unworthiness, rising into repentance for sin, into the tenderness of grateful recognition of the divine love and forgiving grace, expressed in tears, joy over the assurance of salvation expressed in beaming countenance or in ejaculations of delight, or even in shouts of victory. The human heart becomes an Æolian harp from which the winds of the Spirit of God evoke an infinitude of melodies, grave and solemn, tender and sweet, joyous and triumphant, or vigorous and inspiring,—a very symphonic orchestra. ”

“ It took nearly a century before even an approximation could be reached to the practicability of the Lutheran hymns, which were written, not by literary connoisseurs, but by men in close touch with the people, men who had with singleness of mind striven to win and edify them. As we study the English lyrics, written, not to be sung, but simply to express the personal feelings of the writer in the current style and in complicated measures, we see how far English poets had to go before a practicable singing hymn could be written. ”

“ Charles Wesley wrote in the midst of a great revival, and his hymns emphasize the plan of salvation and voice the personal experiences of the saved. In our own day the ideas of service, of public welfare, of works of philanthropy and mercy, and of social justice find expression.
The supreme theme, of course, is Christ. Whatever phases of Christian doctrine or experience may seem to absorb the mind of any generation, still the songs cluster about the person of Jesus Christ. As Dr. Austin Phelps eloquently insists, “here the rapture of holy song culminates on earth, as it does in heaven. ”

“ It is easy to appropriate the joy, the reverence, the adoration, the intimate communion with God, which the hymns so clearly, so movingly, so contagiously, even so rapturously express, and to make them intimately our own. This is true worship, the high peak in man’s experience of God.
The social elements in human nature come into play and intensify the religious emotions. The personal distractions and inhibitions that hamper devotion are eliminated. Under properly effective conditions there is a mass attitude, a mass emotion, that needs only a mass expression to affect every individual unit. ”

“ The storing of the memories of the children with the leading hymns of the church is no small factor in their Christian nurture. The older members of the family also will be stimulated spiritually, finding in the memorized hymns strength and solace while they bear the heat and burden of the day. We have lost the spiritual atmosphere in many of our Christian homes, not only by the neglect of the family altar, but also by the neglect of the singing and memorizing of the hymns and tunes of the church. ”

“ It is a tragedy that so many clergymen have such dull and unattractive services when through a proper use of hymns they might be made thrillingly interesting. Professor H. M. Poteat, of Wake Forest College, does not use too severe language in his Practical Hymnology when he says, “As a result of inexcusable ignorance, carelessness, and laziness, the singing of hymns, in all too many churches, instead of being an act of worship, has degenerated into a mere incident of the service, holding its place solely because of immemorial custom.” ”

“ Recently the new rationalism and sensual materialism have again submerged the religious life of Germany and the impulse to write hymns has lost its urgency. Whether the shattering of the illusion of world-wide power, and the sobering effect of its terrible losses of men and of wealth, will bring Germany back to her religious senses must be patiently awaited by those eager for her highest welfare. The recrudescence of paganism and its threat of renewed striving after world dominance need not blast this pious hope. ”

“ Their imaginations need to be stimulated. Their response to the charm of musical phrases, to the clearness and lucidity of the thought expressed, to the fitness of the unexpected and pleasing metaphors used, to the nice selection of the words employed to weave a garb of beauty for the message the hymn is intended to convey, can be and must be developed, if not only the proper appreciation of the hymns but also their highest efficiency as preachers are to be secured. ”