Christian hymn

“ Let us abandon at once our contemporary connotation of the word hymn which is derived ultimately from the hymns of Ambrose, 340-397, that is, a metrical lyric constructed in stanzas. In the pre-Ambrosian period Christian hymns were largely of the psalm type, to be chanted in rhythmic periods without rhyme. Not only should the word hymn be conceived in terms of ancient thought, but also the futile attempt to differentiate among psalms, hymns and canticles should be avoided. ”

“ Such strains as angel-lips can sing!
[244]
2 And sweet, on earth, the choral swell,
From mortal tongues, of gladsome lays;
When pardoned souls their raptures tell,
And, grateful, hymn Immanuel’s praise.
3 Jesus, thy name our souls adore;
We own the bond that makes us thine;
And carnal joys, that charmed before,
For thy dear sake we now resign.
4 Our hearts, by dying love subdued,
Accept thine offered grace to-day;
Beneath the cross, with blood bedewed,
We bow, and give ourselves away.
5 In thee we trust—on thee rely;
Though we are feeble, thou art strong ”

“ An eminent Episcopal divine, (says the Christian Register,) one Trinity Sunday, at the close of his sermon, read three hymns by Unitarian authors: one to God the Father, by Samuel Longfellow, one to Jesus, by Theodore Parker, and one to the Holy Spirit, by N.L. Frothingham. “There,” he said, “you have the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
It is natural to speak of hymns as “poems,” indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. ”

“ The faithful express through the church hymn their ardent desire for these things; they meditate upon these things, they rejoice in their possession, they describe them and they extol them; they adore, thank, and laud their Saviour, and they give themselves up to God. Since the content of positive Christian faith, or God’s revelation of salvation through Jesus Christ, is the principal subject of the church hymn, it is clear that the church hymn must be in perfect harmony with the Word of God, the Bible, the very source of the revelation of salvation. ”

“ From the point of view of the evolution of Christian hymns, the hymns in the Book of Revelation are perhaps the most significant in the New Testament because they exhibit varied elements, from Judaism, from Christianity and from the mingling of the two. [14]
[8]
It is interesting to re-read the New Testament in the search for hymns, but one should remember that the field is controversial. Some commentators would suggest that the entire 13th chapter of I Corinthians is a hymn, beginning,
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. ”

“ In considering the origin of the Christian hymn, one must remember that it is an outgrowth of man’s innate impulse to express his feelings in hymns and songs. That impulse is constitutional; man sings because he was so made that he cannot help singing. ”

“ As God hath dealt with thee.
Miss Fletcher.
491 C. M.
Before and behind the vail.
Happy the souls to Jesus joined,
And made in spirit one:
Walking in all his ways, they find
Their heaven on earth begun.
2 The church triumphant in thy love,
Their mighty joys we know;
They sing the Lamb in hymns above,
And we in hymns below.
3 Thee in thy glorious realm they praise,
And bow before thy throne;
We in the kingdom of thy grace;
The kingdoms are but one.
4 The holy to the holiest leads;
To heaven our spirits rise;
And he that in thy statutes treads,
Shall meet thee in the skies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All three may have been represented, but for a hymn of the Ambrosian type, the chant as evolved in rendering the Gospels or the Psalms may have given place to a form of song more characteristic of the lyric.
IV. Themes
The tradition of Christian hymnology which upholds a way of life is fundamental in Ambrosian and contemporary hymns. The “way” is the first term by which Christianity was designated in the Scriptures. Thus to the Scriptures the hymn writers turned for the living characterization of their themes. The call to a virtuous life is sounded in Splendor paternae gloriae quoted above. ”

“ For what we know of the first formulated human prayer and praise we are mostly indebted to the Hebrew race. They seem to have been at least the only ancient nation that had a complete psalter—and their collection is the mother hymn-book of the world.
Probably the first form of hymn-worship was the plain-song—a declamatory unison of assembled singers, every voice on the same pitch, and within the compass of five notes—and so continued, from whatever may have stood for plain-song in Tabernacle and Temple days down to the earliest centuries of the Christian church. ”

“ For Thou only art holy; Thou only art the Lord; Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
[13] THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHANTS
The first Christians sang hymns. The Saviour went to His passion with a song on His lips. Matthew and Mark agree that the last act of worship in the Upper Room was the singing of a hymn. “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out unto the Mount of Olives.” ”

“ His Letters for the Promotion of Humanity (1794-96) contain a passage of classic importance:
“The hymns which Christianity introduced had for their basis those old Hebrew Psalms which very soon found their way into the Church, if not as songs or anthems, at any rate as prayers.... The songs of Mary and of Zacharias, the Angelic Salutation, the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon, which open the New Testament, gave character more immediately to the Christian hymns. ”

“ 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
God made Man for man to die
are the glory of the new dispensation. ”

“ THE STUDY OF THE LATIN HYMNS.
The genealogy of the song of praise in the mediaeval and modern Christian Church is both simple and beautiful. It begins far back, as we have seen, in the chants and psalms of the Hebrew. Then it changes to the Syriac and the Greek. Then it emerges into the Latin. Next it is caught up in the old High-German poetry, and at length it becomes the modern English hymn. The line of direct descent is like that of some high and puissant family whose inheritance is transferred now to one branch and now to another, but whose noble lineage is never lost. ”

“ Thou hast shown Thy people heavy things; Thou hast given us a drink of deadly wine'.
The distinctively Christian hymn has its root in the poetry and worship of the Old Testament, whose songs and rhythmical passages passed directly into the services of the Greek Church. The Alleluia was early incorporated with Christian song. Jerome notes how the Christian ploughman shouted it at his work. Sailors encouraged one another by a loud alleluia as they plied the oar. ”

“ Ride on, ride on in majesty!
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. ”

“ The Στόμιον πώλων of Clement is representative of a theme which pervades Christian hymnody in all ages, the joy and enthusiasm of the initiate or the admonition and encouragement addressed to the Christian who stands upon the threshold of a new life. The Odes of Solomon have been interpreted in these terms. [76] Again, the theme is preserved in the so-called Amherst papyrus, which consists of a hymn of twenty-five tripartite lines, a catechism or liturgy for the newly baptized. ”

“ By no evil thing be marred;
Through all peril, Saviour, guide
To Thy heaven Thy crownèd Bride.
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. ”

“ They have done this more effectively than any other means employed 2 to produce these exhilarating and virtuous qualities of Christian character.
It is true that Christianity came out of a religion which has its rich heritage in the Psalter. Indeed, this is the world’s greatest hymn book; its sentences of prayer and praise have captured the hearts of generations of pious souls and ministered to their religious and moral needs. It is equally true that Christianity has liberated song far more effectively than any other religion. ”

“ The most important musical feature of any service of worship is the singing of hymns by the congregation. When voices are united in Christian song, hearts may readily be joined in common worship. Then it becomes much more than a musical feature. It becomes an act of worship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it must be required of every church hymn that it express only such religious experiences as are in the main common to the whole communion of the faithful, only such soul states and spiritual stages of development as are essentially experienced by every true Christian. ”

“ The rich hymns of the early Fathers are still amongst the most treasured legacies of the Church. Christian hymnology is the treasure-house into which all the best devotions of the men “of whom the world was not worthy,” exiled kings, bishops, confessors, and seers, and souls of lowlier state, have been poured, giving to us in some instances the doxology of a life-time, and associating through all ages the martyr’s or the musician’s name with that one particular chord. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among the more recent hymns that have found their way into the hymn-books of the Christian churches in America, there is none that enjoys such popularity and esteem as Frank Mason North’s hymn, “Where cross the crowded ways of life.” ”

“ Speaking of what the hymn had meant to him through the years of his pulpit and pastoral experience, he said: “I believed then, I am far surer now, that this is the attitude for every Christian, and everyone who would do his best for the common good. You cannot afford to neglect the church.” ”

“ Erhebt den Herrn,
Er hilft uns gern,
Und wer Ihn sucht, den wird sein Name trösten:
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
Freut euch des Herrn, und jauchzt Ihm, ihr erlösten!
Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. 1715-1769.
Christmas Hymn. II.
God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.
St. John, iii. 16.
Come, tune your heart,
To bear its part,
And celebrate Messiah’s Feast with praises;
Let love inspire
The joyful choir,
While to the God of Love glad hymns it raises.
Exalt His Name!
With joy proclaim,
God loved the world, and through His Son forgave us ”

“ The hymn, if well used, is the form in which the Christian religion will reach more people than can be reached by any other means. When these boys returned to their towns the people old and young were eager to learn the hymns, and had soon committed many of them to memory. In far-away towns that no white man had ever visited before, I have held a service, and when I started a hymn the people all joined heartily in singing. ”

“ The group of hymns which praise the early Christian leaders, either directly or by incidental mention, form a nucleus for the impressive medieval hymnology of the saints. The Apostles have first place both in chronology and importance. Prudentius praised the Roman martyrs and Ambrose those of Rome and Milan as well. ”