Hymn book

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such angry passions rise;
Your little hands were never made
To tear each other’s eyes.
Let grown-ups in our day grasp the idea in this simple poem!
MUSIC. The tune, LASST UNS ERFREUEN, one of the most famous in any hymn book, was published in Geistliche Kirchengesäng, Cologne, 1623. It was set to an Easter hymn beginning, “Lasst uns erfreuen herzlich sehr,” from whence it derives its name. The tune is unusual for its simplicity of structure and its invariable repetition of phrases throughout. Usually the alleluias in lines 3 and 6 are sung in harmony, the rest of the song in unison. ”

“ An explanation of the notation of these settings is given in the note to Hymn 29. Congregational singing of hymns is much to be desired; but, though difficult to obtain, it is not permissible to provoke it by undignified music. Its only sound musical basis is good melody: good melodies should therefore be offered to the people, such as it has been the object of this book to bring together; and they should have as much freedom and variety of rhythm as possible. ”

“ From this publication they were taken for extensive use in British hymn books.
1. Abide not in the realm of dreams, (The Harvest Call)
Included in Putnam, Singers and Songs, etc., is a poem of 10 stanzas from which a cento consisting of the first two lines of stanza 1 combined with the second two lines of stanza 2, followed by stanzas 3, 6, 7 and 10 are taken to form a hymn in the New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937.
2. Fades from the west the farewell light (Night)
This poem, entitled “A Psalm of Night,” is given in his Poems, New York, 1871. ”

“ The vastness of the subject can be gauged when we remember that we have above 400,000 hymns, in more than two hundred different languages and dialects.
Augustine says a hymn 'is a song with praise of God. If thou singest and praisest not God, thou utterest no hymn. A hymn, then, containeth these three things: song, and praise, and that of God. Praise, then, of God in song is called a hymn'. Gregory Nazianzen put it thus: 'Modidata laus est hymnus' A definition in the Cottonian MS. says a hymn must be praise of God or of His saints, be capable of being sung, and be metrical. ”

“ The Apostle Paul and other writers of the New Testament, who quote freely from a variety of sources, have used fragments of hymns to reinforce their teachings or with a devotional purpose. One gains from such citations a text only, or a fragment of text. Singing is not implied. The apocalyptic vision of the Book of Revelation, however, contains several magnificent hymns of praise which testify not alone to the form and content of the early hymn but also to the practice of worship in song. The praises of the heavenly host are mirrored in the praises of the congregation upon earth. ”

“ 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’ ”

“ Lord Selborne, in his Book of Praise, holds that 'a good hymn should have simplicity, freshness, and reality of feeling; a consistent elevation of tone, and a rhythm easy and harmonious, but not jingling or trivial. Its language may be homely, but should not be slovenly or mean. Affectation or visible artifice is worse than excess of homeliness; a hymn is easily spoilt by a single falsetto note. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Waldo S. Pratt, of the Hartford Theological Seminary, whose most valuable book has been quoted in these pages again and again, sums up the results of an intelligent and devout use of hymns most admirably: “Hymn-singing may surely be called successful when it affords an avenue for true approach to God in earnest and noble worship; when it exerts a wholesome and uplifting reflex influence on those who engage in it, establishing them in the truth and quickening their spirituality ”

“ If there be praise, and not praise of God, it is not a hymn. If there be praise, and praise of God, and it is not sung, it is not a hymn. It is necessary, therefore, if it be a hymn, that it have these three things: both praise, and praise of God, and that it be sung. ”

“ In hymns and psalms we have a universal ritual. It is the theology of the heart that unites men. Our very childhood is embalmed in sacred tunes and hymns. Our early lives and the lives of our parents hang in the atmosphere of sacred song. The art of singing together is one that is for ever winding invisible threads about persons.'
England is a nation of hymn-singers. Mr. Stead says, 'The songs of the English-speaking people are for the most part hymns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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’? ”

“ Good melody is never out of fashion; and as it is by all confession the seal of high musical genius, so it is that form of music which is universally intelligible and in the best sense popular; and we have a rich legacy of it. What we want is that our hymn-books should contain a collection of the best ecclesiastical and sacred hymn-melodies, and nothing but these, instead of having but a modicum of these, for the most part mauled and illset, among a crowd of contributions of an altogether inferior kind ”

“ Written for the Centennial Celebration of the Boston Thursday Lecture, October 17, 1833. It is a quasi-national hymn in praise of the Pilgrim Fathers. Included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ and in Lyra Sacra Americana.
9. O Thou in whom alone is found (Laying Foundation Stone for a Place of Worship)
Not dated. In Lyra Sacra Americana, and in Thring’s Collection (British) 1882.
10. O Thou who on thy chosen Son, (Ordination)
Written “For an ordination, March, 1829.” Included in Dale’s English Hymn Book, 1874. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But one who studies the new hymn-books, reads the prefaces of their editors, and notes the character of the hymns that are most used in our churches, will realize that now, as it has always been in the history of the Church, the guiding thought and feeling of the time may be traced in popular song, more faintly but not less inevitably than in the instructions of the pulpit. When viewed in historic sequence one observes the growing prominence of the mystical and subjective elements, the fading away of the early fondness for scholastic definition. ”

“ Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds Were in her very look; We read her face, as one who reads A true and holy book, The measure of a blessed hymn, To which our hearts could move; ”

“ Her hymns and religious verses are often lacking in rhythmic smoothness, but they are spirited, and indicate a deep piety and warmth of emotion. Her biographer says her songs, hymns, and letters are all worthy of preservation. She committed very few of her hymns to paper, and most of them have been preserved from the memory of the servant-girl to whom they were recited. They may be found to-day in the hymn-books of most of the popular churches. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It was included in Horder’s British Congregational Hymns, 1884, and in a number of American Unitarian collections.
2. Around the throne of God, the host angelic sings,
A hymn of “Universal Praise,” based on Revelation IV, 2, 3; XV, 3. Dated 1823 and published in the Christian Disciple, vol. V. A fine hymn of its type, but little used, perhaps because of its metre, 6.6.6.6.4.4.4.4.
3. Father of earth and heaven, Whose arm upholds creation, (Thanksgiving for Divine Mercies)
Included in Cheever’s Common Place Book, 1831, and in Lyra Sacra Americana. ”

“ The immense number of hymn-books for congregational use, published with or without musical notation, which have appeared since the time of the Reformation, is almost overwhelming to the student, and rather increases than facilitates the labour of selecting the most noteworthy examples for a work like that in question. ”

“ 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. ”