Chapter III
THE LITERARY ASPECT OF HYMNS
I. WHAT MAKES THE HYMN LITERATURE?
Its Character as a Transcript of Life.
In so far as a hymn is a transcript of a genuine conviction, intensified by emotion, or of a profound experience, it is literature. There have gone into it vision, feeling, imagination, sincerity, intimate experience—an appropriation of the influences life offers a soul that gazes upon it with wide-open eyes. It is not the measure or the rhyme that makes literature of a hymn. A bald formulation in metrical form of doctrines dissected by metaphysical processes may be called a hymn by courtesy, but it is not literature any more than would be a textbook on mathematics.
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. It is the story of the experience of an exploring soul seeking knowledge of the deeper spiritual relations with God and his Kingdom.[1]
Its Wide Distribution.
The importance of the hymn as literature is further attested by the response to it of the many generations which have made it the vehicle of their religious life. Dr. Reeves calls attention to the wide distribution of hymnbooks; they have come from the printing press by the multiplied millions during the last four hundred years. Three millions of the Methodist Hymnal have been broadcast over the United States, sixty million Hymns Ancient and Modern over the British Empire. Hundreds of other contemporary hymnals, both official and unofficial, aggregate even more millions. If we add collections of Gospel Songs, we get many millions more. No other form of literature has had so wide a distribution. A single hymnal has had more active readers than all the poetry in the world, ancient and modern.[2] To dispose of an edition of one hundred thousand volumes of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, the standard collection of the poems of the ages approved by critics, would take a score of years. Moreover, they would go largely into libraries, private and public, for occasional reference.
Its Acceptance Through Many Generations.
But wideness of distribution is no final criterion of literary quality, else our newspapers might lay an earnest claim to literary standing. But these hymnals do not severally represent individual writers, as do most of the books of poetry; they contain a common body of hymns representing the major portion of all of them. That selection of hymns, fundamental to all of them, has been culled out from the great mass of sacred lyrics written through many centuries, by the consensus of different generations, of different backgrounds, of different grades of social and literary culture, of different peoples and even races, and accepted as the most complete expression of the fundamental Christian life of them all. If that unanimity of responsiveness and practical endorsement by continued use does not confer the accolade of literature upon that body of hymns, the accepted definition of literature is faulty and inadequate.
Its Profound Influence.
No other verses have been read so often. They have not only shaped the religious thought and experience of vast peoples and developed their character, but have affected their general modes of thought and forms of expression and influenced their secular literature. Without their rugged, ax-hewn version of the Psalms, would the Scotch have become the stern, dour, conscience-driven people the world has learned to know and value? Without the vigorous “spirituals” and the lively rhythms of its gospel songs, would the American church life have developed the freedom from ecclesiastical tradition and formalism, and the fearless aggressiveness that has lighted the beacons of salvation in every land? The hymn has been the expression of life, and in turn has become the wellspring of life.
Whatever of culture and refinement other forms of literature have brought has directly touched only a small minority, and but indirectly the great mass of civilized peoples; but the hymn has had a direct influence on the life and character of the mass of the people, and has appealed to their instincts and imaginations and shaped their ideals in the most immediate and striking way. Where one person has been refined and enriched in mind by the poetry of Milton, or Wordsworth, or Tennyson, a thousand have been comforted, inspired, and transformed by Sternhold and Hopkins, Watts, or Wesley.
Archbishop Trench, the fault of whose hymns was chiefly that they were too few, was admonished by his friend, John Sterling, to give more attention to hymn-writing: “You would influence millions whom poetry in any other form would never reach.”
II. OBJECTIONS TO RECOGNIZING ITS LITERARY CHARACTER
Due to Narrow Definition of Literature.
In spite of these facts that surely entitle the hymn to be considered literature in the most vital sense of the word, there are critics who look upon it with undisguised indifference, if not with scorn. Partly due to an utter lack of sympathy with the use of it, partly to an academic idea of what literature really is, emphasizing form and rhetorical interest, partly because its appeal is emotional and not mainly intellectual, these objectors are blind to the larger interests involved. If there is any truth in the insistence of some literary critics that there are few hymns that are good from a literary point of view, Montgomery’s statement may give a sufficient reason: “Our good poets have seldom been Christians and our good Christians have seldom been good poets.”[3]
Due to Failure to Realize Limitations of Hymns.
A better reason is that such critics have seldom realized the limitations the singing hymn presents to the poet. Milton was a great poet, but he could not condense his ideas sufficiently or give them the needed terse expression. He needed a large canvas, while the successful hymn-writer is confined to a miniature. Even Tennyson, who succeeded in small lyrics, wrote only one hymn and that ill-adapted to actual congregational use.
Palgrave, in the preface to his Treasury of Sacred Songs, compares secular and sacred verse as follows: “Secular verse covers many provinces: manners, incident, love, landscape, the vast sphere of drama—in a word, all the many-colored romance of life. Sacred verse can hardly go beyond one province: to expect masterpieces in one field approximately numerous as those in the secular lyric is unreasonable. Even more unreasonable is it, when of this single province a district only is chosen for censure, and treated as the whole domain. Hymns, well-nigh limited to the functions of prayer and praise, are precisely that region in which a practical aim is naturally, almost inevitably, predominant!”
Some Critics and Their Criticism.
Dr. Samuel Johnson’s criticism of hymns may be brushed aside as based on a wrong conception of poetry, which to his mind called not for simplicity, but for something near to that artificiality which he conceived of as art: “Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical.”... “The paucity of its topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of its matter rejects the ornament of figurative diction.”
In mitigation of the false judgment of the old literary dictator, it may be said that the golden age of English hymnody had not yet arrived.
The later criticism of the hymn by Matthew Arnold represents more fully the attitude of the literary critic in our own day. The practical aspects of life were not ignored by him, but they did not bulk large in his mind. Hence it is not surprising that, while he fully comprehended the wide influence of the hymn, he had little or no sympathy with its spirit and even less with its purpose, so that he could write about it after this fashion: “Hymns, such as I know them, are a sort of composition which I do not at all admire.... I regret their prevalence and popularity among us.” Could anti-religious rationalism go further?
Among more recent critics, Edmund Clarence Stedman speaks of the hymn as “the kind of verse which is, of all, the most common and indispensable.” But Professor Boynton in the Cambridge History of American Literature, gives as much space to “Yankee Doodle” as he does to American Hymnody and refers to its “sentimental ornateness,” “tawdry sentimentalism,” and “banalities of evangelistic song,” unconsciously drawing an unhappy portrait of his own spiritual condition.[4]
The older criticism of the hymn had at least the merit of thoughtfulness and serious consideration of its value and of its shortcomings.
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.
III. THE WRITING OF HYMNS
The Handicap of Thought and Diction.
Alfred Tennyson clearly recognized the limitations that handicap the writer of hymns. “A good hymn is the most difficult thing in the world to write!” The hymn he did write, “Sunset and Evening Star,” beautiful as it is, failed in practicability for congregational use. Its unfitness for mass singing in its various phases is the chief stumblingblock.
The hymn writer finds in the limitations, which he must bear in mind as he writes, no small hindrance to spontaneity and poetic vision. He must limit the thought not only to the comprehension, but to the natural feelings of the people who are to sing what he writes. He must not use unusual or polysyllabic words. Striking figures, startling tropes, involved similes, obscure metaphors, allusions to things known by but few, descriptive or dramatic lines, are all forbidden. Every verse, whether in single or double meter, must be complete in itself, whatever its relation in thought to what precedes or follows. There must be unity, simplicity, condensation of thought, and yet a clearness that shuts out involved thought or mysticism that cannot be instantly grasped. The hymn writer is like a violinist called upon to play on a single string.[5]
Thomas Hornblower Gill, an English hymn writer who is slowly gaining recognition in current hymnals—The Revised Presbyterian Hymnal has five of his hymns—gives his conception of what hymns should be, in his preface to his first volume, issued in 1868. He insists that the true hymn is a true poem in every case, while it is debarred from liberties of luxuriance which may be claimed by other poetry. “It may easily be too figurative; it cannot be too glowing or imaginative... They should exhibit all the qualities of a good song—liveliness and intensity of feeling, directness, clearness and vividness of utterance, strength, sweetness, and simplicity and melody of rhythm: excessive subtlety and excessive ornament should be alike avoided.”
The Handicap of Meter.
Not the slightest handicap is the necessity of choosing a form of stanza that will at the same time fit the writer’s sentiment and be adapted to singable tunes known to the congregations which are to be lyrically served. This range of form is quite limited. Most of these tunes call for iambic or trochaic measure, because anapaestic or dactylic numbers lack the dignity and the impressiveness necessary for general hymns.
The form of the stanza may take the elevated, heavy “Long” Meter, the more widely expressive “Common” Meter, the sententious “Short” Meter, “Sevens and Sixes,” “Eights and Sevens,” plain “Sevens” or “Sixes,” or the more lively “Sixes and Fours” or “Sixes and Fives.”[6]
These different meters have very marked characteristics. It is really marvelous how the instinct of true hymn writers in all generations has unconsciously, or at most subconsciously, taken account of them and with practical unanimity observed them.
The Long Meter is stately and dignified. It is the fit expression of noble praise like the Long Meter Doxology, “Lord of all being, throned afar,” “From all that dwell below the skies,” “Before Jehovah’s awful throne,” or elevated sentiment like “God is the refuge of His saints,” “When I survey the wondrous cross,” and “’Tis midnight, and on Olive’s brow.” Its long, even lines, broken by no strong stops, afford a smooth, graceful expression for general truths and Christian doctrine in poetic form, such as “O Jesus, our chief cornerstone,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,” and “O Love! how deep, how broad, how high!”
The Common Meter is much more varied in its possibilities of expression, as its unequal lines and alternate rhymes give greater freedom. It is the prevailing meter of the old English ballad. It is really the most adaptable and pliable form of stanza open to the hymn writer, giving equal opportunity of expression to all emotions and classes of truth. It is a fit vehicle alike for the elevated praise of “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” the majesty of “I sing th’ almighty pow’r of God,” the doctrinal statement of “There is a fountain filled with blood,” the tenderness of “Jesus, the very thought of Thee,” the vigor of “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,” and the quiet resignation of “Father, whate’er of earthly bliss.” On account of this adaptability it has become the Common Meter in fact as well as in name. Its exclusive use in some of the collections of metrical psalms shut out the use of tunes in other meters and so led to the singing of only a few of the more popular Common Meter tunes; the result was that the congregational singing in the churches in England, Scotland, and America was nearly wrecked.
S. M. might stand for sententious meter as well as for Short Meter, as the two short lines and the long pauses at the end of each of them give it an emphatic, terse, even epigrammatic style. This may be seen in “My soul, be on thy guard,” “Welcome, sweet day of rest,” “Stand up and bless the Lord,” “Crown Him with many crowns,” and “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” John Fawcett was not happy in the selection of this meter for his otherwise very useful and precious hymn, “Blest be the tie that binds,” as the strong pause at the end of the first line in all but one of his stanzas cuts his sentences in two and makes the hymn alike difficult to read and sing. The same difficulty will be found in the reading of other hymns in this meter, the limitations of which have not always been recognized by writers using it. It would be a very slow, heavy meter did not the longer third line give it needed movement.
The meter known as 6s lacks the longer third line and is therefore peculiarly grave and disjointed. It is well adapted for hymns of passive faith or resignation, such as “My Jesus, as Thou wilt,” “Thy way, not mine, O Lord,” or for dolorous prayers like “My spirit longs for Thee,” and “I hunger and I thirst.”
The meter 6s and 4s in its various forms might be supposed to be even slower than the 6s because of the additional short lines of four syllables each. The opposite is true. In some cases the first four lines are rhythmically equivalent to two lines of ten syllables each, so slight is the pause of actual thought at the end of the six-syllable line, with the result that the slowness is quickened into simple dignity and elevation. But even where the pauses at the end of the first and third lines are long, the shorter second and fourth lines, as in common meter, give added movement. In the other form of 6s and 4s, the first two six-syllable lines are so knit together by their common rhyme and, if properly written, have so markedly a common goal of completeness of thought in the third line toward which they hurry that again the movement is hastened and the severity of the 6s is mitigated. The same principle applies to the following three or four lines, depending on the form examined. Hence we have in the various forms of this meter some of our noblest hymns of prayer, praise, and victory, such as “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” “More love to Thee, O Christ,” “We are but strangers here,” “Fade, fade, each earthly joy,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Rise, glorious Conqueror, rise,” “Come, Thou Almighty King,” and “My country, ’tis of thee.”
IV. THE LITERARY QUALITY NOT TO BE OVERESTIMATED
Literary Quality Not the Supreme Consideration.
Although poetical feeling and imagination and nice literary craftsmanship are not to be undervalued, but rather to be earnestly sought for in our hymns, after all, they are not the supreme considerations. Practical use has proved many hymns that conspicuously lacked them to have been supremely useful because of their spiritual content, sincerely and lucidly expressed. When hymn writers like Watts and Newton have deliberately ignored and even avoided literary values, and yet have written among the most useful hymns in our collections, the critic who insists on poetical quality has by no means a prima facie case. Charles Wesley was a poet, but in his valuable hymn “A charge to keep I have” he is a pedagogue without poetic afflatus. Standards of literary value, when not artificial, as in Samuel Johnson’s case, have their place, but a place that is modest and not supreme.
Literary Quality Should Be Subconscious.
The danger in unduly emphasizing the literary aspect of hymns is well expressed by Dr. Louis F. Benson: “The hazard is implicit in the very motive of hymn singing; the heightening of religious emotion. The danger is of mistaking sugary sentiment for true feeling and its rhetorical expression in ‘soft, luxurious flow’ for true poetry.” In other words, the conscious seeking of the hymn writer after literary atmosphere and skill of treatment is fatal to genuineness of feeling, and to his success in producing a true hymn.
It will do no harm to iterate here that the two essentials to a successful hymn are spirituality and the power to express it so as to reach the understanding as well as the hearts of the people who are to sing. According to Paul, the first commandment in hymn writing and singing is: “I will sing with the spirit”; the second is like unto it: “I will sing with the understanding also.”
Chapter IV
THE EMENDATION OF HYMNS
I. THE CHANGES IN OUR HYMNS
Early Changes.
The question of changes made in hymns by others than their writers deserves consideration. The point is not that the individual preacher is supposed to air his critical skill, but that he should understand why changes have been made by hymnal editors and better appreciate the principles involved and the literary niceties that are to be observed.
In the first compilations of hymnbooks, the rights of the authors of the individual hymns were entirely below the horizon. Many hymns were published without the names of their writers. To this day Charles Wesley’s claim to “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” as against that of his brother John, depends wholly on considerations of style and form of stanza. There is not even a well-founded tradition.
It was the adaptation of the hymn to immediate actual needs that counted, not the writer. There was no moral copyright, much less legal, to stay the hand of the mutilator.
Watts did not hesitate to incorporate in his hymns lines and even whole stanzas from the hymns of others. John Wesley had no scruples in rewriting lines and stanzas and even whole hymns already in print. Toplady’s alterations were often quite radical, as, for example, his drastic revision of Charles Wesley’s “Blow ye the trumpet, blow”[1] to suit his intensely Calvinistic views.
The Abuse of the Editorial Revision.
Dr. Worcester, in this country, who issued several collections of psalms and hymns, chiefly by Watts, was lavish in his alterations, mostly for the worse—so much so that the New England churches revolted. Lord Selborne said of these mutilations by many hands, “There is just enough of Watts left here to remind one of Horace’s saying that ‘you may know the remains of a poet even when he is torn to pieces.’”
The needless alteration of hymns that occurred in these early days is to be greatly deplored, especially of those most widely known. “Rock of Ages” and “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” were fair targets for the editorial spear—out of the twenty-four lines of the former only eleven have escaped change. The line “When mine eyestrings break in death” was the only one peremptorily demanding a change, although a few other alterations may be accepted as slight improvements, as, for instance, “wounded” instead of “riven” side. So many people have committed this hymn with its differing lines to memory that when it is sung there is frequently the clash of these variations instead of the desirable uniformity of utterance.
The same is true of Wesley’s hymn. In spite of John Wesley’s warning against changes in the Methodist hymns—“Hymn-cobblers should not try to mend them. I really do not think they are able”—more than thirty variations occur in the first stanza of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.”
The pity is that while uniformity is extremely desirable in these and many other hymns, it is now out of the question. The several variations have their partisan upholders.
James Montgomery spent years of his life amending and modifying the hymns of others, but asked that others should not change his verses. He insisted that if good people could not conscientiously adopt his doctrines and diction, it was a little questionable in them to impose theirs on him.
It is interesting to note that Montgomery could not “conscientiously adopt the doctrine and diction” of the first verse of Cowper’s “There is a fountain filled with blood” and substituted a verse of his own of which he said, “I think my version is unexceptionable.” But hymnal editors did not find it so and unanimously repudiated it. It was regarded as “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.”
The Return to Originals.
This abuse of the editorial revision produced a reaction, and in the last half century, under the leadership of Dr. Louis F. Benson, a strong movement appeared among hymnal editors whose slogan was “Back to the originals!” In many cases that was not practicable, as the changes made were evident improvements, but the new tendency often proved to be a very useful one in restoring many a good original phrase in place of a much inferior alteration.
II. PRINCIPLES OF EQUITY INVOLVED IN THESE CHANGES
The Rights of the Original Writer.
There are some principles of equity that lie upon the surface. The writer of hymns has rights that must be recognized. His name should be given as its author. No name other than his own should be connected with the product of his pen. Unless there are sufficient reasons, the hymn should be given as he wrote it. If his name is given, no doctrine or experience should be interpolated. In business affairs that would be adjudged forgery in the second degree. If interpolations or changes of ideas become necessary for practical reasons, due notice should be given that the original writer is not responsible for the new ideas or the changes of phraseology. Unitarian hymnal editors have not always recognized this obligation. Our recent well-edited hymnals have been scrupulous in this particular.
The Limits of the Author’s Rights.
But there are distinct limits to the author’s rights. If the hymnal were a merely literary compilation, the liberty to make changes would not be admissible. But the hymnal is not an anthology; it is a collection of hymns for a definite and practical purpose of an exalted character—to aid congregations in the worship of God and in the realization of the spiritual aims he has set before them. That purpose has the right of eminent domain. If the original hymn has faulty lines or weak verses that jeopardize its otherwise practical effectiveness, competent editors of collections of hymns for congregational use have the right to amend, or condense, and so add to its usefulness in the work of the church, in so far as it does not affect the general spirit and tenor of the original. Isaac Watts recognized this principle, saying, “Where an unpleasing word is found, he that leads the worship may substitute a better one.” Indeed, in 1737, he acknowledged that “Many a line needs the file to polish the roughness of it and many a thought wants richer language to adorn and make it shine—but I have at present neither inclination nor leisure to correct and I hope I never shall.”
III. EFFECT OF CHANGES ON QUALITY
Loss of Original Writer’s Vision.
It has been strongly urged that the emendation of hymns is dangerous to their quality; that the original writer was a better judge of both thought and phrasing than the cold critic whose very attitude prevents the high feeling that must inspire the most appealing forms of expression.
But the protest overlooks the fact that the very fervor and urge of fresh vision and its consequent emotion may prevent attention to nice details of phraseology or even to the proper balance of parts of a hymn. Furthermore, the writer with the creative urge may lack the critical faculty and fine discrimination necessary to polish up his verses after the impulse of writing has spent its force.
This being true, the editor who supplies the wanting critical attitude shows no presumption, provided his vision is clear and his skill in supplying more accurate, more melodious, or more practical phraseology adds value to the hymn. Martin Madan was no hymn writer, but when he rewrote Watts’ hymn,
“He dies, the Heavenly Lover dies!
The tidings strike the doleful sound
On my poor heartstrings; deep he lies
In the cold caverns of the ground,”
and gave us the noble stanza,
“He dies, the Friend of sinners, dies;
Lo! Salem’s daughters weep around;
A solemn darkness veils the skies,
A sudden trembling shakes the ground,”
he not only gave it a dignified and Biblical content and form, but he rescued the hymn for the spiritual edification of coming generations.
Biblical Precedent.
There is plenty of Biblical precedent. The original compiler and editor of the Psalms, be he Asaph or Ezra, inserted a version of the eighteenth psalm differing from the original as found in the twenty-second chapter of Second Samuel. It cannot escape the most casual reader of the New Testament that its quotations from the Old Testament, whether poetical or prose, are by no means accurately reproduced. Moreover, the writers of psalm versions from Marot and Luther down to Watts did not hesitate to condense, alter, or interpolate new ideas in their transcriptions of the sacred originals. They had no sense of presumption; their minds were preoccupied with the practical ends they were trying to serve.
IV. ANALYSIS OF CHANGES MADE
It may be instructive to study more in detail the occasions for changes made in our hymns and learn the justification for many of them. If some of them seem somewhat microscopic and even captious, none the less they make for exactness, for nice discrimination, and for more intelligent appreciation of the literary and spiritual values of our magnificent body of hymns.[2]
The Omission of Verses.
A very important change from the original of many hymns is the omission of some of the less valuable stanzas, or even a condensation of some of them by omitting unattractive lines.
“Oh for a thousand tongues to sing,” the fine hymn that opens all but recent Methodist hymnals, originally began, “Glory to God and praise and love,” and had eighteen stanzas. The hymn as now used consists of stanzas 7 to 12 of the original. Some hymnals omit stanza 10.
In the Trinity hymn sometimes ascribed to Charles Wesley, “Come, Thou Almighty King,” the second of the original five stanzas is always omitted:
“Jesus, our Lord, arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall;
Let thine almighty aid
Our sure defense be made,
Our souls on thee be stayed;
Lord, hear our call.”
The evident imitation of the second stanza of the British National anthem is too obvious:
“O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter his enemies,
And make them fall.
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
Confound their politics,
On Him our hearts we fix;
God save the King.”
In Bishop Brooks’ original of “O little town of Bethlehem,” so widely known and used, the fourth stanza is omitted:
“Where children, pure and happy,
Pray to the Blessed Child;
Where misery cries out to thee,
Son of the Mother mild;
Where charity stands watching,
And faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
And Christmas comes once more.”
The reasons are not far to seek: the double rhyme in the third line is so forced as to be awkward; the first two lines refer to Jesus in the third person, but the next two in the second; more important still, the stanza does not make a sufficient addition to the value of the hymn to warrant the added length.
The stanza,
“Thy body slain, sweet Jesus, thine,
And bathed in its own blood,
While all exposed to wrath divine,
The glorious suff’rer stood,”
if retained, despite its medieval picture of our suffering Lord, would have added nothing to Watts’ noble hymn, “Alas! and did my Saviour bleed,” but rather would have hemmed the progress of its thought and feeling.
Few of the lovers of Robinson’s classic hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,” would have enjoyed singing and visualizing the omitted fourth stanza,
“O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see thy lovely face!
Richly clothed in blood-washed linen,
How I’ll sing thy sovereign grace!”
A stanza was omitted from a hymn by Isaac Watts by Dr. Worcester, and he was compelled by public sentiment to replace it in his next collection. Who was right—Dr. Worcester, or Watts and the church public?
“But while I bled and groaned and died,
I ruined Satan’s Throne;
High on my cross I hung and spy’d
The monster tumbling down.”
What a travesty in this stanza of Christ’s words, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven”!
The omission of all the older hymns regarding “the state of the unpenitent dead” in our more recent hymnals is due to their usually rather lurid expressions, going beyond those of the Scriptures, to the reaction in the church at large against the rather mechanical and heartless emphasis of the painful doctrine—not only in hymns, but in sermons as well—and also to the realization that it is not a theme fitted for singing.
What modern congregation could sing Watts’ stanza formulating the doctrine,
“Up to the courts where angels dwell,
It [the soul] mounts triumphant there;
Or devils plunge it down to hell
In infinite despair”?
When we come to the hymns constructed by selecting stanzas from long poems—e.g., by John Keble or by John Greenleaf Whittier—we reach marvels of skill in selection and co-ordination that have greatly enriched English hymnody.
Reconstructing and Rewriting Faulty Hymns.
John Wesley inveighed against “hymn-cobblers,” but he was a most efficient and skillful “hymn-cobbler” himself. He deserves high commendation for his literary skill and taste in cutting the rough diamonds that passed through his editorial hands. A few instances will illustrate his success.
“Before Jehovah’s awful throne” is recognized as one of Watts’ noblest hymns of worship. But it is Wesley’s reconstruction that brought out its essential nobility.
Watts began it in rather mechanical fashion,
“Sing to the Lord with joyful voice,
Let every land his name adore;
The British Isles shall send the noise
Across the ocean to the shore.”
Wesley omitted this stanza entirely. Beginning with the second stanza,
“With gladness bow before his throne,
And let his presence raise your joys;
Know that the Lord is God alone
And formed our soul and framed our voice”
(which shows that Watts’ inspiration had begun to rise), Wesley transformed it into a majestic expression of pure worship:
“Before Jehovah’s awful throne,
Ye nations, bow with sacred joy;
Know that the Lord is God alone,
He can create and he destroy.”
He was equally successful with Watts’ third stanza:
“Infinite power, without our aid,
Figured our clay to human mould;
And when our wandering feet had strayed,
He brought us to his sacred fold.”
The first line is faulty: the accent of “infinite” is on the first syllable: Watts placed it on the second. The second line conveys no clear idea: how is clay “figured”? The third and fourth lines are bald and ordinary, lacking in poetic grace. See how deftly Wesley took Watts’ material and gave it grace and dignity:
“His sovereign power, without our aid,
Made us of clay and formed us men;
And when like wand’ring sheep we strayed,
He brought us to his fold again.”
Transforming Watts’ fourth stanza in like manner, he added a majestic fifth stanza of his own:
“Wide as the world is thy command,
Vast as eternity thy love;
Firm as a rock thy truth shall stand
When rolling years shall cease to move,”
completing one of the noblest hymns in the language.
Another hymn of Isaac Watts was enriched by passing through the hands of John Wesley. Besides correcting minor infelicities and curtailing its impracticable length, he rewrote the third stanza of the very popular hymn, “Come, ye that love the Lord,” transforming Watts’
“The God that rules on high
And thunders when he please,
That rides upon the stormy sky
And manages the seas,”
into
“The God that rules on high,
That all the earth surveys,
That rides upon the stormy sky
And calms the roaring seas.”
He might have gone further and obviated the break of the sentence occurring between the third and fourth stanzas. Some hymnal editors meet the difficulty by omitting both.
Rev. Martin Madan wrote no hymns; his only claim to immortality rests on his emendations of the hymns of greater men. But he well deserves to be remembered for some of his happy improvements of important hymns. His revision of Watts’ hymn “He dies! the Heavenly Lover dies!” has already been referred to.
Madan very fortunately changed Charles Wesley’s
“Hark how all the welkin rings,
Glory to the King of Kings,”
into the much more poetical lines:
“Hark! the herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the newborn King.’”
Minor Felicitous Changes.
No small improvement in our hymns consists of the change of individual phrases because of misplaced accents, unfortunate consonantal combinations, inept metaphors, and phrases that are secular in spirit and associations.
In Cowper’s “Jesus, where’er thy people meet,” the second line had the word “inhabitest,” difficult to sing; it was changed to “Dost dwell with those.”
In Bishop Ken’s “Evening Hymn” some bad cases of wrong accents have been corrected. “Under thy own almighty wings” now is “Beneath the shadow of thy wings,” and “Triumphing rise at the last day” is become “Rise glorious at the judgment day.”
Isaac Watts’ theory that hymns should eschew poetic grace was carried too far—into euphonic slovenliness. In “Welcome, sweet day of rest” he wrote “One day amidst the place,” ignoring the fact that “amidst” is not singable. “One day in such a place” is much more suave. In “Joy to the world! The Lord is come!” he wrote in the first line of stanza three “let sins and sorrows grow”; the excessive sibilation has been removed by using singular nouns.
In Charles Wesley’s very useful hymn, “Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim,” “The praises of Jesus” is substituted for “Our Jesus’ praises,” distributing the hissing s’s more musically. The second and third stanzas are wisely omitted; few congregations could sing, with the solemnity the rest of the hymn calls for, such lines as
“When devils engage, the billows arise,
And horribly rage and threaten the skies.”
Charles Wesley in his hymn, “Jesus, let thy pitying eye,” had a very realistic vision of the crucifixion and wrote “My Saviour gasped, ‘Forgive!’” which for singing purposes was well emended to “prayed.” How did it escape the eagle eye of his brother John? Or did the influence of the Moravians, who were fond of these physical touches in writing of the crucifixion, affect both the Wesleys?
The “Protestant Te Deum,” “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” has fared well—or ill, according to the point of view—at the hands of “hymn-tinkers.” Revisers have omitted
“Let highborn seraphs tune the lyre
And, as they tune it, fall
Before His face who tunes their choir,
And crown him Lord of all.”
They have transformed the stanza,
“Let every tribe and every tongue
That bound creation’s call
Now shout in universal song
The crowned Lord of all,”
into the nobler stanza,
“Let every kindred, every tribe
On this terrestrial ball,
To him all majesty ascribe,
And crown him Lord of all.”
Omitting one or two more stanzas, Dr. John Rippon has added a last stanza that puts a fitting climax to the whole hymn:
“Oh, that, with yonder sacred throng,
We at his feet may fall!
We’ll join the everlasting song,
And crown him Lord of all.”
Edward Mote began his widely-used hymn, “My hope is built on nothing less,” with a “stumble on the threshold,” writing “Nor earth nor hell my soul shall move,” a very unintelligent plunging in medias res. Was it Bradbury, who wrote the popular and effective tune that gave the hymn wings, that had the happy impulse to combine parts of the first and second stanzas, using the first two lines of the second stanza and the last two of the first? This gave an arresting first line and eliminated a line impossible to put on the lips of a general congregation, “Midst all the hell I feel within.”
The very familiar and useful hymn of George Heath, “My soul, be on thy guard,” is a notable example of the value of a competent editor’s emendations. In stanza three Heath wrote,
“Ne’er think the vict’ry won,
Nor once at ease sit down;
Thy arduous work will not be done
Till thou hast got thy crown.”
Again in the fourth stanza he wrote,
“Fight on, my soul, till death.
God will thy work applaud,
Reveal his love at thy last breath,
And take to his abode.”
The improvement in both stanzas, as found in our hymnals, is obvious at a glance.
Even so finished a poet as the distinguished historian Milman disfigured his noble Palm Sunday hymn, “Ride on, ride on in majesty,” by such a line as “Thine humble beast pursues its road,” which Murray changed to the graceful and appealing line, “Saviour meek, pursue thy road.”
Space is wanting to exhaust the various changes in hymns that are amply justified if their most effective use is to be secured. It is sufficient to say that changes of text must increase the perspicuity, precision, propriety, and force of the hymn. Single phrases may wisely be modified if a change corrects a wrong accent, makes a line more euphonious, adds to its vividness, expressiveness, or vigor, increases its dignity, clarifies the sense, or better adapts it to public use.