Part 1 — Chapter II THE PURPOSE AND VALUE OF HYMNS I. THE IMPULSE TO WRITE HYMNS
Reading edition
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.
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. Such a hymn is not calmly planned; it forces itself upon the mind of the rapt poet.