Part 2 — Chapter XVII HYMNS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

I. RISE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH

Although the Wesleys were Church of England clergymen, the tide of religious feeling they set in motion could not sweep over the mass of the population without its waves dashing across all ecclesiastical and traditional barriers. But John Wesley’s somewhat arrogant spirit, the extreme methods which he found necessary to reach the lower classes, so desperately in need of a new religious impulse, above all, his sharp reaction against the high Calvinistic theology of the Church, repelled many who had been deeply affected by the Methodist atmosphere that enveloped them and had felt a new sense of obligation to bring back their people to a true religious life.

II. EARLY COLLECTIONS OF EVANGELICAL HYMNS

The effectiveness of the spontaneous Methodist singing was evident enough and the Evangelical ministers of the Established Church felt the need of collections of hymns that should achieve the same results without what seemed to them the doctrinal vagaries and emotional extravagances of the Wesleyan hymns. Nor were they at first willing to set entirely aside the psalmody that had served the church for so many generations.

As might be expected, the earliest collections of hymns for 194 use in the Established churches were largely based on Nonconformist and Wesleyan materials, since most of their editors, and the churches they wished to serve, were under the influence of the Countess of Huntingdon, who in turn was in close touch with the Calvinistic-Methodist movement.

One of the first of the collections of the Evangelical wing was that of Martin Madan, Psalms and Hymns, containing 170 hymns without order or arrangement, except that sacramental hymns had a department by themselves. Madan used a free hand in revising and remodeling the hymns he selected, sometimes for good, frequently for ill. He was quite a musician, supplying tunes, thirty-three of which were his own composition, of which “Huddersfield” and “Helmsley” still occasionally appear in our hymnals. His book was used to a considerable extent and helped to hasten the introduction of hymns in the Church of England. Other collections of the same name and type were issued by Berridge and Conyers.

More important was Toplady’s Psalms and Hymns, issued in 1776. Despite his virulent attacks on the Wesleys, he used quite a number of their hymns, without credit and drastically revised. His collection contained 418 hymns, some by Watts and by other Nonconformists. His revisions were not wholly on doctrinal grounds, but on literary as well—“God is the God of Truth, of Holiness, and of Elegance. Whoever, therefore, has the honor to compose, or to compile, anything that may constitute a part of his worship should keep those three particulars constantly in view.” In this remark, found in his preface, Toplady anticipated the later period of the literary hymn by Heber, Keble, and Milman. This collection continued in use for nearly fifty years.

III. EVANGELICAL HYMN WRITERS

With the exception of this later collection of Toplady these hymnbooks were mere compilations. The impulse of this Evangelical wing to write hymns of their own did not long 195 delay. The most notable of these hymn writers were John Newton (1725-1807) and William Cowper (1731-1800). They co-operated in the issue of Olney Hymns, so called after the village of which Newton was the curate.

John Newton was born in London. His mother, who was a pious Dissenter, and had dedicated her boy from his birth to the Christian ministry and had tried to train him in preparation for this work, died when he was but seven years old. He grew up to be a wild, profligate, wicked young man; he speaks of himself as “once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa.” At the age of twenty-three he again came under religious influences and became an ardent Christian.

It was not until he was nearly thirty-nine years old that he entered the ministry of the Established Church, being appointed curate of the village of Olney. He had always had an impulse, even during his wildest years, to read and study and to add to his general culture. Hence, in spite of his vagrant life (having spent eighteen years on the sea) and his secular pursuits, he came into the ministry with a rough-hewn education, and a practical and resourceful attitude of mind, that served him well in his aggressive ministry. His spiritual experience was deep and intense. He had been in close touch with Whitefield, the Wesleys, and other leaders in the great evangelistic movement.

For his work as a curate in the Established Church, the hymns of Watts lacked the deep personal spirituality for which his own soul sought expression. The Wesleys supplied that element abundantly, but their hymnbooks did not express his Calvinistic attitude, nor fit his local needs. His own urge to write hymns and his intimacy with Cowper, which undoubtedly seemed a providence, encouraged him to produce Olney Hymns, which contained 280 hymns by Newton and 68 by Cowper.

Newton sympathized with Watts in his objection to pronouncedly 196 poetic elements in hymns; in his preface he remarks that “the imagery and coloring of poetry, if admitted at all, should be admitted very sparingly.” The book was dedicated to “the use of plain people,” to promote the faith and comfort of sincere Christians. To secure these, “perspicuity, simplicity, and ease” were sought. Yet some of Newton’s best hymns closely approach the best of his friend, the poet Cowper. Genuine feeling gave lyric wings.

Of his 280 hymns, the most successful in maintaining a place in our hymnals are: “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,” “Approach, my soul, the mercy seat,” “Glorious things of thee are spoken,” “Come, my soul, thy suit prepare,” “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” “Safely through another week,” “While with ceaseless course the sun,” “One there is, above all others.” What a noble chaplet of pearls for his Lord is this amazing contribution by the former “servant of slaves”!

Newton’s famous coworker on the Olney Hymns, William Cowper, was the son of one of the chaplains of George II and was born in Hertfordshire in 1731. He was frail and shy, and had a very painful experience among the boys of the Westminster School which he attended for ten years. Doubtless his later mental affliction was due in large part to the bullying of his schoolmates. He studied law, but did not find it to his taste. At the age of thirty-six he moved to Olney, where he met John Newton, who became his close friend and protector as well as his leader in the writing of hymns. He co-operated with Newton’s religious work as lay reader and wrote his hymns for the cottage prayer meetings that were a feature in Newton’s work.

While his literary work shows no trace of his melancholia, being cheerful and even humorous, his hymns frequently show traces of it, notably in “God moves in a mysterious way” and “Oh, for a closer walk with God.” Newton’s habit of introspection may have influenced him, and the obscurity of the people and of the occasions for which he wrote may have 197 given him a sense of freedom in expressing his deeper, subconscious experience. He was an exceedingly spiritual-minded man. It was said of him by one who often heard him, “Of all the men I ever heard pray, none equaled Mr. Cowper.” He had a vivid and intense experience when he was converted: “For many succeeding weeks tears were ready to flow if I did but speak of the Gospel, or mention the name of Jesus. To rejoice day and night was all my employment. Too happy to sleep much, I thought it was lost time that was spent in slumber.”

Cowper’s literary work was done after he was fifty years old—indeed, after his contributions to Olney Hymns had been made. His hymns were really preliminary studies for his secular work.

Cowper made a very important contribution to the Christian hymnody of the ages: “God moves in a mysterious way,” “Oh, for a closer walk with God,” “Jesus, where’er thy people meet,” “Sometimes a light surprises,” “There is a fountain filled with blood,” “Hark, my soul, it is the Lord,” which will all survive as long as devout hearts meditate and sing. Olney Hymns was very widely accepted and had more to do with the introduction of hymns into Anglican services than any other hymnbook up to that time. It was speedily reprinted in America and was very popular there.

Beyond all its Church of England predecessors, it established the ideal of the hymn as evangelical, as an expression of personal spiritual experience, as a vehicle for the conveying of spiritual truth. It was closely akin to the Methodist ideal, but more sober and sedate, with less of the poetical element. The hymnbook was the crystallizing force of the Evangelical party and its unifying discipline. It did not win the co-operation of the whole Church, by any means, but it prepared the way for the final acceptance of the hymn as an inherent part of the Church service in that communion.

While the Olney Hymns continued in use by the Evangelical 198 wing of the Established Church, there continued to be Psalms and Hymns issued by various compilers, Basil Woodd, Simeon Bidulph, Cecil Venn, and others, all giving increasing attention to the hymns, and extending their use, in the church service.

IV. HYMN WRITERS OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL

If in the actual singing hymn up to this time there had been any definitely literary quality or poetic spirit, it had been in spite of a theory that the hymn must be plain and simple and adapted to plain people, as in those of Watts and Newton, or somewhat unconsciously so by reason of an imagination vitalized by deep feeling, as in those of Charles Wesley. The hymn had been a practical religious vehicle for expressing feeling and impressing truth, not an artistic and a literary effort.

From this time on the Romantic movement in literature began to affect the ideal of the hymn. Since the hymn was to become a part of the religious service, instead of a Nonconformist addition to the sermon, and since the metrical psalm was to pass away because of its literary shortcomings and absurdities, it was felt that the opportunity had come to put a higher literary quality, a more vivid imagination, a more definitely poetic element into the hymn—hence the literary singing hymn came into being.

This was all the more opportune, since literature was turning to religion for its themes. Coleridge issued his Religious Musings, Wordsworth his Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Moore his Sacred Songs, and the libertine Byron his Hebrew Melodies. In 1807 the literary remains of the lamented Henry Kirke White, including his ten hymns, among which was the sublime “The Lord our God is clothed in might” and his spiritually autobiographical “When marshalled on the mighty plain,” were edited by Robert Southey. It is also worth while noting that from 1809 to 1816 Reginald Heber printed his 199 religious poems and his hymns. In 1827 John Keble’s The Christian Year made its appearance with its materials for singing hymns. In the same year the hymns of Bishop Heber and of Henry Hart Milman greeted the Christian public.

As early as 1809 Heber was considering the use of a hymnal in his parish church. In 1811 he published four hymns in the Christian Observer as specimens of a series he was contemplating. He proposed a hymnbook that should be “a collection of sacred poetry.” He sought the help of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey, and other literary men of prominence, but only Henry Hart Milman, the great church historian, responded. The ecclesiastical authorities sympathized, but thought the church unready for an authorized hymnbook.

After Heber’s death in India in 1826, his widow brought the manuscript back to England and it was published in 1827—not as a hymnbook, however, but in the form and style of current poetic issues. In this book appeared fifty-seven hymns by Heber and twelve by Milman. Having due regard to its size, it was probably the richest contribution ever made to Christian hymnody.

After the lapse of a century, his hymns are still in current use, many of them inevitable in every hymnal whether churchly or popular, such as “From Greenland’s icy mountains,” “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” “The Son of God goes forth to war,” “By cool Siloam’s shady rill,” “Bread of the world, in mercy broken,” “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning.”

The beauty of Heber’s style was recognized from the first. His hymns were distinctly literary in flavor, poetically conceived, with varied rhythms and forms of stanza. But he did not transgress the limitations of the singing hymn, as had the literary men of a century and more before, nor did he ignore the practicability of the small number of verses. The hymns were poems, but they were congregational hymns none the less. But they might have been all this and yet perished 200 by the way. It was their deep spirituality, their lucid expression of Christian truth, transmuted by intense conviction and personal experience into a personal appeal that was abiding, that have made them immortal.

Dean Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) was a brilliant scholar and church historian and a poet of great reputation. His hymns are strong, churchly, thoughtful to a high degree, but they lack the poetic charm of those of Heber. Of the eleven that appeared in Heber’s posthumous collection, and of others that were printed later, only one, his Palm Sunday hymn, “Ride on, ride on in majesty,” is certain to be included in every hymnal. The litany, “When our hearts are bowed with woe,” and “Oh help us, Lord, each hour of need,” are only occasionally used.

Like Saul among the prophets, we find the author of Lalla Rookh, Thomas Moore (1779-1852), enrolled among our English hymn writers. The charm of his secular verse and songs is found also in his Sacred Songs, from which his ever-useful and tender “Come, ye disconsolate” has been taken; it is found in most of our hymnals. Less often do his “Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea” and “O Thou who driest the mourner’s tear” find a place. Not directly associated with ecclesiastical circles and lacking in religious fervor, he yet deserves a place among distinctly literary hymn writers.

No small factor in the development of the literary hymn was The Christian Year by John Keble (1792-1866). It was not a collection of hymns, but a series of poems appropriate to all the several sacred times and seasons; but out of it were salvaged a number of hymns that have served the needs of high liturgical churches on special days. Hymns Ancient and Modern, the High-Church hymnal so popular in Great Britain and its dominions, contains no less than eleven of these adapted hymns. The Christian Church at large is a grateful debtor to this devotional poetry for the two hymns, “Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,” the evening hymn, and “The 201 voice that breathed o’er Eden,” the wedding song. Beyond the value of these excerpts from his poems was the poetic stimulus that enriches all subsequent hymnody by raising the literary quality of the ideal hymn.

It was this literary quality of the work of the foregoing writers, their definite recognition of the liturgic needs of the Church, and their high church ideals and sympathies, that won the final victory of the hymn over the metrical psalm in the Church of England. This party had been the last stronghold in England of metrical psalmody.

V. CONTEMPORARY HYMN WRITERS

Although contemporary with the foregoing romantic school, Thomas Kelly (1769-1854), originally an Evangelical Church of England clergyman, later on an Independent, was not particularly influenced by them. He was an indefatigable hymn writer; his collection of Scripture Hymns finally contained 765 hymns, all original. His ideal was still that of Watts, Wesley, and Newton—the useful hymn. He had no conscious striving after literary quality, but, like Newton, frequently rose to a high standard in this particular when lifted by his theme. He was an earnest, pious, zealous, enthusiastic preacher, and liberal with his large wealth. His influence in Ireland was widespread and counted largely for piety and for evangelistic aggressiveness.

Some of our most widely used hymns are from his pen: “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices,” “Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious,” “On the mountain’s top appearing,” “The Head that once was crowned with thorns,” “Zion stands with hills surrounded.”

Another distinguished contemporary, James Montgomery (1771-1854), was probably more directly influenced by the literary impulses of the times. A Moravian layman, the son of a Moravian minister, he was a professional writer and editor of a secular newspaper of considerable influence. For years 202 a worldling, he was forty-two years old before he publicly professed his acceptance of Christ.

He had written quite a good deal of secular poetry up to this time; now he turned to writing hymns, which he had ceased to do since he was a boy of fourteen. His poetry was highly appreciated at the time, but it is now forgotten, although his hymns keep his memory green. He had served a full literary apprenticeship and had formulated his theories of the hymn—its character, its content, its limitations—before he began writing, so that his hymns have an average excellence and effectiveness that can be paralleled only by those of Bishop Heber. His critical attitude is very evident in his introduction to his second book, Christian Psalmist: “The faults in ordinary hymns are vulgar phrases, low words, hard words, technical terms, inverted construction, broken syntax, barbarous abbreviations that make our beautiful English horrid even to the eye, bad rhymes, or no rhymes where rhymes are expected, but above all numbers without cadence.” It is not surprising that, with this keenly critical approach, he made many alterations in Cotterill’s Selection of Psalms and Hymns, which he was asked to edit, nor that he almost rewrote the Moravian hymnbook on which he labored for twelve years.

The list of Montgomery’s widely accepted hymns is very large: The New Methodist Hymnal has 8, the New Presbyterian Hymnal 9, Hymns Ancient and Modern (1904 Ed.) 13.

The most widely used of Montgomery’s hymns are: “Angels from the realms of glory,” “Forever with the Lord,” “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,” “Hark the song of jubilee,” “In the hour of trial,” “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,” “Oh, where shall rest be found,” “The Lord is my Shepherd, No want shall I know.”

VI. MINOR HYMN WRITERS

There are some minor writers in this and the succeeding generation that deserve passing mention. The man of a single hymn sometimes strikes twelve.

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Among these is John Marriott (1780-1825), a Church of England vicar whose “Thou, whose almighty word” is in the first rank because of its dignity and sustained feeling. It is one of our best missionary hymns.

James Edmeston (1791-1867), a London architect, served his day and generation with hundreds of hymns for adults and children; only one of them has become a permanent addition to English hymnody, the evening hymn, “Saviour, breathe an evening blessing.”

Another layman, Sir Robert Grant (1785-1838), was conspicuous in his day as a statesman, and finally as Governor of Bombay; he was a man of deep piety and elevation of mind. He wrote a number of thoughtful and impressive hymns, but he made his most permanent contribution to the Christian Church’s sacrifice of praise in his noble “Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above,” which is in the first rank for its noble poetry as well as its profound devotion.

Another writer of high merit is the butcher’s son, Henry Kirke White (1785-1806), whose death at the early age of twenty-one years, after writing at the age of seventeen some poems of such merit as to arrest the attention of the literary world, was a distinct loss to English hymnody. How great that loss can be judged from the high quality of his “The Lord our God is clothed with might,” “Oft in danger, oft in woe,” and his Christmas hymn, “When marshaled on the nightly plain.” His struggles with poverty in seeking an education, with skepticism in finding peace of soul, with dread disease to which he had to succumb, invest his story with a poignant pathos.

Another hymnist deserving attention was Bernard Barton (1784-1849), a Quaker banker, twenty of whose hymns came into general use. Two of them seem to have won a permanent place in our hymnody, “Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace” and “Walk in the light! so shalt thou know”—not great hymns, but extremely useful.

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Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847) entered the church as a profession, but presently was led into a deep religious experience by attending the dying bed of a neighboring clergyman who, too, had looked upon his work as a means of livelihood. The fruit of this experience was the hymns that have been so loved and appreciated on both sides of the ocean. The favorites among them are “Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide,” “Jesus, I my cross have taken,” “As pants the hart for cooling streams,” and “Praise, my soul, the King of heaven.” The pathetic story of his last days has touched the hearts of God’s people as they have sung his swan song, “Abide with me”—the finest evening hymn of the Christian church—if it is accepted as an evening hymn.

That a Unitarian, Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), should have written so noble a hymn about the cross of Christ as “In the cross of Christ I glory,” expressing all its spiritual implications, can be explained only by his orthodoxy of heart. His superficial reasonings were the outgrowth of his early educational and social environment, and were not in co-ordination with his deeper convictions. He was a voluminous writer. His extraordinary genius for languages is revealed in his series of “Specimens” from the poetry of no less than five European languages. Politically he was even more conspicuous than Sir Robert Grant, but, like him, his name will be ever revered for a single great hymn, “In the cross of Christ I glory.” Other hymns in common use are “Watchman, tell us of the night” and “God is love; his mercy brightens.”

Josiah Conder (1789-1855), the compiler of the Congregational Hymn Book, wrote fifty-six hymns for it, one of which is very impressive and worshipful, “The Lord is King! lift up thy voice,” which will undoubtedly live through coming generations. His other hymns are uniformly good and of a high literary standard, but with less appeal.

VII. THE HYMNS OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

Cardinal Newman held that John Keble was the originator 205 of the Oxford Movement[1] by his great Assize sermon on “The Great Apostasy” preached at Oxford, and by his emphasis of the church’s calendar in his The Christian Year; but he can hardly be associated with the school of hymn writers that grew out of it, for some of them repudiated the literary hymn entirely.

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was the leader of the movement back to the ideals of the pre-Reformation church. He wrote some poetry, notably “The Dream of Gerontius,” and a few hymns. Of these, “Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom” is the most widely known, because of its attractive music, as he himself testifies. “Praise to the Holiest in the height” is really a more serviceable hymn for actual church services.

His disciples, Edward Caswall (1814-1878) and John Mason Neale (1818-1866), opened new veins of hymnic wealth in their translations from the Latin and the Greek, with which they greatly enriched the treasury of sacred song. In the enthusiasm evoked by their success, the suggestion was seriously made that all the post-Reformation hymnody be set aside to give way to the medieval and even earlier hymns!

Caswall devoted himself to the Latin medieval hymns and sequences and made some surpassing translations, or, if you please, transformations—e.g., “Jesus, the very thought of Thee,” “The sun is sinking fast,” “My God, I love Thee, not because,” and “When morning gilds the skies” from the German. He was a Church of England man, but in 1847 he entered the Roman Catholic Church, following his leader, Dr. Newman.

Dr. Neale did not leave the English Church, but was quite prominent in High-Church circles. He was intensely interested in the liturgics of his church, which led to his studies of the early Greek church and its breviaries. He brought to his translations of Greek hymns a literary skill, a spiritual insight, and a fervor that made him the primate among those who 206 found their inspiration in these ancient books of service and breathed into these ancient lyrics the breath of modern life. Among his most notable successes are: “Art thou weary, art thou languid?” “Christian, dost thou see them?” “The day is past and over,” “Fierce was the wild billow,” “’Tis the day of resurrection,” “Brief life is here our portion,” “Jerusalem the golden.” It must be remembered that these are not literal translations, but English hymns made up of ideas suggested by phrases in the originals. Only a poet imbued with devout feelings, responding to the vague suggestions of the often obscure originals, could have produced them.

Another disciple of Cardinal Newman who also followed him into the Roman Catholic Church was Frederick W. Faber (1814-1863), a poet by the grace of God, a devout Christian, a man of intense convictions, but somewhat temperamental and impulsive. Among his many good hymns are: “My God, how wonderful thou art,” “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy” (sometimes beginning “Was there ever kindest Shepherd”), “O Paradise! O Paradise,” “Hark, hark, my soul! angelic songs are swelling,” “Faith of our fathers! living still.” Few that sing the last-mentioned hymn realize that it refers to the faith of the Roman Catholic saints and that the hymn had to be cleansed of its Mariolatry before being used in our Protestant hymnals. Nevertheless, in its present form it is a very impressive and valuable hymn that has been redeemed from the propagandist vagary of its original writer.

Still under the influence of the Oxford High, or Anglo-Catholic Church, we find Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander, (1823-1895), the writer of many hymns, especially for children, among which are a number that promise permanent usefulness: “There is a green hill far away,” “Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult,” “The roseate hues of early dawn.”

Bishop W. W. How (1823-1897) wrote a number of excellent hymns for his hymnal, Psalms and Hymns, some of which have since found their way into other hymnals. Perhaps those 207 that have appealed most are “O Jesus, Thou art standing,” “We give Thee but Thine own,” “O Word of God incarnate,” “Soldiers of the cross, arise,” “Summer suns are glowing.” His hymns are thoughtful, devout, and full of tender feeling; their literary quality is admirable.

A very copious writer of the same generation was Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879), whose devotional poetry touched the heart of her generation to a remarkable degree. Her pen was quite facile, and not all she wrote had more than transient value: but some of her hymns the Christian Church will permanently treasure: “Take my life, and let it be,” “I could not do without Thee,” “True-hearted, whole-hearted,” “Lord, speak to me, that I may speak,” “I gave my life for thee.” Miss Havergal was a woman of profound Christian experience, which is voiced by her hymns.

Among the later writers is Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1927), voluminous writer on a variety of topics as well as a fairly popular novelist. He wrote the stirring “Onward, Christian soldiers” for a local processional of school children and assured himself of an immortality by a half hour’s writing that all his laborious literary work would not have won him. He also wrote an appealing evening hymn, “Now the day is over,” that Joseph Barnby has made popular by his pleasing tune, “Merrial.”

In spite of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns and a number of minor poets, and in spite of a wealth of charming folk songs, to prove that the spirit of song dwells in the Scottish breast, Scotland has made but a small contribution to English hymnody. The metrical psalm ruled the Scotch religious heart with a rod of iron. Only during the last generation has Scotia almost unwittingly made an important contribution. Horatius Bonar (1808-1889) was an industrious writer on many topics. He allowed no hymns to be sung in his church, but by a strange anomaly he issued three series of Hymns of Faith and Hope—in 1856, 1861, and 1866. While 208 these hymns were being increasingly sung around the world, his church sang metrical psalms! More than one hundred of his hymns are in common use. Among them are the following: “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” “I lay my sins on Jesus,” “Go, labor on; spend and be spent,” “Beyond the smiling and the weeping,” “A few more years shall roll,” “I was a wand’ring sheep,” “When the weary, seeking rest.”

Another Scotchman, George Matheson (1842-1906), the blind preacher, has written, among many others, a hymn whose beauty and mystical suggestiveness has rapidly given it wide usefulness: “O Love, that wilt not let me go.” Fortunate in having a very pleasing and effective tune, St. Margaret by Albert L. Peace, it promises to be a permanent fountain of blessing.

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