Part 3 — Chapter XIX THE STUDY OF HYMNS
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I. IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY OF HYMNS
It has been said that the two great books which every minister should study are the Bible and human nature. A third great book may be added, in which the foregoing two unite in a new combination—the Hymnbook.
In that collection of hymns the truths of the Bible find their expression in a new form. They are no longer Oriental in spirit, based upon human experiences under different conditions and in a different intellectual atmosphere, but modern, and strong with a fresh vitality. They have passed through the crucible of intense personal feeling and experience, and have been recast in forms more comprehensible to a different race and to a different age.
Next to his library of comment upon the Bible, and of exposition of its doctrines, should be that of the minister’s hymnological books giving the history, the illustrations, and the methods of making effective the hymns he uses in his congregation.
II. PERSONAL ADVANTAGES OF SUCH STUDY OF HYMNS
The first line of the study of hymns should be contributory to his own personal development.
Literary Pleasure.
A great delight awaits the minister of cultivated 230 taste and sensibility, for there are not only ten really good hymns, as a famous literary doctor[1] once insisted, but hundreds of them, whose distinction and beauty of phraseology, whose fresh and orderly development of ideas, and whose elevation and glory of thought give unfailing literary pleasure. How can one read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Still, still with Thee,” that best of American morning hymns, without exquisite delight?
“Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh, When the bird waketh, and the shadows flee: Fairer than morning, lovelier than daylight, Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee.”
Prominent among these literary hymns will be that hymn of majestic praise by Sir Robert Grant:
“Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above, Oh, gratefully sing his power and his love; Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of days, Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.
Oh, tell of his might, oh, sing of his grace, Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space: His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form, And dark is his path on the wings of the storm.”
Here are majesty and beauty of thought, flawless phraseology, and musical numbers. No editor has found excuse to alter or amend it.
Even Isaac Watts, who boasted his freedom from literary trammels and who illustrated that freedom all too often and too perversely, proved his latent poetic powers in the noble poetry of
“Our God, our Help in ages past, Our Hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home.”
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That the literary quality of Adelaide A. Procter’s hymn, “My God, I thank Thee who hast made,” is high no one would deny:
“My God, I thank Thee, who hast made The earth so bright, So full of splendor and of joy, Beauty and light; So many glorious things are here, Noble and right.”
The minor chord in the third verse but renders more poignant the high glory of her praise:
“I thank Thee more that all our joy Is touched with pain; That shadows fall on brightest hours, That thorns remain; So that earth’s bliss may be our guide, And not our chain.”
There is a mine of inestimable literary wealth awaiting the search of discriminating taste.[2]
Literary Culture.
But many ministers of limited native susceptibility to literary and poetic beauty, and perhaps of none too efficient literary opportunities, will not be able at once to enter into the delight of the literary qualities of hymns. All the more will it be important for them to study their hymnal for the sake of its opportunity for deepening their capacity for enjoying literary values. Their imaginations need to be stimulated. Their response to the charm of musical phrases, to the clearness and lucidity of the thought expressed, to the fitness of the unexpected and pleasing metaphors used, to the nice selection of the words employed to weave a garb of beauty for the message the hymn is intended to convey, can be and must be developed, if not only the proper appreciation of the hymns but also their highest efficiency as preachers are to be secured.
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Few preachers realize the importance of this literary culture; yet, apart from his deity, Jesus Christ was the greatest literary man the race has developed. His parables, his similes, his aptness of phrase, his wit, his clearness of style, despite the great topics on which he discoursed, cannot be paralleled in any literature. The literary value of the Gospels is one of the reasons of their agelong and race-wide appeal.
The effort of the preacher to sensitize his mind and spirit, in order to appreciate what his hymnal offers, will give him more of the extraordinary winsomeness of his Master’s style.
While not all hymns are distinctly literary in style and vocabulary, most of them have some poetical and imaginative qualities, and a great many of them have marked literary value. A careful canvass of these values will develop literary discrimination and taste. Hymns like Keble’s “Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear” and Heber’s “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning” must stimulate genuine literary appreciation. To segregate carefully in his mind the genuinely literary hymns—those that are full of imagination, symmetrical in structure, gracious in phraseology—will be a literary exercise of inestimable value.
Development of Emotional Nature.
But the finest literary discrimination and the highest literary delight cannot be secured without an emotional responsiveness that ministers do not always bring to their reading of hymns. But this emotion must not simply be poetic, it must be spiritual, based on an actualization of the profound spiritual truths expressed in the hymns.
The most common fault among ministers is an aridity of mind, a dryness of feeling, a habit of abstract, academic thinking which have no response to the emotional values in the doctrines they preach. It is the secret of many an empty church, of many a barren pastorate.
To some men who lack emotional and poetic insight, the hymnbook may appear dry and uninteresting. It certainly is 233 unappealing to the unspiritual man, no matter how poetical he may be, and this will account for the occasional attack upon the hymns of the Christian Church as being without poetical power or merit. But the Christian minister, who deals with spiritual things, for whom the emotions of the human heart are a great opportunity, ought to find in the study of his hymnbook a great deepening of emotional intuition.
Here he comes in touch with the saints of the Church who have risen to the greatest heights of spiritual insight, and who have sung because the feelings within them were so impelling that they could not do otherwise than sing. His own deficient emotion and his own dull insight into spiritual truth are here inspired and stimulated until he too stands upon the mountaintop. For his own spiritual edification, therefore, there is nothing, outside the Bible, so likely to be of spiritual help as the hymnbook. When he is discouraged, its hymns of inspiration and encouragement cannot but lift the cloud. When his heart is dull, and his vision of his Lord obscured, such hymns as “Jesus, I love Thy charming name,” by Philip Doddridge,
“Jesus, these eyes have never seen That radiant form of Thine,”
by our own Ray Palmer, or
“Jesus, the very thought of Thee With sweetness fills my breast,”
by that unknown saintly abbess of the Middle Ages, surely will once more set his spiritual pulses in motion and thrill him with the vitalizing vision of his Lord.
It is with this emotional attitude alone that a minister should study his hymns; otherwise, he will fail in realizing any of their values. To come to them coldly dissecting them with knife and scalpel is to miss their beauty, their spiritual appeal. The minister who prays over his sermon would do well to pray with equal fervency over the hymns he studies and selects. If he vitalizes them for himself, that fresh vision of 234 their meaning will reach the congregation directly and indirectly.
III. THE PRACTICAL VALUES OF INDIVIDUAL HYMNS
Not the least important consideration in the study of hymns is clearly to envisage their several effective values. To know the literary worth and the spiritual stimulus of a given hymn is most desirable; but to realize what spiritual results it is fitted to secure, and how, is even more important. Each hymn has its individual force, its individual adaptation to definite mental and spiritual results; for the minister not to recognize these varying effects is like the failure of a physician to know the differing reactions of baking soda and strychnine. To announce “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” when the situation calls for the tenderness of “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” is malpractice none the less that it is so frequently done.
Classifying Hymns by Their Nature.
It will be helpful to classify hymns, deciding to which group each one belongs. Some are purely didactic, bearing instruction rather than emotion. Others are meditative, combining elements of instruction and personal experience. Another class expresses personal experience and the resultant emotion; such hymns may be tender or joyous or even exultant. Taking another step upward, we find hymns of inspiration and exhortation, fundamental expressions of faith and enthusiasm. Rising high above all the foregoing are the hymns of worship and adoration, thanksgiving and praise.
This is the primary process in evaluating the practical possibilities of hymns. It is in these pigeonholes of his memory that the minister finds the hymn called for by a given situation.
Classifying Hymns by Their Fitness for Definite Purposes.
Then there is the classification of fitness for different purposes, organizing them according to the particular work each 235 is fitted to do. Some hymns are distinctly liturgical, fitting only into a solemn and stately service by the great congregation—e.g., Faber’s “My God, how wonderful Thou art,” Watts’ “Before Jehovah’s awful throne,” or Tersteegen’s “Lo, God is here: let us adore.”
In a less formal class are Van Dyke’s “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,” Grant’s “Oh, worship the King, all-glorious above,” “Praise the Lord! ye heavens, adore Him,” and many others in which rejoicing in the Lord takes a less majestic but none the less genuine form, fitting smaller assemblies and what without derogation may be called ordinary church services.
Hymns of still another class, represented by Robinson’s “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,” Wesley’s “O Love divine, how sweet Thou art,” Keble’s “Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear,” are still distinctly worshipful, but have an intimacy of communion in which tenderness and joy veil the sense of infinite majesty.
The foregoing classes of worshipful hymns are available for the regular services of the church, although some of them call for a preparation of the worshipers for their intelligent and sincere singing. They are helpful to devout people in their approach to the Triune God.
Jesus Christ is not only God in the fullest, truest sense; he is our Redeemer, our Mediator, our Sharer of the deeper experiences of the soul, our Comrade in the march of life, our intimate Friend in time and eternity. Hence, there are many hymns of praise and adoration of Jesus Christ that are elevated in mood, even majestic, like Wesley’s “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing,” Robinson’s “Mighty God, while angels bless thee,” Hammond’s “Awake and sing the song,” which will fit into the most exalted service of worship. There are many others like “Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature,” Medley’s “Oh, could I speak the matchless worth,” Havergal’s “O Saviour, precious Saviour,” which are keyed a little lower, but are still most appropriate for an average church service.
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In addition to these there are hymns of communion with Christ, of love for and delight in him, yea, even of intimate affection, like Caswall’s “My God, I love Thee, not because,” Newton’s “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” Palmer’s “My faith looks up to Thee,” which are so fine in feeling, so heartfelt, so intimate, that they require preparation of the congregation before they can be sung sincerely. Some of them are so intense, like “I need Thee every hour,” “My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine,” and Palmer’s “Jesus, these eyes have never seen,” that their use seems limited to assemblies, small or large, entirely made up of earnest believers. Indeed, there are many of our intensest hymns of devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ that can be worthily sung only in prayer meetings where there is profound emotion to be expressed. Some of them cannot be sung by the general congregation except when the tide of religious fervor runs high.
Without further analysis, enough has been said to show that in the practical classification of hymns two major factors must be considered: the character, depth, and quality of the emotional burden of the hymn, and the character and the emotional responsiveness of the people who are expected to sing it. Ignorance of the former and lack of proper diagnosis of the latter will bring defeat to the minister who is depending on his hymns for help in securing spiritual results.
IV. THE MINUTE STUDY OF HYMNS
There can be no adequate knowledge of a hymn without a survey of the whole field of hymnology. It is necessary to understand the character and limitations of the hymn, to visualize its history and development, in order to secure its proper interpretation and use. It is unfortunate that too many ministers are satisfied with this general knowledge which is, after all, only a preparation for the study of the individual hymn. It is only in the individual hymn that the point of contact with practical results is reached. One may know all 237 about Isaac Watts and yet know so little of his great hymn “When I survey the wondrous cross” as to announce it at a church banquet before all the people are done eating! Imagine John, Peter, and the rest munching dried figs or dates as they stand before the cross on which their Master is dying!
Only as the individual hymns are fully understood as to their meaning, and as to the methods required to get that meaning transformed into experience and character, can hymnology become a practical force.
Analysis of the Hymn.
1. The first step is the investigation of its structure. The form of the stanza, the kind of measure used, the proper occurrence of accents, the schedule of rhymes all are important, controlling the music and the reading of the hymn.
The logical structure is even more important as governing the development of thought. Recognition of the relation of the several verses to the general plan of the hymn will reveal their individual value and prevent mutilation when circumstances demand omission of verses. This structure is more evident in didactic and homiletical hymns, of course, but the progress of thought usually lies near the surface. The doctrinal teachings should be clearly and explicitly thought out.
2. There is a logic of emotion more or less paralleling that of thought. There are ebb and flow of feeling, radical change of feeling, one feeling merging into another, that must be recognized. The climaxes of interest in the succeeding verses, rising higher and higher and culminating in the supreme climax of the last verse, should be noted that they may be expressed in the reading and the singing. This recognition of the emotional character of the hymn is absolutely essential to its real effectiveness. The hymn is fundamentally an expression of emotion, and only as such has it practical value.
3. After this general analysis of the structure and thought and of the general emotion of the hymn, there will need to 238 be a study of its detailed phrases. The minister ought to study it line by line and phrase by phrase. The Scriptural allusions need to be located and their connections noted. What did Charles Wesley mean in his great hymn, “Love divine, all loves excelling,” by the phrase in the second verse, “the second rest”? Why did he pray “Finish, then, thy new creation”?[3] What is the Scriptural justification for the phrases of Newton’s “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds”?[4] In Doddridge’s “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,” what Biblical authority has he for “cloud of witnesses,” or the ideas of “prize” and “race”?[5] What did Watts mean in the third verse of his “Not all the blood of beasts,”
“My faith would lay her hand On that dear head of Thine, While like a penitent I stand And there confess my sin”?
Without the picture of the high priest laying his hands on the head of the scapegoat and confessing the sins of the people before sending it out into the wilderness (Lev. 16:21), what meaning can these lines convey?
The Background of the Hymn.
1. The interpretation of the hymn cannot be complete without a recognition of the person who wrote it. His type of mind, his responsiveness to divine truth, his conception of the work of the Church, stamp themselves on the product of his pen. The personality of Watts, of Wesley, of Whittier, and of Faber interpret their several hymns.
Knowledge of the circumstances under which a given hymn was written will add to the value and correctness of the interpretation, by giving a sense of actuality to the thought and feeling expressed.
2. The age in which a hymn was written will be a large factor in its interpretation. The sheer objectiveness of the ancient hymns, the meditativeness of the medieval hymns 239 stressing the sufferings of Christ on the cross, the worship character of the pre-Wesley hymns, including those of Watts, the warm, tender, experiential hymns of the Wesleyan Revival, all stamp their several hymns ineffaceably with their characteristics. “A mighty fortress is our God” bears the stigmata of the opening battles of the German Reformation. “Jesus, the very thought of Thee” is permeated by the peace and ardent piety of the Spanish nunnery whose devout abbess wrote the Latin original. “Stand up, stand up for Jesus” sounds the militant note of the great Philadelphia revival of 1857 and the Antislavery campaign that was so soon to drench the South with the noblest blood of both sections.
Watts’ hymns must be analyzed in the light of the prevailing psalmody, of the religious aridity of his time, and of the formalism, not of the Established Church only, but of that of the Nonconformist societies as well. Wesley’s hymns cannot be understood except as expressing the struggle between extreme worldly-mindedness, sensuality, and social decay outside of the Church, allied with the mere formalism and the cold and sheerly pharisaic morality within, on the one side, and the emphasis of conversion, profound religious experience, and aggressive evangelistic propaganda on the other. The objectivity and essentially liturgic spirit of Watts’ hymns and the subjective warmth and the poetic glow of those of Charles Wesley immediately become full of meaning and historic vitality.
3. The greater hymns gather about themselves the noble associations of the many generations which have lived and died with their lines upon their lips. Would “Rock of Ages, cleft for me” or “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” if written now, speedily win the place they now hold in our Christian hymnody? Would “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing” be widely sung, if it were not that in England and America it had been an impressive voice of worship in chapel and home, in stately church, and in mountain schoolhouse on the American frontier? 240 Lips now trembling with age lisped them in childhood; memories of father and mother, of thrilling religious experiences, when the very heavens seemed to open to the soul, cluster about them.
4. Only in this way can he secure a clear idea of what parts of a hymn will serve his immediate purpose, which lines and phrases will enrich his discourses or bring his points to an incandescent glow, or which verses when sung will assure the definite effect he has in mind. There may well be occasions when he will want his people to sing, not the first verse of Whittier’s tender hymn, “We may not climb the heavenly steeps,” but the second,
“But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee,”
or the even more comforting third verse,
“The healing of the seamless dress Is by our beds of pain; We touch him in life’s throng and press, And we are whole again.”
Such a study in interpretation will greatly enhance the spiritual values of the hymns to the minister himself, enriching mind and heart. It will make it possible for him to interpret them to his people. To any person the hymn is what he understands it to mean, no more; its effect on him is in due proportion to the completeness of his interpretation of it. The minister, therefore, is in duty bound to supply each singer in his congregation with an accurate and complete understanding of the hymns that are sung.
Making a Hymnal of His Own.
The minister who has given his hymnal the study that has been suggested will wish to garner and organize the materials he has thus won. He will proceed to make a little hymnal of his own by selecting a 241 given number of the hymns that appeal to him—say one hundred—in his regular hymnal. This will constitute his inner hymnal to which from time to time he will make additions.
These hymns will be marked in his own copy of the church hymnal, a wide margined one, or an interleaved one, if it can be secured. As he analyzes each one, finding the joints in its structure, he will indicate the results by lines of division with the proper captions. His dissection of the phrases will disclose more or less obscure allusions needing explanation, like “Siloam’s pool,” “Mt. Nebo’s lonely height,” “Gog and Magog,” “Ebenezer” and many others that convey no meaning to the average mind. These should be underlined for explanation. Some phrases are so suggestive, so packed with meaning, that their value eludes the ordinary singer—for instance, the second verse of Monsell’s “My sins, my sins, my Saviour.” These should be put in quotation marks to remind the preacher to unpack by spirited comment their wealth for the edification of his people.
Numbers referring to his card index or commonplace book will bring to mind helpful facts about the hymn, or its writer, or illustrations that will quicken both mind and heart. Enclosing a verse or verses in brackets will mark those that can be omitted without wrecking the symmetrical progress of the thought. That will eliminate the usual thoughtless phrase, “We will omit the third verse.” If there is a choice of tunes, the most practicable one can be indicated; or a tune better known to the congregation elsewhere in the hymnal may be suggested with its number.
Verses to be read by the congregation, or to be sung by the choir or by a soloist, before being sung by the people may be starred. Changes of force, or speed, may be marked p. for soft singing, or f. for loud singing. A passage marked rit. will be retarded, or hurried if marked accel. A repeat sign, bis, after a verse will suggest that a verse may be profitably repeated. Scripture references will suggest passages that can 242 be used to emphasize the sentiment of the hymn, such as Genesis 28:10-13, for the hymn, “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” M before a verse may mark it as a memory verse to be sung with closed hymnal. P may indicate that it is a prayer, to be sung before the long prayer. Dates connected with a hymn will show when it has been sung, and so prevent its unduly frequent repetition from mere force of habit. Every alert-minded minister will have methods and devices of his own that should be recorded in connection with the hymns so treated.
Such a hymnal, individual, practical, wealthy in resources, will be of incalculable value to the wide-awake, aggressive minister, rendering him independent of moods, of dull spirits, of disturbing environments. He needs but open his hymnal, a treasure house of practical suggestions, and his resources, immediately accessible and fully prepared, await his use.
A personal hymnal like this will not be made in a day or a month. Week by week, as hymns are selected, they are fully investigated and studied and their points recorded in the preacher’s copy. His skimming of newspapers and magazines, his daily experiences, his hearing of addresses and sermons; his reading of history and literature, no less than his study of hymnological literature, will pay heavy tribute to such a royal treasury.
The books of hymnic material, pretty largely historical, are fairly numerous, and their help should not be despised, for they offer very useful illustrative matter. Robinson’s Annotations upon Popular Hymns is not as up-to-date nor as scholarly exact as the later Duffield’s English Hymns, or as Nutter and Tillett’s Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church, but is richer anecdotally and more suggestive of expository comment. Dr. Benson’s still later Studies of Familiar Hymns, Series I and II, will be found very rich in practical material. The present writer’s Practical Hymn Studies[6] offers help most ministers need. The matter found in these and other like collections 243 should be carefully sifted and recorded. A condensation of the selected items, particularly of the longer anecdotes, may be ample for all practical purposes.
Is it necessary to suggest again that all this varied material should be well organized in a loose-leaf blank book small enough to be carried about or, better yet, in a rebound, interleaved hymnal?
In making such a thorough study of as many hymns as he has leisure to analyze, the minister is really editing a hymnal of his own, none the less his own that it is embedded in the larger collection. There are very few preachers who do not have such an inner hymnal made up of the hymns they are in the habit of using; the pity is that it is frequently so small, so poorly selected, so unsymmetrical, so dependent on an unresponsive memory, and so lacking in the materials that would help to make the hymns effective.
Memorizing Hymns.
A large number of hymns should be committed to memory for his own mental enrichment and comfort. It will enlarge his devotional vocabulary, his power of expression of spiritual things—nay more, increase the spontaneity and spirituality of his thinking and feeling, for memory lies nearer the springs of subconscious intuition and impulses than the printed word. A wealth of spiritual thought, of sanctified imagination, of vibrant religious feeling, of apt and expressive phrase and vocabulary, is provided by such a well-stocked memory.
The subconscious mind will furnish the fitting quotation, whether he writes his sermon or speaks ex tempore. In unexpected emergencies, when there is no time to leaf over the hymnal for a verse to be sung, the mind automatically supplies it. In personal work, in cheering the sick, in comforting those who mourn, in inspiring the lagging and discouraged ones, the apt quotation will be exceedingly effective. There are moments in a service, unexpected episodes of an emotional character, climaxes of feeling in a discourse, when a verse of a 244 hymn sung by the congregation will exceed in impressiveness any oratorical outburst; if the minister can trust his memory, he can carry the faltering memories of his people and realize an effect otherwise impossible, not only not losing any momentum, as he would if it were necessary to refer to the hymnal, but indefinitely increasing it. The great hymns of the Church should be made a part of his mental furniture, become a large share of his clerical working capital. He should not be satisfied to have less than a hundred hymns at his mental fingers’ ends for efficient use at a moment’s notice.
V. A STUDY OF METHODS OF USE
But it is not enough to gather the materials and study the individual hymns. A magazine of blasting powder has immense possibilities of power; but unless methods are invented for applying that power to desired ends, it is a liability and not an asset. Having learned all about hymns, the next study is how efficiently to use them, to organize the best methods of exploiting the social, mental, and spiritual values their singing offers.
Using Hymns in Sermons.
Few ministers utilize the possibilities of apt Scripture quotations in their sermons; fewer still know how to draw on the treasures found in their hymnals to increase interest and intensify emotion. In many cases the very finest climax to a section of a sermon, or to the sermon itself, will be found in one or more verses of a hymn which brings the emotion of the theme to its high culmination. There is no lack of material; for the expression of every Christian doctrine that lends itself to lyric feeling there are intense and poignant phrases and lines steeped in transcendent emotion. Abstract truth has intellectual value of course, but has spiritual value only when transmuted into the gold of intense conviction in the heart of true believers. It is the genuine hymn that raises the temperature to the transmuting point, if properly introduced and emotionally used.
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Studying Responsiveness of the Congregation.
The intelligent preacher will study his congregation and its capacities of song to determine what he can do. He will canvass their responsiveness to certain classes of hymns, solemn, cheerful, aggressive, meditative, emotional, didactic—literary, popular. Their taste in the tunes to be used will need to be carefully considered. It would be folly to announce “When the Roll is Called up Yonder” in a congregation used to singing and enjoying Luther’s “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott”; equally so to ask a congregation that enjoys singing “There’s sunshine in my soul” to sing Iron’s version of the “Dies Irae.”
A survey must needs be made of the musical resources and of the adaptability of musical helpers. In some cases such adaptability needs to be trained and developed. Their pliancy in rapidly taking up new methods, and executing unexpected plans of the preacher quickly, will require training.
Studying Methods of Announcement and Securing Participation.
An important study will be how to announce and introduce the hymns in such a way as to awaken the interest and to win the sympathetic attention of the members of the congregation, and also how to help the people to sing with their minds and hearts, as well as with their vocal cords.
The methods to be used in securing full participation in the singing, without losing sight of the deeper meaning of the hymn, will need to be formulated or borrowed from successful leaders of song. The problem is not met by merely urgent demands that everybody sing; they must all be moved upon to want to sing. Can it be done by illustrations, by moving anecdotes, by tender appeals bearing on the thought and feeling of the hymn in hand? The kind of anecdotes and how they are to be used, before or during any given hymn, will call for careful discrimination. How shall the preacher acquire the power of introducing a hymn in a very few well-chosen words, vibrant with the feeling the hymn expresses, striking the spiritual key connecting up the hymn with the 246 religious purpose of the whole service? Year after year, by observation of other ministers and song leaders, by his reading, by experiments of his own, he will acquire a body of efficient methods with which to vitalize his song service.
Studying Use of Hymnal for Specific Purposes.
This will include methods of using hymns for specific purposes. Is his congregation indifferent with regard to some particular line of work that he wishes to present—missions, for instance: what hymns, and methods of using them, will stimulate their minds and prepossess them for this as yet unappealing topic? Are they careless or irreverent in mood as they gather: can he sober their minds and awe their souls with a consciousness of God’s actual presence with a solemn hymn and its impressive tune? How shall he use the singing of the hymns to affect and win the unsaved whom he plans to invite to accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Master? In a thousand ways the intelligent and adroit minister can make his hymns count largely in accomplishing his beneficent purposes.
VI. A STUDY OF THE TUNES
One of the most important lines of study will be that of the tunes to which the hymns are to be sung.[7] To use a botanical figure, a hymn will not bear fruit unless it is pollenized by a vital tune. Who would be even aware of Cardinal Newman’s “Lead, Kindly Light,” if it were not for Dykes’ tune? Without Lowry and Doane’s music what recognition would the modest lyrics of Fanny Crosby have won? Wesley’s “Hark, the herald angels sing” owes the wideness of its Christmas use to Mendelssohn’s tune. Tennyson’s “Sunset and Evening Star” and “Sweet and Low” were brought to wide public attention by Barnby’s two settings. Without the wings of melody few hymns would get very far in place or time. A mediocre hymn with a good singable tune will do vastly more good than a great hymn with an impracticable one.
Hence it is the minister’s business to study the tunes. Not 247 the notes, not the harmony: he can leave them to his musical experts, if he has them. He must study the singability of the tune, its appeal to his particular people, its adaptation to the sentiment of the hymn with which it is associated. Its age, its traditional or conventional use, its style, its composer, its elaboration of harmony—all these are merely incidental. That it is singable, fitted to express and intensify the sentiment of the hymn, to give it access to the hearts of the congregation, to create the contagion of feeling in the assembly—these are the essentials of a good tune.
Just as the sales departments of our great manufacturing establishments make an intensive study of the psychology of salesmanship in all its phases, so the ministry of the church, in its schools of preparation and in its several organizations, should increase its efficiency as salesman of vital religion by a like study of the psychology of the hymn and of its use.
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