Part 1 — V. REASONS FOR THE MINISTER’S APPRECIATION OF HYMNS

Hymns Are Evidences of the Effect of the Bible.

The hymnbook is an evidence of what the Bible can do with unregenerate human nature. That the truth of the Bible should be able to take Newton, the slave driver, and make of him a minister of God, not only himself writing such hymns as “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” “Glorious things of Thee are spoken,” or “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” but inspiring and encouraging the poor hypochondriac, William Cowper, so that from his heart should well forth the hymns, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” “God moves in a mysterious way,” and “Sometimes a light surprises,” is in itself one of the great evidences of Christianity.

Hymns and Psalms Affected the Life of the Church.

The extraordinary result of the use of hymns and psalms in the life of the church and of believers is another reason for the minister’s valuing hymns highly. The awkward lines of Sternhold and Hopkins’ version of the psalms entered into the speech and private devotion of Scotch and English Christians as even the Bible itself did not, becoming a very liturgy to the condemners and flouters of liturgies. Thomas Jackson in his life of Charles Wesley remarks that “it is doubtful whether any human agency has contributed more directly to form the character of the Methodist societies than the hymns. The sermons of the preachers, the prayers of the people, both in their families and social meetings, are all tinged with the sentiments and phraseology of the hymns.”

Hymns in Personal Christian Experience.

Listen to the personal experiences of Christians in our own day and you will 49 hear more reference to hymns than to the Scriptures. There is now no such committing to memory of passages of the Bible and of hymns as there was in preceding generations, but almost without set purpose, by simple absorption, the average Christian can quote more lines of hymns than he can of Scripture verses. This extraordinary place in the affections and life of Christian people is no derogation to the Bible, for the hymns are simply the Bible in another form.

Hymns as Stimulating the Spiritual Life of the Minister.

To some men who lack emotional and poetic insight, the hymnbook may appear dry and uninteresting. It certainly is uninteresting 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 give a great opportunity for sowing the seed of life, ought to find the study of his hymnbook a great delight.

Hymns Approved by Paul.

If there were no other reason why a minister should be profoundly interested in hymns and their use in religious work, the example and exhortations of Paul should be sufficient. He does not lay as much stress upon preaching, nor upon praying, as he does on singing. He admonishes the Ephesians that they “be filled with the Spirit”; and that divine possession should manifest itself in “speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” A part of this exercise of singing was to consist of “giving thanks unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[6]

He exhorts the Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom,” and one of the results of such indwelling was to be “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”; he even urges earnestness and sincerity in such singing, “Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”[7] Such singing should not be 50 with mere enthusiasm, for he assures the Corinthians that his singing was not only devout but intelligent as well: “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.”[8] There is more than a suspicion that in some of his most striking passages he is quoting a current hymn or interjecting a part of an improvised hymn.

Hymns in the Early Church.

The emphasis placed on the value of song by the early church is made clear by Tertullian, who states that at the current “love feasts” each person in attendance was invited at the close of the feast to sing either from the Holy Scriptures or from the dictates of his own spirit a song of adoration to God.

In the middle of the third century St. Basil testifies to the value of congregational singing as practiced in his day: “If the ocean is beautiful and worthy of praise to God, how much more beautiful is the conduct of the Christian assembly where the voices of men and women and children, blended and sonorous like the waves that break upon the beach, rise amidst our prayers to the very presence of God.” The remark is made by one of the ancient fathers that the singing of the churches often attracted “Gentiles”—i.e., unconverted persons—to their services, who were baptized before their departure.

Hymns Prepared the Church for Periods of Marked Progress.

While by no means the only cause for such progress, a great increase in the writing and singing of hymns has been a conspicuous feature in every great religious movement. The converse is also true that when the privilege of congregational singing was curtailed or withdrawn, spiritual declension followed.

The victory of the Church over Arianism was a singing victory both in the Eastern and Western churches. The Crusades were marked by processional singing of religious songs. The singing Lollards and Hussites heralded the Great Reformation, and the most effective preaching of Huss and Luther and Calvin was the hymns and metrical psalms they introduced. 51 Watts prepared the way for the Wesleyan revival, and the Wesley brothers entered the path he had blazed and made a great highway of Christian song. Dour New England found its voice during the Great Revival under Jonathan Edwards and later under Nettleton. The preachers who saved the pioneers of the Appalachian range of mountains and the budding Middle West from relapsing into paganism and savagery were “singing parsons” with their repertoire of “spiritual” revival choruses and religious ballads.

Even Charles G. Finney, the great praying evangelist and later founder of Oberlin College, whose revivals swept through New York and northern Ohio like a prairie fire, had the popular Christian Lyre, edited by Joshua Leavitt, as a breeze to fan the flame, although he often forbade the singing of hymns in certain conditions in his meetings. William B. Bradbury, S. J. Vail, Robert Lowry, William H. Doane, Fanny Crosby, George F. Root, Philip Phillips, P. P. Bliss, and many others had written and taught the American people the songs that prepared the way for the Moody and Sankey revival movement which so profoundly affected the religious life of both America and England and, through the missionaries, intensified the faith of the Christian Church throughout the world.

Through all the centuries it has been the singing armies that have won the religious wars. The successful denominations and individual churches have been pre-eminently singing churches led by singing preachers who swayed their communities. Cardinal Newman is now chiefly remembered for his hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light.” Washington Gladden, a great religious leader, will have his memory kept green by his hymn, “O Master, let me walk with Thee,” and Bishop Phillips Brooks fifty years hence will be chiefly remembered for his Christmas carol, “O little town of Bethlehem.”