Part 1 — VI. PRACTICABILITY FOR ACTUAL USE

Ideas Must Be Plainly Evident.

The thought of a good hymn must lie on the surface. It must appeal not only to the scholarly and subtle minds in a singing congregation, but also to all who are expected to join the religious exercise. Paul’s word regarding unknown tongues applies here: “Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken?” The practical Paul enforces the parallel by saying a few verses further on, “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.” No matter how high the thought or how deep the sentiment of a poem may be, or how felicitously they may be expressed, it is not an effective hymn if study (for which there is no time at the moment of singing) is required to bring out its meaning and feeling.

Hymns May Not Be Extremely Individualistic.

While a hymn may be the expression of the individual poet, it must be an appropriate expression of the mind and heart of the whole congregation as it sings. Yet in addition to the evident, clearly expressed thought, there may be singing, sotto voce between the lines, of deeper experiences and higher soarings of the spirit that only prolonged meditation can reveal.

Some sacred poems express a religious emotion in so individual 35 and unusual a way that they are not at all fitted to express the emotion of a congregation. As an illustration of a poem too personal and individualistic, here are a few stanzas of a hymn of Rev. Samuel J. Stone, which is found in an increasing number of current hymnals:

This is a beautiful poem that would make an admirable text for a solo, but it is out of place on the lips of a congregation. Compare with this the very useful hymn by Bonar:

Every one of the first eight lines of this once widely used hymn begins with the pronoun of the first person singular, yet there is no particular individuality in this confession; it is the expression of the common experience in a straightforward manner, void of all idiosyncrasy.

In some hymns there is found an intensity of feeling that leads to an apparent extravagance of expression that a single soul can sometimes sincerely accept as the vehicle of its own experience, but which a gathering of miscellaneous people cannot sing without the great mass of them being insincere. For a careless person idly to sing with Faber,

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or

is sheer blasphemy. It is the sin of Uzziah!

The following verses from one of Charles Wesley’s hymns combine the two faults of extravagance and too-intense individualism:

Distracting Figures and Forms of Expression.

Other poems are so full of imagination, so crowded with unusual and almost bizarre figures of speech, that they fail to be the natural expression of the religious emotion of an assembly of religious people. George Herbert wrote a great many religious poems whose beauty and charm are only enhanced by their quaint and unusual imagery. Occasionally a hymnal editor ventures on a selection, but it is so foreign to the methods of thought and expression of the churches as not to appeal to their taste and feeling. Take the beautiful poem on the Sabbath day, “O day most calm, most bright.” The first line is spontaneous, expressive, and musical, and appropriate for a hymn. The second line, “The fruit of this, the next world’s bud,” with its antithetical structure, is already somewhat formal and forced. But when the third and fourth lines,

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offer a purely legal and unpoetical figure, one’s sense of song is entirely obscured.

Yet, when Herbert’s imagery is most matter-of-fact and ungenial, there is a body of thought and there are a certain fitness and a clearness of relation that command admiration.

Verses Must Be Complete in Themselves.

Hymns that have long, intricate sentences extending through two or more verses are impracticable for use in a song service, as the break between the stanzas dislocates the development of the idea. Every verse must be practically complete in itself, no matter what its relation to the development of the general idea of the hymn may be.

Musical Limitations.

It must also be recognized that there are limits to the expression congregational music can give. A poem that is vividly descriptive, or is in part intensely dramatic, cannot be recognized as a practicable hymn, since all stanzas have the same tune, a tune which cannot vary its musical effect to suit the differing stanzas.

Then there are hymns that are too majestic, too glowing, for a hymn-tune composer to write a fitting tune out of the limited resources of musical effects available to him. Such a hymn is that one of Henry Kirke White, of lamented memory:

With a chorus of a thousand trained singers, an organ of extraordinary power, and an orchestra of five hundred instruments, 38 all concentrated on “St. Anne,” one might make the music adequate to the words, but in an ordinary congregation the incongruity is painful. This must remain a reading hymn.

Outworn Hymns.

The efficient hymn must not distinctly belong to previous generations in its style and vocabulary or in its peculiar formulation of doctrine. Only as many of the older hymns have been purged of their obsolete and archaic words and turns of thought have they survived. For instance, we no longer sing, “Eye-strings break in death,” as Toplady originally wrote it.

Mistaken Objections to Some Hymns.

Some minds, although strong and keen, seem to have a very small visual angle. Some such persons condemn all hymns that are not direct praise. The line in Lyte’s “Abide with Me”—“Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes”—has been objected to as Romish by some, blind to the fact that it is a prayer to Christ.

Others exclude hymns in which the pronoun of the first person singular occurs. Bishop Wordsworth, himself a hymn-writer of no mean merit (vide “O Day of rest and gladness” and “See, the Conqueror rides in triumph”), says, in his introduction to his Holy Year, that while the ancient hymns are distinguished by self-forgetfulness, the modern hymns are characterized by self-consciousness. As illustrative examples, he cites the following: “When I can read my title clear,” “When I survey the wondrous cross,” “My God, the spring of all my joys,” and “Jesus, Lover of my soul.” It is strange that so keen a mind should not have seen that his objection would apply to all liturgies!

The minister with his eye fixed upon his spiritual purpose can afford to ignore all these supersensitive critics who have refined refinement until sensibility becomes hyperesthesia, a veritable disease.

The use of hymns of a somewhat indifferent literary value is often thoughtlessly condemned because the importance of the recognition of its topic is overlooked. Such a topic as 39 “Church Erection,” or “Education,” may not occasion the deep feeling necessary to the writing of a great hymn, and yet it must find a place in the practical work of the church. Here again Dr. Phelps gives a useful warning: “The severity of aesthetic taste must not be permitted to contract the range of devotional expression in song.... Our desire to restrict the number of hymns upon occasions, and other hymns of infrequent use, ought not to banish such hymns entirely.... A hymn intrinsically inferior, therefore, may be so valuable relatively, as justly to displace a hymn which is intrinsically its superior.”

Aside from the topical symmetry referred to, this principle will find other applications in the practical use of hymns. Some inferior hymns have for some occasions a greater immediate effect than much better ones, perhaps because of a more singable tune or because its sentiment fits into the situation or because it makes a desired impression in a more efficient way.

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