hymns are simply the Bible in another form. It certainly indicates that they have a larger spiritual influence than most ministers seem to allow them.

To some men who lack emotional and poetic insight, the hymn-book 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. Dr. Samuel Johnson said of Watts, "His devotional poetry is like that of others-unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figure." That these hymns express emotions and feelings that the unregenerate man cannot understand is a sufficient reason why many a literary man can find no help in them, or why he can see merit in only a few of them, whose literary graces, or whose expression of an emotion common to all humanity, whether sanctified or unregenerate, appeal to him. But the Christian minister, who deals with spiritual things, for whom the emotions of the human heart are a great opportunity for sowing the seed of life, ought to find the study of his hymn-book a great delight.

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 lacking emotion, his own dull insight of spiritual truth, here are inspired and stimulated until he too stands upon the mountain top. For his own spiritual edification, therefore, I can recommend nothing, outside of 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;

"My God, I love Thee, not because
I hope for heaven thereby,"

by Francis Xavier;

"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 saint of the Middle Ages, Bernard Clairvaux, surely will set his spiritual pulses in motion once more and thrill him with the vitalizing vision of his Lord. Any minister who cannot find in his hymnal encouragement, delight, and spiritual uplift, may well look into his heart and examine his spiritual condition with anxiety and

concern.

I

II

WHAT IS A HYMN?

N taking up the study of hymns it may be well to clearly define the nature of a hymn before proceed

ing further. The narrow etymological definition of a hymn would confine it to poems that in at least some part of them are directly addressed to some person of the Deity. There are hymnologists that insist upon this limited conception. Dr. Austin Phelps' test of a genuine hymn, "Genuineness of religious emotion, refinement of poetic taste and fitness to musical cadence-these are essential to a faultless hymn, as the three chief graces to a faultless character," is a very clear and charming statement of the essentials of a hymn, but is not sufficiently explicit. A more practical and more useful definition is that a hymn is a sacred poem expressive of devotion, spiritual experience, or religious truth, fitted to be sung by an assembly of people in a public service.

The first element in this definition is that the hymn must be poetry. It must have poetical form, having meter and rhyme. This is absolutely necessary for its use with a musical setting. It should be poetical in spirit, having not only the superficial music of the regularly recurring accent, but the liquid harmony of the words as they flow through the lines, and the literary grace of spiritual thought in a beautiful expression. If poetry is the expression of thought steeped in imagina

tion and feeling, all the more must the hymn be the expression of religious thought transfigured with emotion.

But every sacred poem is not a hymn. Some sacred poems express a religious emotion in so individual 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, let me quote a few stanzas of one found in several of the hymnals:

"My feet are worn and weary with the march
On the rough road and up the steep hillside;
O city of our God, I fain would see

Thy pastures green where peaceful waters glide.

**

Patience, poor soul! The Saviour's feet were worn,
The Saviour's heart and hands were weary too;
His garments stained and travel-worn, and old,
His vision blinded with pitying dew."

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

"I was a wandering sheep,

I did not love the fold;

I did not love my Shepherd's voice,

I would not be controlled."

Every one of the first eight lines of this widely used hymn begins with the pronoun of the first person singular: yet there is no particular individuality in this confession; it is the common experience expressed 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 to idly sing with Faber

or

"I love Thee so, I know not how
My transports to control,"

"Ah, dearest Jesus, I have grown
Childish with love of Thee,"

is sheer blasphemy. It is the sin of Uzzah!

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

"On the wings of His love I was carried above
All sin and temptation and pain;

I could not believe that I ever should grieve,
That I ever should suffer again.

"I rode in the sky (freely justified I!)
Nor envied Elijah his seat;

My soul mounted higher in a chariot of fire,
And the moon it was under my feet."

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