another it is being constantly made. Of course, these current songs are not equal to the standard hymns! No one in his sober senses would claim they are; and yet here and there out of this mass of song, some of it very bad, most of it indifferently bad, a little of it fairly good, there emerge in the course of the years a few hymns which the world would be sorry to lose, but which would never have been written, if the weak and ephemeral hymns, among which they sprang into being, had not had their opportunity as well. IV THE STUDY OF HYMNS ITH such a clear-cut and practical conception of the hymn the minister is prepared to make a careful and thorough study of the history of hymns. Next to his library of comment upon the Bible and the exposition of the doctrines of the Bible, should be his hymnological books, giving the history and the illustrations of the hymns he uses in his congregation. There is no more reason why there should be a knowledge of the land within whose borders God gave the Bible, than there is that there should be a knowledge of the men who have written the hymns of the Church and of the circumstances in which these hymns were written. Such a clear knowledge of the gradual development of the hymns of the Christian Church from the early beginning, through the meditative period of the Greek and Latin monks, through the profoundly spiritual and elevated hymns of the German Reformation, through the various versions of the Psalms, through the development of modern English hymnody from Watts to the present time, is vastly more important in practical church work than a scholarly knowledge of the development of Christian institutions, valuable as that is. I do not urge that every minister should become an expert hymnologist. Life is far too short that he should know all of the half million hymns now in existence in all languages and of all times. But he ought to know at least a hundred hymns intimately, and two hundred more in a practical, workable way. To this end he should have in his library at least Duffield's " Latin Hymns" and his English Hymns," Butterworth's "The Story of the Hymns and Tunes," Tillett's "Our Hymns and Their Authors," Horder's "The Hymn Lover," Palgrave's "Treasury of Sacred Song," Robinson's "Annotations upon Popular Hymns," Stead's "Hymns That Have Helped," Bank's "Immortal Hymns," and, if he can afford it, Julian's large“ Dictionary of Hymnology." The study of the minister in the first place should be upon the literary phases of the hymns. Here a great delight awaits the minister of cultivated taste and sensibility, for there are not only ten really good hymns, as a famous literary doctor once insisted to me, but hundreds of them whose distinction and beauty of phraseology, whose fresh and orderly development of idea, 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. "Alone with Thee, amid the mystic shadows, In the calm dew and freshness of the morn. "When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber, "So shall it be at last in that bright morning When the soul waketh, and life's shadows flee; Shall rise the glorious thought, I am with Thee!" Then there is Whittier's "We may not climb the heavenly steeps," whose charm is as complete as it will remain unceasing. "We may not climb the heavenly steeps "But warm, sweet, tender, even yet And faith has yet its Olivet, And love its Galilee. "The healing of the seamless dress We touch Him in life's throng and press "Through Him the first fond prayers are said The last low whispers of our dead "O Lord and Master of us all, Whate'er our name or sign, We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, It would be a mistake to assume that the hymns of high literary value are to be found only within the lids of the standard church hymnals. Many of our despised Gospel songs have really high merit. Spofford's "It is Well with My Soul," Bliss' "Almost Persuaded," Mrs. Hawk's "I Need Thee Every Hour," Mote's "The Solid Rock," Gilmore's" He Leadeth Me," Miss Hankey's "I Love to Tell the Story," Mrs. Gates' " Home of the Soul," Miss Havergal's "What Hast Thou Done for Me," and many others, have not only pleasing and helpful sentiment, but literary grace and finish. The body of thought and its logical development throughout the hymn will call for the minister's careful analysis. No matter how charming the phrases may be, no matter how emotional a hymn may be, if there is not a solid basis of actual thought in the hymn, its literary value must necessarily be very low. Where there is the blazing light of emotion there must be the genuine electrical charge producing it. Given a definite germinal thought and its clear and logical development, there must also be the musical and impressive expression of it in good idiomatic English. Slovenliness of style either in grammar or in rhetoric must greatly lower the value of any hymn. Crudeness of taste, ambiguity of expression, lack of nice discrimination in the words used, harsh and cacophonous lines, will further impair its impressiveness. Whatever the practical tendencies of the minister may be, however fixed his eye may be upon the goal of results, he cannot for one moment allow these to blind his mental vision to the actual literary merit of the hymns he uses. He may be willing to sing, "I Want to Go There, I Do," or "When the Roll is Called," or "Death is Only a Dream," because they have a certain popular effectiveness, but he should never allow himself or his people to feel that the hymns have any literary value or the music any permanent worth. It were a sin against himself and his own culture, and eventually against his work in all its phases, were he to allow the ideal element to be utterly |