6 been proposed, and it is this which has given | speak the same things,' is to be retained; if rise to these observations. A motion was the religious tone of the people is to be conbrought before the Convocation of Canter- sidered, a very cursory glance at existing colbury in the early part of last year by the lections will satisfy us that some regulation' Archdeacon of Coventry (and carried in the is greatly needed. And it would be but conlower house, though afterwards thrown out sistent that we, who have a prescribed book by the Bishops) urging the formation of a of prayers, should also have some restriction Committee who should prepare the draft of upon our hymns. Again: the Prayer-book a hymn-book with select paraphrases of the is itself imperfect without its complement of Book of Psalms, and with the Canticles hymns or anthems; for, to pass by the plain pointed for chanting, which, if approved by recognition of such singing in the Rubric, we Convocation, may be submitted to Her Ma- may fairly test the perfection of anything by jesty, with an humble prayer that she would a comparison with its professed model, espeauthorise its use in such congregations as cially when to that model it stands in the may be disposed to accept it.'* Passing over relation of an offspring. Now it is well all minor questions as to the source and ap-known that the pre-Reformation Prayerplication of authority, we take the motion as broadly suggesting the permissive, but not enforced, use of a hymn-book bearing the 'imprimatur' of the Church of England. We are at a loss to discover whether this is meant to withdraw de facto the present assumed liberty of using others, and to throw back all who are not disposed to accept' this upon the Old and New Versions, which hitherto alone rejoice in a Royal licence. There is no doubt at first sight something like hardship in such a use of the high hand of authority-such an arbitrary books, after the pattern of which ours was framed, had their regular arrangement of metrical hymns throughout. And it was by no means the intention of the Reformers to deprive us of these, at once the most popular and least corrupt parts of the old services. Cranmer himself tried his hand upon the 'Salve festa dies,' but gave it up in despair, writing to the King, that, as his English verses wanted the grace and faculty which he could wish they had,' he craved of his Majesty that he would cause some other to do them in more pleasant English and verse.' It would further be difficult to discover a Crushing and pounding to dust the crowd below;' almost every national Church. Eastern and reason for our differing in this point from 'Overthrow, not only making of their books Western, Greek and Russian, Roman and Reformed, are richly provided by the consti'But a mash'd heap, a hotchpotch of the slain;' tuted authorities, and why not the Anglican? but freely selecting, revising, and rearranging One of our own offshoots, the Church in the scattered materials to construct another, America, put forth her selection seventy and setting at nought all respect for their years ago, and that in Scotland recently. To sole proprietorship in their own labours. those who think it an insuperable evil to Their zeal, however, in the good cause, shut out for ever, or at least for a long time, shown in their past exertions, may fairly be the inspirations of a future Ken, a Cowper, taken as an earnest of their public spirit, and a Wesley, or a Keble, it may be answered a ground for supposing them ready to adopt that the same argument would have prethe sentiment of Whitgift's last words, pre-vented the fixing of all prayers; and that fixed by Bishop Mant to his own labours in hymns of real merit hereafter composed this cause-Pro Ecclesiâ Dei, pro Ecclesia may be at some future time adopted by comDei.' But there are other objections which petent authority. To those again among have been raised to any authoritative inter- the clergy who would say, with the late Mr. ference in this matter; and there are good Newland, If I am not to be trusted in the old prejudices too in favour of Tate and selection of hymns, neither am I to be trusted Brady, or the accustomed Hymn-book, which in composing sermons,' we should say that must be removed by some outweighing reanot only does this also prove too much, for sons in favour of the proposed step. Habit it is equally applicable to prayers; but there is second nature; and we have been so long is a great difference between that which is left to ourselves, that what Mr. Blew calls spoken to the people as the expression of the the patent defect of an authorized hymn- preacher's thoughts, and that which is put book' is not patent to the generality of peo- rehearsed as the words of the Church in into the mouths of the congregation to be ple. Yet if purity of doctrine is important; if the motto of our Church, that we all worship of which they are a part. 6 *The same proposition has since been submitted to the Convocation of York. But assuming this question settled in the affirmative, and a committee of divines, poets, musicians, and ritualists appointed to this work, they have a task before them that no one can estimate until he has sounded the depth and width of the subject himself. Hymns have a history, a philosophy, and a literature of their own. Hymnology has its roots in the beginnings of history, its branches are co-extensive with Christendom, and it requires a special study which has never yet been bestowed upon it. It is a subject of no little importance to the purity and, may we add? the popularity of religion. Yet it is far from being a merely popular, transient, and superficial matter: the well-known saying of the politician, 'Let me make a people's ballads, and let who will make their laws,' has its counterpart in religion; for all leaders of religious movements, from Arius to Wesley, have borne witness to the fact that hymns are more powerful in fixing religious dogmas, and guiding religious feeling, in the minds of the people than any other mode of teaching. What is powerful for good may be, and often has been, more powerful for ill; and it is not always that which is positively evil, but frequently that which is negatively and poorly good, that works most harm. It is well then that we should keep in mind the necessity of a more extended view of hymnology in those who undertake the proposed task than has yet been generally taken of it. A considerable number of the hymns already in use in the English language owe their origin, more or less directly, in the various degrees of translation,' paraphrase,' and imitation,' to the inspirations of other ages and other lands; but hitherto we have gone only as chance gleaners, and our gatherings have been scanty, and partially chosen; it is time we went as a Church and a nation, and boldly laid claim to our rights, as members of the great brotherhood, to a full participation in the common store. It will, therefore, be worth while to take a rapid general survey of the hymnology of foreign churches; and we hope our readers will not be startled when they are told that they are to be carried off to Jerusalem and Antioch, and brought home gradually by Corinth and Milan, through France, Spain, and Germany, in search of such apparently homely things as hymns. 1. The Hebrew hymns lay first claim to our notice, not only by right of their supreme antiquity, but as being enshrined in the Sacred Volume. They fall naturally into three classes: 1. The occasional pieces, scattered up and down the books of the Old Testament; 2. The authorized collection of the Jews themselves, known as the Psalms of David, gathered together, probably out of a vast number, of which the rest, being rejected as uninspired, have been lost; and 3. The hymns of the New Testament,-the Magnificat, the Nunc dimittis, and the Benedictus. Of the first class Dr. Neale gives a catalogue in his Commentary' (Diss. I.) of more than seventy, as they are found arranged in the Mozarabic Breviary to be used as Canticles. The best known are the two Songs of Moses (Exodus xv. 1-19; Deut. xxxii. 1-12), the Song of Deborah (Judges v.), of Balaam (Numbers xxiii.), of Hannah (1 Samuel ii. 1-10), and of Job (xix. 25-27). With the exception of the last, which is sung by the priest in our Burial Service, the Church of England has not adopted any of these; and very few are sufficiently general in their allusions to be fitted, without a somewhat strained interpretation, to our times and circumstances. Some one or two, however, have been successfully rendered in English metre, as, for instance, Isaiah's Hymn (lii. 7, 8), by Dr. Watts, in his 'How beauteous are their feet Who stand on Zion's hill! ' As regards the Psalms and New Testament Hymns, we are saved further trouble; for our Church has already appropriated and recast in our own tongue the whole of these glorious outpourings of the prophet-poets of the old dispensation, and, so to say, put the mark of Christianity upon them by the addition of the Gloria Patri Filio,' &c., at the end of each; the Psalter is recited throughout by us every month, and the Canticles daily in turn. With this, then, we should have omitted further notice of Jewish hymnology; but that we fancy we hear some of our readers ask, perhaps with some indignation, whether we have forgotten the metrical versions of the Psalms. We have not forgotten them-we never shall: we know that every notion of metrical singing in England was for two centuries founded upon and limited by 'Sternhold and Hopkins,' or 'Tate and Brady;' but surely the days of the 'versions' are numbered. Have we not already in our most beautiful Prayer-book translation all the sublimity, poetry, devotional pathos, and innate music of the Psalter, fully preserved in its original form, and that form not only the best suited to its spirit, but in its rhythmical cadence and fitness for musical recitation unequalled by the smoothest metre? The world is indebted to our own Bishop Lowth for the discovery that the Psalms (and we may add the Canticles) are written in a most complete system of rhythmical arrangement, guided not by sound but by sense-1 -thought answering to thought, and sentence to sentence, instead of line to line, and ending to ending. The 96th Psalm He hath put down from their seat And hath exalted. and the Magnificat have been pointed out as | jectionable supremacy which the organ has good examples, especially the 7th and 8th established for itself over the choir and converses of the latter, which are cases of anti-gregation: we are convinced that if the words thetical parallelism :— of our old metrical Psalmody had been at all worthy of their subject, they would have coerced the music to adapt itself accordingly; and we should have been spared the incongruity of the poorest and most prosaic, as well as the most bombastic lines of psalms and hymns being made a conveyance for such tunes as Cambridge New, Devizes, Portsmouth, &c.; if indeed such tunes would ever have come into existence. The mighty The hungry He hath filled with good things The humble and meek. = The rich. = He hath sent empty away. Who could endure to hear and sing hymns, the meaning and force of which he really felt-set, as they frequently have been, to melodies from the Opera, and even worse, or massacred by the repetition of the end of each stanza, no matter whether or not the and sense Most happily for us, this character of the originals has been admirably retained in our Authorized Versions, both in the Bible and Prayer-book; and one cannot help feeling the fitness of their parallel structure for the antiphonal chanting of our choirs; and, without doubt, these were written for some like method of singing (see 1 Samuel xviii. 7); but this very fitness for the one makes them unfit for the other method; for how improba-it-not to mention the memorable cases of were consistent with ble, and indeed impossible, it must be, as the learned and judicious Archdeacon Evans observes, that a rhythmical structure of parallel thoughts should co-exist with a metrical structure of words! Let any one, for instance, seek it will be in vain-for any marked parallelism in Tate and Brady's metrical Magnificat. We readily allow that here and there a happy paraphrase, whether from the Old and New Versions, or from the many others that have appeared at different times, might claim a place as an independent hymn, including of course the Old Hundredth; but we must confess that we see little reason to dwell longer upon the metrical Psalms as a source for supplying any considerable portion of such a collection as we need, and still less as having any claim to stand as a distinct branch of our hymnology, as contemplated in the motion of Archdeacon Sandford mentioned above. It is, no doubt, their Scriptural origin that has led hitherto to this distinction; but this same reasoning would include all the Scotch and other paraphrases of passages of Scripture, such as Morrison's 'The race that long in darkness sat;' the hymn 'Thou God, all honour, glory, power,' from the Revelations; and, 'While shepherds watched their flocks by night.' Indeed the fact that the Psalms form part of the Holy Scriptures ought to make us all the more unwilling to subject them to the dilution which is unavoidable in rendering them into metre. grammar and -My poor pol My poor pol My poor polluted heart;' -Our Great Sal Qur Great Salvation comes!' From In leaving the Hebrew Psalms and Hymns we make a great stride, passing from Jewish to Christian hymnology, or, to speak more accurately, from hymns in which Christianity is latent under prophecy and figure to those in which it appears as a present fact. the very earliest date, after the day of Pentecost, we find the Church using certain anthems, mostly, as we might expect, taken from Scripture, and forming, together with the Canticles, a link between apostolic and post-apostolic times; being partly inspired, partly uninspired compositions. They include the Tersanctus or Triumphal Hymn 'Holy, Holy, Holy,', from Isaiah (vi. 3); the Benedicite, or Song of the Three Children, from Daniel (iii.; see Ps. cxlviii.); and the Angelic Hymn, 'Glory to God in the highest,' from St. Luke (ii.), with and without the additions, as in our Communion Service, which was originally, and in the Greek Church is now, used as an ordinary morning hymn: to these may be added an evening hymn* corresponding to this last, and various forms of the Gloria Patri.' All, but one, of these have been adopted, we believe, universally throughout Christendom, and are to be found in all the languages of its public worship. But we cannot dismiss the metrical Psalms * Lyra Apostolica,' p. 79, ed. 1856; and Bingwithout calling them to account for the ob-ham's 'Origines,' xiii. 11, 5. But for the treasures of post-apostolic hymnology we must carry our search into the various collections indigenous to each branch of the Church; and starting as we did from the Holy City, we find ourselves first in that country the metropolitical honours of which she now shared with Antioch, and whose language had been already long adopted by her own people in the place of their native Hebrew. 2. Syria is rich in hymns; but they are as yet little known in the West, and we are scarce able to do more than draw attention to their existence. The metrical writings of the father of Syriac sacred poetry, St. Ephraem, are accessible in some measure to English readers through the translations of Dr. Burgess and Mr. Morris; and a selection from the Service-books of various dioceses are given with Latin renderings by Daniel in his Thesaurus.' The veil is, therefore, as yet only partially drawn from them; yet as it discloses many hymns of exceeding beauty, it would be at the risk of much loss that we should neglect them. Moreover, we cannot forget that this language has, in all matters of religion, a prime claim to our attention as the language of the chosen people at the time of our Lord's appearing, and consequently that in which He spake as never man spake. Hac linguâ,' says Bishop Beveridge in summing up its claims to our study, doğoXoyia Angelica modulata (utpote pastoribus intellecta): hac promissio Spiritus et vitæ eternæ facta; hac omnes Christi conciones prædicatæ; hac Sacramenta instituta; hac verba Servatoris nostri de cruce prolata; Verbo, hæc Ipsi Christo vernacula. Quis non edisceret?" It is a remarkable fact in the history of Christian hymnology, that in more than one case the first incitement to hymn-writing among the orthodox is said to have proceeded from the heretical communities which had separated from them. It was so in Syria. A certain Bardesanes of Edessa, founder of a school of Gnostics at the end of the second century, seeking a popular means of spreading his heresy, hit upon the experiment of hymns, of which he wrote near two hundred. His son Harmonius, a learned musician, followed vigorously his father's leading, and by the middle of the fourth century the pernicious effects upon the orthodoxy of the people had become so manifest that Ephraem, a monk and deacon of Edessa, upon the maxim that 'fas est et ab hoste doceri,' not only began to write orthodox hymns to counteract the influence of his opponents, but, turning their own weapons upon them, he set them to the tunes of Harmonius; and so successful was he that his hymns hold their place to this day, while those of his adversary are not. The Syrians,' says Asseman (quoted by Dr. Burgess), 'attribute to Ephraem alone 12,000 songs; the Copts 14,000.' So much for quantity. Of their quality it may be said that, tried by the standard of Greeks, Latins, or any other that we know, they will not be found wanting. Dr. Burgess only knows of two hymns extant of a date previous to Ephraem, namely, two by Simeon Bishop of Seleucia in 296; but those who followed him, Balœus his disciple, Isaac Magnus at the close of the fourth century, and Jacob Bishop of Sarug in 519, are all voluminous metrical writers, either of hymns or homilies; for these Eastern teachers poured forth their very sermons in verse, after the manner of their inspired predecessors of the same country, the prophets of Judah and Israel. Of this we have a noble example, now within reach of English readers through Dr. Burgess's translation, the 'Repentance of Nineveh.' The originals, though not these translations, are metrical. The following is an Easter Hymn of St. Ephraem :— 'Blessed be the Messiah, Listen, O mortal men, To the mystery of the Resurrection; Which was once concealed; Behold it is now proclaimed abroad In this latter age In the Holy Church. For Jesus then became For the space of three days, For before that time Death by this was made arrogant, In the midst of my prisons." A mighty war Came without warning The shouts [of the foo] overtook him, The dead perceived And they began to spread the glad tidings That their hope was accomplished. From the beginning [of the world] Death had dominion Over mortal men: Until there arose The Mighty One And abolished his pride. His voice then came, Like heavy thunder, Among mortal men; And He proclaimed the glad tidings, Burgess's Syriac Hymns, p. 77.] from Judæa to the Ultima Thule of Britain, rising to its height in each only when it was ebbing away in the last, and then falling again to culminate in the next. We have seen that in Syria its golden age was about the fourth century, and perhaps rather later, Ephraem himself living till about 380. 3. Contemporary with him flourished the earliest Greek hymn-writer, St. Gregory Nazianzen; but he by no means represents the highest attainments of Greek hymnology, which did not approach its zenith till the days There is a decided Orientalism about them, of Andrew, Archbishop of Crete (712); St. some of them having also a tendency to fall John Damascene, facile princeps (about 750); into the antithetic parallelism of the ancient his contemporary, St. Cosmas, Bishop of MaiHebrews, which might interfere with their uma; and St. Theodore of the Studium being transferred into Western metre. Some (about 800). The magnificent canons, or of the beautiful sentiments and figurative ex-long hymns, of these writers are the glory of pressions of the Syriac hymnographers have, however, tempted us to try a metrical imitation of a baptismal hymn from the Office used at Jerusalem : 'Glad sight! the Holy Church Spreads forth her wings of love, To welcome to her breast a child, Begotten from above. Begotten at the font By God the Spirit's power, A gentle lamb from Satan snatched E'en now around the font, There to receive their charge And all the host of heaven How true o'er Jordan's stream Once by the stream discerned Praise Him who made ;-praise Him Amen.'-Dan. iii. 226. Following the westward course of Christianity, we shall find that hymnology, like a wave of the sea swelling up in its wake, rolled successively through each country the Eastern Church. Their compositions, together with those of other more voluminous writers of their own and the later and waning times of Greek Church poetry, take up nine-tenths of the contents of the sixteen large double-columned quarto volumes of Service-books almost wholly to themselves. But this immense field of research is as yet, like the last, but recently explored; and all we can do is to point it out with a few observations culled from the writings of the learned Dr. Neale, the chief English authority on the subject. Their structure has been well designated 'harmonious prose.' They are by our standard prodigiously long; a hymn (or 'canon') consisting of eight odes, and each of these, again, of many 'troparia' or stanzas, from three to above twenty. Their character varies from the most exalted triumphal songs to the most prayerful and penitential aspirations. Take for example the first verse of an ode which has found its way already into an English hymn-book from a Christmas canon of St. Cosmas : 'Christ is born! tell forth His fame! Christ from Heaven! His love proclaim! Christ on earth! exalt His name! Sing to the Lord, O world, with exultation; Break forth in glad thanksgiving every nation; For He hath triumphed gloriously!' &c. Or this, the celebrated Hymn of Victory,' sung immediately after midnight on Easter morning, during the symbolical ceremony of lighting of tapers :- "Tis the day of Resurrection! The Passover of GOD! From death to life eternal, From earth unto the sky! Our CHRIST hath brought us over With byns of victory! |