Do Thou, O God, redress, Of sinful heaviness. Come, comfort the afflicted thoughts of my consumed heart: O rid the piercing pricking pains of my torment- O Holy Ghost, grant mé From sin may purgèd be. O teach me then the way Make Thee my only stay. My lips, my tongue, my heart and all, Yea, every living thing Shall sweetly sing To Thee, O heavenly King. The next specimen is ascribed to Walter Raleigh. severity of tone Puritan; but only in so far as Puritanism is to be used to signify, not a distinct sectarian spirit, but the spirit of what was best in the religious feeling of the time. The tone of the hymns is, in fact, a reproduction of the tone of the theology: nor, had the writers been disposed to adopt the more cheerful and animated style of their secular contemporaries, would the politics, whether of Church or of State, under the first Stuarts have encouraged them. Hence, as we advance to the seventeenth century, the hymns of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and others of that age, including some by Habington the Roman Catholic, are deeply meditative; they are weighty with thought and feeling; there is little in our poetry which bears reading more, or better repays the reader. On the other hand, these later hymns have the faults of the time in their style; they are often oversubtle in thought or in language; they run into obscurity and fantasticality; there is a certain pleasure in quaintness, and the writings of that age give it, but it is one of Sir the lower forms of pleasure: they tend to Rise, O my soul, with thy desires to heaven, But down in darkness let them lie; So live thy better, let thy worst thoughts And thou, my soul, inspired with holy flame, To Thee, O Jesu! I direct my eyes; To Thee my hands, to Thee my humble knees; To Thee my heart shall offer sacrifice; To Thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees: To Thee myself,-myself and all I give; To Thee I die; to Thee I only live! This grave but manly character continued to mark our hymns during Elizabeth's reign ; at least, there are very few that take the lighter tone which, during the latter half of it, began to show itself in other forms of poetry. There is a sense in which one might call this forget what I may call the congregational character proper to the hymn, and fall rather into the class of the religious meditation. My first examples are from the justly-famous George Herbert. Teach me, my God and King, Not rudely, as a beast, To run into an action; A man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye; All may of Thee partake; Nothing can be so mean, A servant with this clause, Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, This is the famous stone That turneth all to gold: For that which God doth touch and own Observe the curious touch of scientific observation about the properties of glass in the third stanza. Herbert was one of Bacon's main friends and counsellors in his philosophic labours. Oh what a thing is man! how far from power, He is some twenty sev'ral men at least Each sev'ral hour. One while he counts of heaven, as of his treasure: And calls him coward, who for fear of sin Now he will fight it out, and to the wars; And snudge in quiet: now he scorns incrcase; reprinted (Pickering, 1847), and is within It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest I see them walking in an air of glory, My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, O holy hope! and high humility! High as the heavens above! These are your walks, and you have show'd them me, To kindle my cold love Dear, beauteous death, the jewel of the just ! He builds a house, which quickly down must go, What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, And crusht the building: and it's partly true, O what a sight were man, if his attires Did alter with his mind; And, like a dolphin's skin, his clothes combined Surely if each one saw another's heart, There would be no commerce, No sale or bargain pass; all would disperse, Lord, mend, or rather make us; one creation Except Thou make us daily, we shall spurn power There is a strange meditative about this poem; something almost dramatic in its analytic insight into human nature. My next example is an elegy on the loss of dear friends, from Henry Vaughan, a poet far less known than he deserves; a follower of Herbert's, who, if he has not all the strange, passionate intensity of his master, shows a greater fluency and sweetness. I wish I had space to quote from the charming preface (1654) to Vaughan's book, the "Silex Scintillans," in which he sets forth a little of his own life and of his ideas of hymn writing; but it has been beautifully Could man outlook that mark! He that hath found some flegd'd bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams And into glory peep. I end the first division of my subject with Charles I., rather because the race of hymnwriters seems after that time to grow scanty for awhile, than because there is much dif ference between their style and that of the few hymns which I know dated during the last fifty years of the seventeenth century. Some specimens by Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Mason, and others will be found in Sir Roundell Palmer's rich collection. I must pass on to the second period. II. To this, which I termed the " Evangelical," belong probably the majority of the hymns sung, or sung till lately, in our churches and chapels. Most of these were either written by, or in spirit connect them selves with, the great ministers of God who, in the eighteenth century, carried on the torch of English religion, sometimes, per`haps, with too irregular and ecstatic a hand; kindling it sometimes, perhaps (if I may pursue the metaphor), into too lurid and earthly a flame; yet, on the whole, running their race with no small portion of the "divine breath and inspiration." To this remarkable development, however, so far as it is simply theological, I can do no more than allude; and it must be enough to define it by enumerating the names of Doddridge, Watts, Whitefield, the two Wesleys, Scott, Toplady, and Cowper. Indeed, the first very distinguished hymn-writer we meet-Bishop Ken- is not connected with this particular religious movement. His famous hymns may perhaps be regarded as points of transition to the newer manner; they are the earliest which really live in our churches. Addison, again, belongs to no marked theological school. Yet there are few hymns more tender and holy in their sentiment, as there are few indeed more finished in their style, than those which we owe to that all-accomplished genius. The only one I can quote commemorates Addison's thankfulness for his safety during what were, a hundred and fifty years ago, the dangers of a journey to Italy. I knew thou wert not slow to hear, The storm was laid, the winds retired, The sea that roar'd at Thy command, In midst of dangers, fears, and death, My life, if Thou preserv'st my life, And death, if death must be my doom, Isaac Watts is so well known a name that I am sure it would surprise some of my hearers to find, if they turned to his own book, in place of the partial selections from it, of how many remarkable pieces they were ignorant. Let me here give one which seems to me amongst the most characteristic of Watts's, whether in its dramatic directness of expression, its straightforward introduction of dogmatic opinions in which we, perhaps shall not share, or its admirable delicacy and elevation of sentiment. It is a mere baby's hymn, indeed; yet one hardly envies the power of writing such a hymn more than the modesty with which the author speaks of it:-"Some copies of the following hymn having got abroad already into several hands, the Author has been persuaded to permit it to appear in public. CRADLE HYMN. Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber, Heavenly blessings without number Sleep, my babe; thy food and raiment, How much better thou'rt attended Soft and easy is thy cradle; Coarse and hard the Saviour lay: When His birth-place was a stable, And His softest bed was hay. Blessed babe! what glorious features, Was there nothing but a manger To receive the heavenly stranger! Did they thus affront their Lord? Soft, my child; I did not chide thee, 'Tis thy mother sits beside thee, And her arms shall be thy guard. Yet to read the shameful story, How the Jews abused their King, See the kinder shepherds round him, Where they sought Him, there they found Him, See the lovely babe a-dressing; Lovely infant, how He smiled! Where the horned oxen fed; 'Twas to save thee, child, from dying, That thy blest Redeemer came. I could give a hundred kisses, I Humble as this hymn is in its aim, hardly know anything like it in its union of simple words and sublime ideas; nor does Reynolds himself paint childhood with a more overpowering tenderness. You will observe how different are these hymns from those of the earlier period. They contain less expressed thought, less direct argument, but they are animated by a brighter spirit; they are not so weighty in diction, but they are more truly songs of the pious heart; they lean rather towards rendering a reverential faith than a penitential fear. Sometimes, indeed, the fervour of the age passes into an ecstasy hardly suited for public use or public recital. Such we find amongst the many admirable hymns which we owe to the Wesleys, and such also is that hymn, which, in accordance with the opinion of good judges, I should be disposed to put highest within its class Toplady's magnificent Rock of Ages." One specimen in a less elevated key is all I can introduce, and I content myself thus the less reluctantly, -- because I am here in the region most familiar to our memories. It is by Charles Wesley. The harvest of my joys is past, The summer of my comforts filed, And sink unsaved among the dead, Destroy me not by Thy delay; Delay is endless death to me: Is as a thousand years to Thee : I might add Doddridge, Haweis, and Bed- Cowper, are unable to reach; like Herbert's, like Addison's, like even those which we owe in a later age to Byron, they vindicate the secret supremacy of the poet's art, even in that form of it where art is bound most sedulously to conceal itself. I commend this point to your attention, because it is one which has been little noticed; nay, the judgment just expressed may perhaps be in opposition to that often entertained in respect of hymns. Here, as elsewhere in every form of art, the highest excellence is reserved not for the man most solely and singly penetrated with the Christian idea, but for him who has combined the required devotional spirit with the greatest mastery over poetry as an art. Short single effusions of first-rate merit we owe indeed to those who could not strictly or professionally, be described as poets. But whenever there are a number accepted by the world at large as good, we find that they are due to those who have practised poetry as an art: to Addison or Cowper, to Herbert or Keble. Purity of mind, simplicity, devotion, love of God and one's neighbour, openness of heart, courage of confession all these are essential elements for those who would succeed in hymns; but, after all, and above all, we shall find that the poet has the best of it; that art is justified in her children. Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings; It is the Lord who rises With healing in His wings: When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again A season of clear shining To cheer it after rain. In holy contemplation We sweetly then pursue The theme of God's salvation, And find it ever new: Set free from present sorrow, We cheerfully can say, E'en let the unknown to-morrow Bring with it what it may. It can bring with it nothing But he will bear us through; Who gives the lilies clothing Will clothe His people too: Beneath the spreading heavens No creature but is fed; And He, who feeds the ravens, Will give His children bread. Though vine nor fig-tree neither Their wonted fruit shall bear : Though all the fields should wither Nor flocks nor herds be there; Yet, God the same abiding, His praise shall tune my voice; For, while in Him confiding, I cannot but rejoice. Cowper's closing lines (as here) are often conventional in their expression. Hark, my soul! it is the Lord, 'Tis Thy Saviour, hear His word : 66 'Say, poor sinner, lov'st thou me? "I deliver'd thee when bound, "Can a woman's tender care "Mine is an unchanging love, Far from the world, O Lord, I flee, The calm retreat, the silent shade, There, if Thy Spirit touch the soul, There, like the nightingale, she pours Nor asks a witness of her song, Author and Guardian of my life; What thanks I owe Thee, and what love, Shall echo through the realms above |