PREFACE. IN preparing the "Story of the Hymns" the writer does not aim, like Miller, in his "Songs and Singers of the Church," to give a complete or nearly complete history of the origin of all hymns in common use, but only of such as are the result of some peculiar circumstance or special religious experience. The hymns that the church best loves, and most carefully preserves, are, for the most part, the fruit of eventful lives, luminous religious experiences, severe discipline, or unusual It is the writer's object to associate such hymns with the peculiar circumstances that inspired them, and to explain the personal and local allusions that enter largely into their composition. The volume might properly have been called "The Origin of Hymns of Religious Experience." sorrow. Confidence adds largely to the enjoyment of what we read, and nothing more tends to increase our confidence in any literary composition than to know that the author wrote as he felt, and teaches what he himself has experienced. Nearly all works, written merely for effect, are ephemeral. The tinsel of fancy and mere sentiment fades, while words coined from the heart's pure gold live with the ages. The sacred writers were careful to preserve the history of nearly every psalm, from that of Miriam, when Pharaoh and his host were destroyed, to those of Mary in the presence of Elizabeth and Simeon in the Temple. We better understand the awful and shadowy grandeur of the ninetieth psalm, when it is explained to us that it is the "prayer which Moses the man of God prayed" after the people had sinned in the wilderness. We can enter into the spirit of the eighth psalm, which describes the sublimity of the celestial scenery at night, with a clearer insight when we are told that it was written by the shepherd of Bethlehem, after he had proved himself victorious over the melancholy of Saul at home, and over the champion of the Philistines in the field. It interests us to know that the first psalm was written for the jubilant assembly of King Asa, that the forty-fifth connects itself with the splendors of the reign of Jehoshaphat, that the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth celebrate the removal of the ark after the conquest of Jerusalem, and that the thirtieth was written for the dedication of the House of David. So also in regard to the psalms that belong to the reign of Hezekiah, and refer to the destruction of the Assyrians; and the great Hebrew choral, or one hundred and seventh psalm, sung at the Feast of the Tabernacles. Poets are the song-birds of human nature, the interpreters of human feeling; and they only are worthy of the name, in whose interpretations we find our own unexpressed thoughts and feelings and experiences. The sacred poet, like the Levite of old, is still a minister in the temple; he still kindles the altar fires of holy feeling, and from his own spiritual indwelling, insight, and inner communings, he puts into language for 1 us those emotions, dispositions, desires, that our hearts recognize and yet our lips fail of uttering. He takes us to mountain tops of feeling, into valleys of shadow, and leads by streams of refreshing, and into solitudes of restfulness and calm. But to understand him best, we must know the ways by which he himself has been led, and have the assurance that it is a trusty guide with whom we enter into holy companionship. The essential marks of a good hymn, remarks Earl Nelson, are, “1. It must be full of Scripture. 2. Full of individual life and reality. 3. It must have the acceptance of the use of the church. 4. It must be pure in its English, in its rhyme and its rhythm." He adds: "A hymn coming from a deep communing with God, and from the special experience of the human heart, at once fulfils, and only can fulfil, the tests I have ventured to lay down." The number of hymns in the language is very large. Sir Roundell Palmer estimates that the hymns of Watts, Browne, Doddridge, Charles Wesley, Newton, Beddome, Kelly, and Montgomery, number 6,500; and Mr. Sedgwick, an English writer on hymns, published in 1861 a catalogue of 618 authors who are represented in various English hymn-books. Of these hymns, only the fittest survive, and the most helpful stand the test of time. It usually happens that the most painstaking and elaborate productions of the Christian lyrist are the first to perish, while some minor expression of sincere religious feeling is the surest to live, and take its place among the recognized lyrics of the church. |