THE SINGING CHURCH THE HYMNS IT WROTE AND SANG By Edmund S. Lorenz, LL.D., Mus. Doc. AUTHOR OF MUSIC IN WORK AND WORSHIP PRACTICAL HYMN STUDIES PRACTICAL CHURCH MUSIC CHURCH MUSIC COKESBURY PRESS NASHVILLE THE SINGING CHURCH Copyright, MCMXXXVIII By WHITMORE & SMITH All rights in this book are reserved. No part of the text may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publishers, except brief quotations used in connection with reviews in a magazine or newspaper. _Set up, electrotyped, printed, and bound by the Parthenon Press at Nashville Tennessee, United States of America_ “_Be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord._” (Eph. 5: 18, 19.) PREFACE In preparing this discussion of the Christian hymn, it has been my ambition, not to be pre-eminently scholarly, but rather to be pre-eminently helpful. The current treatment of this phase of church worship is quite sufficiently thorough in its literary analysis and historical research; there is nothing but praise for this aspect of the study of the hymn in the many excellent treatises in America as well as in England. The fathers of American hymnology, Professors Austin Phelps and Edwards A. Parks and Rev. Daniel L. Furber, set a good example to later hymnologists in their _Hymns and Choirs_ in laying stress on the thought and sentiment of the hymns and in devoting nearly one-third of their study to “The Dignity and the Methods of Worship in Song,” discussing choirs, congregational singing, organs, and many other practical phases in the use of hymns. They gave little consideration to the historicity of individual hymns; that viewpoint had not risen above the horizon.