The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and SangLorenz, Edmund S. (Edmund Simon)
Religion
The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and Sang
Lorenz, Edmund S. (Edmund Simon)
Hymns -- History and criticism
The hymn of propaganda calls for consideration. It is a didactic hymn,
of course, but its purpose is not to express the fundamental doctrines
of the faith, but to urge some subordinate article of it out of all
proportion to its intrinsic importance, or to win adherents for some
new religious ideas. There are hymns of Perfectionism, of Holiness, of
Unity, of Premillenialism, of Second Adventism, of Christian Science,
of phases of Theosophy, that fall within this category.
The spiritual value of some of these is not to be underrated, but each
hymn must be judged on its own merits. The danger of exaggeration is
the chief point calling for circumspection. Hymns of propaganda
criticizing or antagonizing the Christian Church must be rejected.
_Hymns of the Social Gospel._
A few years ago, when the sociological aspect of Christianity won wide
attention, it was seriously proposed to rewrite the whole hymnbook and
inject the “Social Gospel.” A few desirable hymns on Brotherhood were
written which fill out a previously somewhat neglected rubric.
Brotherhood is not a discovery of the twentieth century, but has been
an integral part of Christianity from the beginning and was never so
fully exemplified as at that period.
In so far as the “Social Gospel” is simply the application of the
gospel of Christ to old wrongs that yet need to be righted, like
slavery, and war, and alcoholism, or to new social complexes in our
modern economic life where there is injustice, or where there is need
of help for body, mind, or soul, hymns may prove desirable helps. They
will, however, be written spontaneously, not as propaganda, and will
be used freely in so far as there is practical and emotional
justification for them. The onward progress of the Kingdom in these
unfinished tasks will most likely depend on the stimulation of the
great motives that have given victory in the past. It is the appeal to
these motives that gives vitality to such a hymn as “Where cross the
crowded ways of life,” by Frank Mason North.
_Special Hymns._
It is a little difficult to supply hymns for subordinate topics which
do not stir the spiritual pulses, and hence the poorest hymns in our
hymnbooks are found in these divisions. The doctrines of Human
Depravity, Regeneration, Sanctification, the State of the Impenitent
Dead, do not lend themselves to attractive hymnic expression.
These hymns have no wings; they are unemotional and without appeal to
the imagination. Yet the selectors of hymns who have a purely
homiletical point of view demand that a hymnal shall supply
appropriate lyrics to fit subjects and occasions that have no lyrical
possibilities. If the demands of symmetrical completeness in a hymnal,
or of close fitness of theme in a service, must be met, then one must
be content with prosaic verses lacking in poetic charm or emotional
inspiration.
_The Great Hymnic Themes._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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