Chapter XI: Part II: History of the Development of Hymns (2)

Luther’s masterpiece, “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A mighty fortress is our God”), is based on the forty-sixth Psalm. It is one of the greatest hymns in the whole Christian hymnody, great in itself, great in its influence on the Protestantism of northern Europe. Ranke, the noted church historian, says: “It is the production of the moment in which Luther, engaged in a conflict with a world of foes, sought strength in a consciousness that he was defending a divine cause, which could never perish.” Carlyle recognized its majesty, “a sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmurs of earthquakes.” Calling up the inspiration it brought to the Protestant armies, German and Swedish, in the religious wars after the Reformation, Heine characterized it as “the Marseillaise of the Reformation.” It has been recognized as the national hymn of Protestant Germany.

A number of translations into English have been made. Carlyle successfully reproduces its rugged strength in his version, but for congregational use the translation of Rev. Frederick H. Hedge, made in 1853, is more practicable.

Luther’s tune is worthy of the text in its ponderous majesty. A small congregation, or a larger one that does not know it very well, can do little with it; only a large congregation singing lustily and in the characteristically German slow _tempo_ can do it justice.

His Christmas hymn, “Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her” (“From heaven above to earth I come”), his praise of Jesus Christ, “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” (“All praise to Thee, eternal Lord”), a revision of a pre-Reformation popular hymn, and his doctrinal hymn, rejoicing over the salvation wrought out by Jesus Christ, “Nun freuet euch, lieb’ Christen G’mein” (“Dear Christian people, now rejoice”), have been very much beloved and were very effective in building up the Protestant cause.

Luther deserves well of the Christian Church, not only because of his own hymns, but because of the inspiration he afforded others among his contemporaries, and to the generations since his day, to take up the writing of hymns. Among the co-laborers in this field in his own generation were Justus Jonas, Paul Eber, Erasmus Alber, Lazarus Spengler, Paul Speratus, and Nicolaus Decius. Luther furnished the idea, the inspiration, and the model for all these hymnists. According to Koch, fifty-one writers contributed hymns to swell the Lutheran hymnody between 1517 and 1560.

As was to be expected, the early German hymnody was also enriched by a number of excellent hymns from the Bohemian Brethren. They were translated by Michael Weiss and Johann Roh, German ministers who had been associated with them.

No small part of the immediate success of Luther’s hymns was the tunes which he provided. He used the melodies already current among the people. He had providentially associated with him musical helpers like Johann Walther and Ludwig Senfl, who did the musical editorial work on his issues. His settings of his “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” and “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” are still a valuable part of the melodic treasury of the Christian Church.

_Chapter XII_
THE LATER GERMAN HYMNODY

I. THE RISING STANDARD OF LITERARY VALUES

After Luther’s death, the impetus of his hymnic influence gradually lost its evangelical force, and a more self-consciously literary coterie raised both the literary and musical standards. Prominent among them was Bartolomaeus Ringwaldt (1530-1598), who wrote “Es ist gewisslich an der Zeit”—the German “Dies Irae”—which probably suggested the English hymn, “Great God! what do I see and hear?” He was a very fertile writer. Equally fertile was Nicolaus Selnecker (1530-1592), who wrote nearly one hundred and fifty hymns.

More important than either was Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608), a Westphalian pastor, whose “Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern” (“O Morning Star, how fair and bright”) and “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (“Sleepers, wake, a voice is calling”) have been and are the most widely used of all German hymns outside of Luther’s two masterpieces. Nicolai wrote them while a great pestilence was raging in Unna, during which fourteen hundred persons perished. He wrote the hymns for his own comfort and that of his people. He also wrote the chorales to which they are sung and which have been called respectively the “Queen” and “King” of German chorales. On the basis of their intrinsic value rather than on that of adaptation to American spirit and type of church life, they occasionally appear in our hymnals, but they are rarely or never sung. Miss Winkworth’s translation of the “King” may be judged by the first stanza:

“Wake, awake, the night is flying;
The watchmen on the heights are crying,
Awake, Jerusalem, at last!
Midnight hears the welcome voices,
And at the thrilling cry rejoices;
Come forth, ye virgins, night is past!
The Bridegroom comes, awake,
Your lamps with gladness take;
Alleluia!
And for his marriage-feast prepare,
For ye must go to meet him there.”

This chorale was used by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy as one of the climaxes of his great oratorio, “St. Paul.”

The popular “Te Deum” of Germany, “Nun danket alle Gott” (“Now thank we all our God”), was written by Martin Rinkart (1586-1649). Miss Winkworth’s version is found in most modern hymnals and deserves wide use, for it is entirely practicable in a congregation of average size. Mendelssohn used this chorale in his cantata “Lobgesang” with much effectiveness. This great hymn was written at the conclusion of the horrible and disastrous Thirty Years’ War. Michael Altenburg (1584-1640) wrote the famous battle hymn of Gustavus Adolphus with which the great Warrior King has been credited; “Verzage nicht, du Haeuflein klein” (“Fear not, O little flock, the foe”) is still used in Germany. However, Luther’s “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” was the more usual battle hymn, as Altenburg’s hymn was not introduced until late in Gustavus Adolphus’ campaigns—indeed, has been called his “Swan song.” Martin Opitz (1597-1639) deserves mention as a valuable influence in regulating the meters and in stressing poetical values. One of the immortal hymns written during this period was that of Georg Neumark (1621-1681), librarian of the Duke of Weimar, “Wer nur den lieben Gott laesst walten” (“If thou but suffer God to guide thee”). Other hymn writers during this distressful period were Johann Heermann (1585-1647), who wrote distinctive hymns of prayer in a correct style and good versification; Johann Rest (1607-1667), who wrote six hundred and eighty hymns intended to cover the whole domain of theology (two hundred of which were in common use in the German churches); and Matthaeus Apelles von Loewenstein (1594-1648), Johannes Matthaeus Meyfart (1590-1642), and Paul Fleming (1609-1640).

This was a period of tribulation, calamity, and desperation, which, as Miss Winkworth remarks, “caused religious men to look away from this world” and led to a more subjective type of hymn, expressing personal feeling. In general, the literary value of the hymns of this period, in form and diction and imagination, exceeded that of those of the previous generation.

II. THE GOLDEN AGE OF GERMAN HYMNODY

The spiritual deepening of this age of sorrow, the widening of the scope of the hymn by the inclusion of more subjective elements, and the literary advance in the structure and diction were preparing the way for the Golden Age of German hymnody which followed the conclusion of the great religious war. It extended from Paul Gerhardt (1604-1676) to Christian Fuerchtegott Gellert (1715-1769).

Gerhardt had spent his young manhood amid the desolation and difficulties of the Thirty Years’ War. He did not enter the ministry until he was nearly fifty years old, having written no hymns up to that time. A great preacher and a devoted pastor, he was a man of deep piety and of unflinching loyalty to the truth, as it was given to him to see it. As calamity followed calamity, under strict divine discipline in preparation for his great work in the writing of hymns, not only for the German church, but also for the whole Christian world, he united in himself the two tendencies, the one of viewing God and divine things in an objective way, characteristic of the early Lutheran hymns, and the other, the expression of the emotion produced by such contemplation in the heart of the Christian, characteristic of the subsequent period. He had the body of the older hymnody and the spirit of the new.

Moreover, Gerhardt was a poet. Indeed, his writings were extensive lyrics rather than hymns. Some of them have furnished several hymns. He was the Keble of German hymnody, and his influence upon subsequent hymn writing has been most helpful. There is a poetic fertility in the man lacking in his predecessors.

He wrote one hundred and twenty-three hymns, of which Dr. Philip Schaff declares that they “are among the noblest pearls in the treasury of sacred poetry.” They are of such uniform excellence that it is difficult to select those of outstanding merit. “Befiehl du deine Wege” (“Give to the winds thy fears”) was translated by John Wesley. “O Jesu Christ, mein schoenstes Licht” (“Jesus, thy boundless love to me”) is another most successful translation by the same hand. “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” (“O sacred head, now wounded”) leans hard on “Salve, caput cruentatum,” but has a spirituality the older hymn does not so fully display. Thirty of his hymns are in general use in the German churches, and Germany recognizes him as her prince of hymnists, superior even to Luther.

Gerhardt’s contemporaries, John Franck (1618-1677) and John Scheffler (1624-1677), while fairly prominent do not compare with him in thoughtfulness and literary felicity. Both are more pietistic. The latter has a somewhat exuberant style, intense and enthusiastic. John Wesley translated and adopted one hymn known to our hymnals as “Thee will I love, my strength, my tower.”

III. THE PIETISTIC HYMN WRITERS

In the latter decades of the seventeenth century, Philipp Jacob Spener, August Hermann Francke, and Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen led a strong movement of protest, called Pietism, against the arid scholasticism and cold formalism of the Lutheran church. It was a second Reformation, emphasizing piety and sincere emotionalism. It postponed the blight of Rationalism for a few decades and led a generation into a devouter, more genuine, religious life.

Spener was a great leader and a good man, but no hymn writer; Francke wrote but few hymns, and so this phase of their work devolved on Freylinghausen. He was full of spirit, with attractive rhythms and florid music. His songs were very popular, but lacked permanent merit. Other writers of this school were Schade, Schutz, and Rodigast.

Less immediately connected with the Pietistic movement, but under its influence, are Hiller of South Germany, Arnold, a professor at the University of Giessen, and Tersteegen of Westphalia, a mystic, all of whom wrote very acceptable hymns. Tersteegen was highly appreciated by John Wesley, who translated his “Gott rufet noch; sollt’ ich nicht endlich hoeren?” (“God calling yet! shall I not hear?”). “Gott ist gegenwaertig! lasset uns anbeten” (“Lo! God is here; let us adore”) and “Jedes Herz will etwas lieben” (“Something every heart is loving”) are others found translated in current hymnals. Lord Selborne speaks of him as “of all the more copious German hymn writers after Luther, perhaps the most remarkable man, pietist, mystic, and missionary, he was also a great religious poet.” That he was a layman makes his religious life all the more remarkable.

A more widely known and striking personality was Count von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), a very devout but somewhat erratic man. He became the patron saint of the Moravian Church and shared—perhaps created—its zeal for foreign missions. He spent some time in the United States, in eastern Pennsylvania, and in the West Indies, doing evangelistic work. He wrote two thousand religious lyrics, disfigured to a large extent by extravagances and by repulsive materialistic similes and phrases. His associate and successor, Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg, long resident in America, and Bishop Christian Gregor also wrote very useful hymns. The Moravian hymnody is all the more noteworthy in that it had a great influence over the hymnic work of the Wesleys.

IV. GERMAN REFORMED HYMNODY

The Reformed Church in Germany long followed Calvin in exclusively using the Psalms of David, but finally felt the impulse of the Lutheran hymnody. Tersteegen, mentioned above, leaned to this branch of the German church, although not officially connected with it. Joachim Neander (1650-1680), a Reformed minister at Bremen, wrote some extremely valuable and popular hymns of praise and was called the Psalmist of the New Covenant. Among his best are “Sieh, hier bin ich, Ehren-Koenig” (“Behold me here in grief draw near”), “Lobe den Herren, den maechtigen Koenig der Ehren” (“Praise to the Lord! He is King over all the creation”), “Unser Herrscher, unser Koenig” (“Sovereign Ruler, King victorious”), still sung in every pious home in Germany.

V. TRANSITION TO RATIONALISTIC HYMNS

The transitional personality between this Pietistic and the succeeding Rationalistic era, was Christian F. Gellert (1715-1769), a professor in Leipzig University. He was a man of sincere piety; he was a teacher, not only in the classroom, but in all his literary efforts. He wrote moral _Tales and Fables_, _Moral Poems_, _Didactic Poems_, as well as _Sacred Odes and Hymns_. There were fifty-four of these, all in the same didactic style. They lacked the rugged strength of Luther, the poetical element of Gerhardt, and the mystic insight of Tersteegen; but this very matter-of-factness made his writings immensely popular. Of all his hymns, but one survives in our modern hymnals, his Easter hymn, “Jesus lebt, mit ihm auch ich” (“Jesus lives, no longer now”).

VI. RATIONALISM IN HYMNODY

German hymnody suddenly fell from its exalted Pietistic rhapsodies into a crass materialism. Dr. Philip Schaff gives a vivid glimpse into the situation: “He (Klopstock) was followed by a swarm of hymnological tinkers and poetasters who had no sympathy with the theology and poetry of the grand old hymns of faith; weakened, diluted, mutilated, and watered them, and introduced these misimprovements into the churches.... Conversion and sanctification were changed into self-improvement, piety into virtue, heaven into the better world, Christ into Christianity, God into Providence, Providence into fate. The people were compelled to sing rhymed sermons on the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the delights of reunion, the dignity of man, the duty of self-improvement, the nurture of the body, and the care of animals and flowers.”

There is no poetical, much less religious, lyrical impulse in rationalism, and the church lyrics of this period have left little impress on the hymnody of the Christian Church. It was the classic period of German literature, but it had few Christian elements in it. Athens and Rome, not Jerusalem, were the centers of intellectual interest; and it might almost be said that it is a pagan literature.

VII. HYMNS OF RENEWED RELIGIOUS LIFE

As in the immediate pre-Reformation age, in spite of the decadence of religious life among the Roman Catholic leaders, there was a semi-submerged piety that forced the Reformation inside the church; so in this recrudescence of paganism in the German church, there was a great body of earnest, pious Christians who kept the spirit of true German devoutness alive.

These were represented by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803), who, although he set the disastrous fashion of re-writing the older hymns in order to improve their literary value by removing archaisms and harsh lines, was yet a devout man, writing the great German epic “Messias” and also some deeply religious hymns that were too poetic for the common people. Another devout writer was Johann Kasper Lavater (1741-1801), better known by his treatise on physiognomy, who wrote some hymns after the style of Klopstock, but with greater popular success, for his “O suessester der Namen all” (“O name than every name more dear”) has been translated and used in English hymnals.

When the first intoxication of the new freedom from churchly, and even moral, restraint passed away, the German church again found able representatives to give expression to its religious life. Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801), also called “Novalis,” a mining engineer of fine literary ability, wrote some hymns of deep feeling and beautiful style. Friedrich de la Motte Fouque (1777-1843), chiefly known as the author of _Undine_, and as an outstanding representative of the Romantic school in literature, wrote some very beautiful hymns, including two missionary hymns of great excellence. There is a literary and imaginative charm in these hymns, as in his general German style, that betrays his Huguenot heredity. Both these writers had the literary emphasis that somewhat discounted the value of their hymns for the common people. They stand, however, as landmarks of the subsidence of the rationalistic period in German hymnody.

VIII. HYMNS OF PIETISTIC TYPE

In the reaction from Rationalism, Pietism again came into its own and a noble roster of sacred lyrists have given it expression. This includes Ernst Moritz Arndt, professor of history at the University of Bonn, whose “Wahres Christentum” was as necessary to every Christian home as the Bible itself, a patriot who won the hatred and persecution of Napoleon Bonaparte by his patriotic songs, and whose hymns are no small part of the treasury of later German hymnody. Among them are “Ich weiss, an wen ich glaube” (“I know in whom I put my trust”), which is one of the German classics.

Friedrich Adolf Krummacher (1767-1845) is best remembered by his hymn “Mag auch die Liebe weinen” (“Though love may weep with breaking heart”) and his missionary hymn, “Eine Herde und ein Hirt” (“One shepherd and one fold to be”). Still others are Friedrich Ruckert (1789-1866) whom Dr. Schaff calls “one of the greatest masters of lyric poetry,” Albert Knapp (1798-1864), editor of the outstanding critical collection of German hymns, “Der Liederschatz,” and writer of many widely used hymns, and Meta Heusser-Schweizer (1797-1876), of Switzerland, “the most eminent and noble among all the female poets of our whole evangelical Church.”[1]

The primate of them all is Karl Johann Philipp Spitta (1801-1859), “the most popular hymnist of the nineteenth century.” The fifty-fifth edition of his _Psalter und Harfe_ appeared in 1889. He was an Hanoverian pastor. He had been under rationalistic teachers at the University of Goettingen, but toward the end of his university course had a profound religious experience that affected all his future life; he wrote no secular verse after that time. He was recognized as a mystic and pietist and his promotion was antagonized on that ground.

Many of his hymns have been translated into English. Among the most successful are “O Jesu, meine Sonne” (“I know no life divided”), “Es kennt der Herr die Seinen” (“He knoweth all His people”), “O selig Haus, wo man dich aufgenommen” (“O happy home, where thou art loved the dearest”), “O treuer Heiland, Jesu Christ” (“We praise and bless thee, gracious Lord”).

Spitta may be called “the Gerhardt of the nineteenth century,” for he has many of that great hymn writer’s qualities as well as his popularity. He was sincerely devout, a man of an abiding sense of God’s care and nearness; his style is smooth and melodious as well as poetical.

Spitta’s hymns are very practical in length and form of stanza, and his themes grow out of the common needs and experiences of general humanity. For this reason they have been very largely translated into English—no less than thirty-three of them—and, what is more significant, selected by editors of hymnals, especially in England.

Karl von Gerok (1815-?) is another exceedingly popular religious lyrist of the nineteenth century, hardly second to Spitta. His “Palm-blaetter,” issued in 1857, reached its fifty-sixth edition in 1886. By this time it has likely reached the century mark. But his verses are religious poetry, not hymns, and but a few centos have been admitted to German hymnbooks.

Recently the new rationalism and sensual materialism have again submerged the religious life of Germany and the impulse to write hymns has lost its urgency. Whether the shattering of the illusion of world-wide power, and the sobering effect of its terrible losses of men and of wealth, will bring Germany back to her religious senses must be patiently awaited by those eager for her highest welfare. The recrudescence of paganism and its threat of renewed striving after world dominance need not blast this pious hope. God’s hand is still on the tiller of the German national bark, and the heart of the German people is not represented by the bulletins on the surface of its current events, caused by the pride of nationalism in the shallow vocal stratum that stridently claims the world’s attention.

In this hurried review of the development of the German hymn from Luther to Spitta much that is interesting and profitable has been omitted. But it is manifest that this German hymnody holds the supreme place in the hymnody of the Christian Church in all ages and nations. The reasons for this lie on the surface: the German people are a singing people, and the instinct to sing their thoughts and feelings is stronger than in any other race. Again, they did not lose two centuries under the spell of Calvin’s devotion to the Hebrew Psalms, as did Great Britain and America. In contrast with the Latin and Greek hymnodies, it is the voice of the people, not the restrained liturgical voice of the clergy.

The German hymnody is often ponderous and heavy, often tediously prolix and dull, but at the heart of it is a profound realization of the actualities of the Christian faith, and a responsiveness to its appeals to the hearts of men, that one cannot find elsewhere to the same extent.

_Chapter XIII_
METRICAL PSALMODY

I. CALVIN’S CONCEPTION OF CONGREGATIONAL SINGING

While Luther recognized the value of hymns as pre-eminent in his work, he still left a large place for the Psalms, himself making some admirable versions and inciting others to do the same. But there were limits to his sympathy with an undue and merely formal emphasis of them. He canceled the obligation of repeating the whole Psalter once a week, instituted by Cardinal Quimonez, as “a donkey’s burden.” Luther was a reformer, changing only what needed changing in order to secure a deeper spirituality. Calvin and Zwingli were not reformers, but re-creators, setting wholly aside all the liturgy, the ecclesiastical organization, the clerical rules, and the distinctive doctrines of the Roman church, and building up an entirely new church with no other sanction than their interpretation of the Word of God.

Perhaps unconsciously, Calvin harked back to the Roman attitude of Gregory the Great, in insisting on purely Scriptural sources for the service of song. He was too good a Biblical scholar not to know that the Apostolic Church used “hymns and spiritual songs” as well as Psalms; indeed he never categorically forbade hymns of “human composure.” But the people had been forbidden the Bible. The Psalms had been sung by the clergy alone in an already dead language. Calvin declared that “if a man sang in an unknown tongue, he might as well be a linnet or a popinjay.” So he reacted somewhat violently. He had a profound sense of the authority of the Word of God, and his mind was possessed by the idea of the divine sovereignty; hence religious rites of human origin seemed trifling and negligible.

This attitude was emphasized all the more by the Latin hymns sung and read in the churches, and on religious occasions, whose chief burden was worship of the Madonna, and even of the saints, against which his mind rose in outraged horror.

II. CALVIN’S FOLLOWERS MORE EXTREME

Human nature being what it is, it was inevitable that Calvin’s followers should carry his ideas to an extreme, and mechanically add the conclusion that hymns independent of the lyrics of the Scriptures should be forbidden.

While Luther stressed the Biblical content of the hymns and exalted the Psalms as the source of religious lyrical impulses, Calvin and his disciples added a rigid and almost superstitious regard for the mere form of the Scripture lyrics. They accepted their distortion and mutilation in giving them a metrical form as justified by the congregational necessity, and by the evident devotional results among the people.

III. MAROT’S SUCCESSFUL VERSIONS

Beneath his austerity Calvin evidently had an appreciation of literary beauty and grace, for he developed an ambition to clothe the Hebrew Psalms in a literary French metrical dress. It was while this problem was exercising his mind that there fell into his hands the French version of some of the Psalms by Clement Marot (1497-1544), who had come under the influence of Marguerite de Valois, the Huguenot princess, whose _valet de chambre_ he was during his early twenties. It is possible that he and Calvin met at Ferrara in 1535. Though the work of a Huguenot poet, these lyrics were admired in high political and social circles in France. Written in measures fitting them to popular tunes, they were very popular among the royal courtiers, Catholics as well as Protestants, and were soon introduced into other countries.

That he was later persecuted by the Roman ecclesiastics only recommended him the more to Calvin. Here was a poet of high reputation, a skillful versifier of the Psalms, a fellow-sufferer at the hands of the Roman hierarchy—why not commit to his hands the task of supplying Calvin’s new church with its needed book of Psalms? So Marot was called to Geneva.

IV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENEVAN PSALTER

In 1543, nineteen years after Luther’s first venture, the _Acht Liederbuch_, appeared, _The Genevan Psalter_ was issued in the French language. It contained fifty psalms by Marot. Marot died in 1544. The completion of the Psalter was committed to Theodore Beza of Burgundy, who revised Marot’s verses, eliminating the classical allusions and offensive gaiety. With the help of Bourgeois, and later of Goudimel, in completing and harmonizing the tunes, he finished the Psalter in 1562.[1]

V. ENGLISH PSALM VERSIONS BEFORE STERNHOLD

There had been English versions of some of the Psalms before Sternhold undertook the task. Bishop Aldhelm of Sherborne, who died in 709 A.D., composed a complete psalter. Two versions were due to Lutheran influence. That of Miles Coverdale, _Ghoostly Psalms and Spiritual Songs_, appearing sometime between 1530 and 1540, used some of the German chorales, including the great “Ein’ feste Burg.”

The Wedderburn brothers of Dundee, Scotland, issued the _Compendious Booke of Gude and Godlie Ballates_, also known as _Dundee Psalms_, on the return of John Wedderburn, soon after 1539, from Wittenberg, where he had been under the influence of both Luther and Melanchthon. Latin psalms and hymns had no value with young people, he insisted in his preface; “but when they hear it sung into their vulgar tongue, or sing it themselves, with sweet melody, then shall they love their God with heart and mind, and cause them to put away bawdry and unclean songs.” While considerably better than the songs the collection displaced, the new book was too cheaply popular, and undignified in many of its religious parodies of popular songs, to satisfy the elders of the Scottish Kirk (!) and they tried to suppress it.

But the lines of religious, social, doctrinal, and political influence connected England and Scotland with France and Geneva so closely that it happened that the new English and Scotch psalmody was based on the work of Marot and Calvin and not on that of Luther. To human minds with some sense of literary dignity and style and of a more spontaneous expression of religious life and experience, it seems a great pity!

The first response in England to the new version of Marot was the Latin version of George Buchanan in 1548. Latin was an entirely dead language to the commonalty, but was quite generally familiar to people of scholarship and culture. This version, in the scholarly language of all Europe (like the Mandarin in China), found wide appreciation in intellectual circles and many editions of it were issued. Of course, the mass of the English people was not affected by it, and it had little or no influence on the development of English psalmody.

That there were vernacular versions already in use, is quite certain. Robert Cowley anticipated Sternhold and Hopkins in the versifying of the whole Psalter, issuing his work in 1549. In the preface to this collection he refers to previous versions which had passages “obscure and hard.” Probably they were Lollard or Wycliffite in origin, for these “sweet singers,” precursors of the Reformation to come, worked among the lower classes in the Low Countries as well as in England, singing the Gospel in the vernacular.

VI. VERSION OF STERNHOLD AND HOPKINS

Undoubtedly it was the French Psalms of Marot, and their great popularity in the highest circles in France, that incited Thomas Sternhold to undertake a like version in the English language. His first issue, probably in 1547 and 1548, contained nineteen Psalms. In 1549 he published another edition containing thirty-seven Psalms. Sternhold died in 1549, leaving but nineteen additional Psalms unpublished. Another poet, John Hopkins, a near neighbor in Gloucestershire, contributed to the edition of 1551. In 1562 the psalter was completed. Of the one hundred and fifty Psalms, Sternhold had supplied fifty-one, Hopkins sixty, all in common meter, and the rest were contributed by various writers. It also contained metrical versions of the Canticles, the Ten Commandments, the Athanasian Creed, the Te Deum, the Lord’s Prayer, an English version of the festival hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” and several original English hymns.

This psalter had a popularity equaled only by _Hymns Ancient and Modern_ and the _Gospel Hymns_ series in the recent past. Within half a century more than fifty editions were issued. By 1841 no less than six hundred and fifty different editions had been absorbed by the religious public—more than all other metrical versions combined.

This version was adopted by the Church of England in 1562 and continued to be used for nearly two hundred and fifty years, despite its notorious crudities and imperfections, and despite the many efforts made to supersede it by other versions and by hymns. The singing of Psalms became universal. At St. Paul’s Cross, after the service, there were sometimes six thousand persons engaged in singing Psalms. It was a time of genuine community singing.

VII. THE SCOTCH VERSION

In 1556, John Knox issued his _Anglo-Genevan Psalter_, based on the 1551 edition of Sternhold and Hopkins, with some alterations and additions. It naturally was greatly influenced by Calvin’s _Genevan Psalter_. The _Anglo-Genevan Psalter_ is significant chiefly because of its influence on the Scotch Psalter. Through that, it is the source of some psalms and tunes still in use—notably, “All people that on earth do dwell” and “Old Hundredth” to which the Long Meter Doxology is sung.

The Scotch Psalter developed on a different line. The Psalm editors of the Scottish Church accepted eighty-seven of the Anglo-Genevan Psalms, added and somewhat altered forty-two from the final Sternhold and Hopkins editions, and supplied twenty-one from their own versifiers. It appeared in 1564 and was adopted by the General Assembly as its authorized Psalm book.

In 1600 James I began a revision and himself wrote thirty-five of the Psalms before his death. This psalter was completed by William Alexander and was issued in 1630, being known as the _Royal Psalter_. Charles I bound up a revised edition of it with a new liturgy prepared by the Scotch bishops in 1536, and ordered its exclusive use. But the Scotch clergy declined with thanks, having no use for “the mass in English.”

But the question of a revision of this Psalter having been raised, its deficiencies, which had been passively accepted, rose up into consciousness. Rous’ version, adopted by the Westminster Assembly in 1643, and hence widely used in England, was made the basis of the new Scotch Psalter and, after seven years of amending and revision, was adopted in 1650. It is still used in Scotland and in American Presbyterian churches whose eyes look back reverently to Scotland.

VIII. ROUS’ VERSION

Rous’ version was made by Francis Rous, Provost of Eton College, Oxford, a Presbyterian lawyer and a man of public affairs. It was an improvement on Sternhold and Hopkins, but still left much to be desired in smoothness of versification and grace of diction, owing to the continued loyalty to the original phraseology of the Psalms. Hence it had some “awful examples,” to use Matthew Arnold’s phrase, whose repetition here might amuse but not edify. But it also had some happy stanzas that we still are glad to sing, e.g.:

“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; he leadeth me
The quiet waters by.”

Compare this with Archbishop Parker’s version of the Shepherd Psalm written in 1557:

“To feed my neede: he will me leade
To pastures green and fat:
He forth brought me: in libertie
To waters delicate.”

But with the blindness of the versifiers to the need of diversifying their meters in the interest of varied and attractive tunes, all the psalms were written in Common Meter.[2]

IX. TATE AND BRADY’S “NEW VERSION”

A new version by two Irishmen, Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, appeared in 1696. Tate was a literary man, a playwright, a poet, and finally poet laureate. Brady had a rather varied clerical career in Ireland and in England, becoming chaplain to King William. This will partly explain why this version received royal endorsement and gradually replaced Sternhold and Hopkins in the English Church. It was adopted by the Protestant Episcopal Church of America in 1789. The fact that the Nonconformist churches remained faithful to the “Old Version” and to Rous’ version, no doubt had its bearing on the final acceptance of the “New Version” by the Established Church.

This “New Version” was a little smoother than the “Old Version,” and had a little more literary grace, but still was shackled by devotion to “purity”—to the exact thought and phraseology of the Hebrew Psalms. Nevertheless, as Gillman says, “this book contained a plentiful supply of chaff, but perhaps a few more grains of golden corn than Sternhold’s.” “As pants the hart for cooling streams” and “Through all the changing scenes of life” are still highly prized, and Tate’s Christmas Carol, “While shepherds watched their flocks by night” (which appeared in a supplement to the “New Version”) is a masterly adaptation of the Nativity story. On the other hand, Montgomery, in comparing the “New Version” with the “Old Version,” remarks: “It is nearly as inanimate as the former, though a little more refined.” Of the “Old Version” he says: “The merit of faithful adherence to the original has been claimed for this version and need not be denied, but it is the resemblance which the dead bear to the living.” Old Thomas Fuller wittily says of Sternhold and Hopkins that “They are men whose piety was better than their poetry, and they had drunk more of Jordan than of Helicon.” Thomas Campbell even more harshly exclaims: “With the best intensions and the worst taste, they degraded the spirit of Hebrew poetry by flat and homely phraseology, and, mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime.” From the literary point of view these dicta are correct enough, but they overlook what is vastly more important—the high moral and spiritual uses which these homely versions so amply served.

X. AMERICAN PSALMODY

The Pilgrims brought with them from Leyden Ainsworth’s version of the Psalms, published in Amsterdam—Genevan rather than English in character. Its use was largely confined to the Pilgrims and their descendants. Presently the copies of both versions became rare and the service of song depended on the “lining out” of the verses.

The first book printed in America was the _Bay Psalm Book_, an independent version of the Psalms made by Thomas Welde, Richard Mather, and John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, a committee appointed in 1636. It was proposed to make it more scriptural than either of the previous versions used. It appeared in 1640. Its preface consisted of a discourse urging that psalm-singing was both lawful and necessary. During the next century and a half no less than seventy editions were printed. It was improved by Dunster and Lyon and reprinted in Great Britain, eighteen editions being called for in England and twenty-two in Scotland. This was America’s first contribution to the song service of the Mother Country, but by no means the last.

It may be interesting to see just what literary style this _Bay Psalm Book_ could display, and a few specimens are herewith given. The one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, for instance, was given the following form:

1. “The rivers on of Babilon
There when wee did sit downe:
Yea, even then wee mourned when
wee remembred Sion.

2. Our Harp wee did hang it amid
Upon the willow tree,
Because there they that us away
led in captivitee,

3. Required of us a song and thus
ask mirth: us waste who laid,
sing us among a Sion’s song
unto us then they said.

4. The Lord’s song sing can wee? being
in stranger’s land. Then let
loose her skill my right hand, if I
Jerusalem forget.

5. Let cleave my tongue my pallate on
if minde thee doe not I
if chief joys or’e I prize not more
Jerusalem my joy.”

Cotton Mather’s rhymeless version was much more sensible in its form, for it eliminated the chief handicap in producing a literal version in metrical form.

As in the Psalm versions of England and Scotland, there was a vivid consciousness of literary and poetic shortcomings; but the sense of obligation to supply a literal translation of the Hebrew overrode all impulses toward a smoother rendering. The preface frankly states the position of the committee: “If therefore the verses are not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider that God’s altar needs not our polishing (Ex. 20), for we have respected rather a plaine translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the Hebrew words into English language and David’s poetry into English meetre.”

There were other American Psalm versions, but the only versions worth considering are the revisions of Isaac Watts’ Psalms, which will come up in introducing American hymnody later.

XI. THE VALUE OF THE PSALM VERSIONS

In smiling over this rude psalmody of England, Scotland, and America, it is always to be remembered that these versions were not a literary endeavor. Their ambition was to secure ‘purity,’ loyalty to the rather prosaically conceived doctrines of the originals. There was no thought of poetry or of literary finish. The meter and rhyme were practical devices to make congregational singing possible.

_Chapter XIV_
THE ENGLISH HYMN BEFORE WATTS

I. THE EARLIEST ENGLISH HYMN

Just as Gregory the Great did not create the music that bears his name, nor Luther the congregational hymnody, so Isaac Watts did not originate the English hymnody of which he is often termed the father. The Lollards, or Wickliffites, sang metrical psalms, and also hymns, in the Low Countries, as well as in England, long before Luther, or Marot, or Sternhold.

Moreover, the emphasis of the Psalms was an ecclesiastical, clerical attitude, while the people at large to whom the Scriptures had been a closed book, and the Psalms an unknown language, sang such vernacular hymns as sprang up among them; so, while we cannot doubt but that they sang some metrical psalms, based on the Wickliffe English Bible, the body of their singing was presumably hymnic.

Indeed, we must go back much farther to find the spring of religious song that was to become a great river of praise. Caedmon, a monk, originally a swineherd, of the early seventh century, supplied the earliest recorded English hymns:

“Now must we hymn the Master of heaven,
The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father,
The thought of his heart.”

Undoubtedly the times before Caedmon were resonant with earlier songs, for the Venerable Bede (673-735) in the next generation records the fact of a great deal of singing among the people. Indeed, he himself wrote hymns in Anglo-Saxon, as well as in Latin. Patrick and Colombo sang psalms and hymns and made them a means of converting the pagans of Ireland and Scotland.

II. ENGLISH HYMNODY SUBMERGED BY REFORMED PSALMODY

The urge, not only for versifying all parts of the Scriptures, including genealogies, but of actually singing them with fervor, submerged the native impulse of song. The religious loyalty to the letter of the Scriptures that followed closed the door against the development of the English hymn.[1]

Professor Reeves in his _The Hymn as Literature_ remarks: “As vigorous and variegated and prevalent as this union of popular poetry and popular music was in England, it strangely weakened and paled at the one time in English history when it might have been expected most to flourish. The Reformation, born of that new freedom of thought and worship which produces the best hymnody, did not in England, as it gloriously did in Germany, speak out richly in the native vernacular hymn.”[2]

III. ENGLISH LITERARY IDEALS UNFAVORABLE TO HYMN-WRITING

But it was not only the blight of a narrow bibliolatry that prevented the development of the English religious lyric. English poetry had lost its spontaneity and its gracious simplicity in a self-conscious devotion to false literary ideals.

The conception of a congregational hymn did not exist among the literary men of the Reformation and later. Indeed, that Reformation among the cultured and intellectual classes was not so much a religious transformation as a political and cultural repudiation of clerical bonds, and an enjoyment of new liberties. There was some religious feeling, of course, but it was expressed in elaborate forms, not in spontaneous simple lyrics that the people could sing.

The technic of the singing hymn had not been developed, nor its limitations recognized. It took nearly a century before even an approximation could be reached to the practicability of the Lutheran hymns, which were written, not by literary connoisseurs, but by men in close touch with the people, men who had with singleness of mind striven to win and edify them. As we study the English lyrics, written, not to be sung, but simply to express the personal feelings of the writer in the current style and in complicated measures, we see how far English poets had to go before a practicable singing hymn could be written.

The conceptions of poetry, the prevalent grandioseness of style, the studied phrasemaking, the excessive Latinity of vocabulary among distinctively literary men, made the simplicity needed in a congregational hymn impossible. Despite Mr. Horder’s enthusiasm over the possible use Luther would have made of John Milton, the German hymnody creator could have done nothing with the ponderous large-planning author of _Paradise Lost_, with his wealth of classical allusions and mythology, and his phrasing rich with preciosity. Milton’s Psalm versions, fine as they are, were simply not singable by the commonalty of his time who were to be depended on to do the singing. He was a writer of odes, not of singing hymns.

Here is a literary hymn—balancing phrases, piling up antitheses, consciously seeking striking and euphonious combinations of words:

“I praise Him most, I love Him best, all praise and love is His;
While Him I love, in Him I live, and cannot live amiss.
Love’s sweetest mark, laud’s highest theme, man’s most desired
Light,
To love Him life, to leave Him death, to live in Him delight.”

The writer of the foregoing, Robert Southwell, a Romanist martyr, writing in prison, could write simple lyrics out of the fullness and genuineness of his religious experience, but it was not in the accepted fashion. What Protestant dare refuse to sing this simple hymn of his?

“Yet God’s must I remain,
By death, by wrong, by shame;
I cannot blot out of my heart
That grace wrought in his name.”

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIC OF WRITING SINGING HYMNS

All these writers, and many others that might be mentioned, had not acquired the technic of congregational hymn writing. They either did not recognize the limitations of the singing hymn, or refused to be hampered by its restraints.

But presently the idea of the singing hymn defined itself. Thomas Campion in 1613 issued a number of lyrics that combined spiritual insight, literary grace, and practical availability to a hitherto unattained degree. Dr. Benson characterizes his

“Never weather-beaten sail
More willing beat to shore,”

as “among the loveliest of the lyrics expressing the heavenly homesickness.” Campion was a musician as well as a poet, which partly accounts for the singability of his hymns.

In 1623 George Withers issued a complete hymnbook for the Established Church. It was made up of Scriptural paraphrases and hymns for special occasions. The hymns are superior to previous attempts in structure and method, in their simple piety and practical purpose, and in their availability for actual congregational singing. But in the midst of admirable lines there were strange lapses in taste. The hymn whose first verse began so auspiciously,

“Come, oh, come, in pious lays
Sound we God Almighty’s praise;
Hither bring in one consent
Heart and voice and instrument,”

makes the singing congregation a conductor directing a vast chorus:

“From earth’s vast and hollow womb
Music’s deepest bass may come;
Seas and floods, from shore to shore,
Shall their counter-tenors roar,” etc.

Clever in a way, but hardly devotional!

Withers’ “Musicians’ Hymn” has a very practical hint to the “singers’ gallery,” as well as to the congregation:

“He sings and plays
The songs which best Thou lovest,
Who does and says
The things which Thou approvest.”

What Withers’ influence on subsequent English hymnody might have been we can only conjecture: the Company of Stationers boycotted his book because he had secured the king’s order to bind it up with the Psalter and shut it out from the regular channels of trade. His second collection, “Hallelujah,” was even more practicable and candidly didactic in style. But Withers had but a slight, if any, influence, for Sternhold and Hopkins still ruled the worship of the churches.

His immediate successors in hymn writing, Herbert, Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan, were not influenced by his practical spirit and sang to please themselves, not to lead the congregation.

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a devout soul, full of a usually charming fantasy and fertile in imagery; but antithesis was still an allurement to poets in his generation. His “Antiphon” makes an effective hymn, but the inevitable contrast is still there:

“The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither fly;
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.”

Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan all share in the quaintness of Herbert and also in his general hymnic impracticability.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674), the singer of rather worldly songs, but a literary artist withal, in his “Litany to the Holy Spirit” reaches more nearly up to the ideal of the singing hymn:

“In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.”

But when in the second stanza he descends to a description of a feverish sleepless night,

“When I lie within my bed
Sick in heart and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me,”

a doubt of its congruity on the lips of a crowd of worshipers begins to rise. But when in the fourth and fifth verses one is asked to sing,

“When the artless doctor sees
No one hope but of his fees,
And his skill runs on the lees,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.

When his potion and his pill,
His or none or little skill,
Meet for nothing but to kill,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me,”

one understands why, despite some fine lines, hymnal editors hesitate to use it.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691), chiefly remembered by his _Saints’ Everlasting Rest_ and _Call to the Unconverted_ and a mass of other most useful writings, prepared a metrical psalter which found little response; he also wrote some poetry, but, as a child of his age, delighted in antithesis. One of his books of poetry had as its subtitle _The Concordant Discord of a Broken-healed Heart_. His hymns, however, are simple in style and make a close approach to the practicable type. Two of them are still largely in use: “Lord, it belongs not to my care” and “Ye holy angels bright.” Had the churches in his day given a fair opportunity, or furnished the inspiration of demand, Baxter might have been one of our great hymnists, superior to Watts in his deeper spirituality.

John Austin (?-1669) wrote some excellent hymns for a book of “Devotions” for family use. Among them is

“Blest be Thy love, dear Lord,
That taught me this sweet way,
Only to love Thee for Thyself
And for that love obey,”

which still finds a worthy place in our hymnals.

About this time (1616) the long poem, “Hierusalem, my happie home,” appears to have been written. Only the initials F. B. P. are attached to the manuscript, now in the British Museum. It is conjectured that they stand for Francis Baker Priest. Out of it have been fashioned two very useful hymns: “Jerusalem, my happy home,” by Joseph Bromehead in 1795, and “O mother dear, Jerusalem,” by an unknown hand. The debt of the original to the Latin is quite evident, but it has original values as well. Aside from its length, a common fault in its time, it approaches the final type of the congregational hymns very nearly in its simplicity, devoutness, and in its practicable measure.

Closely allied to the Herbert school of religious lyrics, Bishop Thomas Ken (1637-1711) had the advantage of belonging to a later generation in which the conception of the congregational hymn had begun to crystallize into a definite form. His Morning and Evening Hymns are both simple in structure—in Ambrose’s iambic long meter—free from affectations and bizarre rhetoric, easily comprehensible, and devout and spiritual. They have been accepted as among the best hymns in the language.

The doxology with which the two hymns close has been sung more frequently and with greater elevation of mind and heart than any other four lines in all earth’s literature. There is in this doxology a nobility, a majesty, a comprehensiveness of praise which have not been approached elsewhere outside of the choruses found in the Book of Revelation. English hymnody had at last found its voice, its spirit, and its model.

The conception of the congregational hymn had now been clearly defined and, from Bishop Ken on, English hymnody was established as a distinct department of English lyrical poetry. Hymn writers thenceforward were content to accept the mediocrity Montgomery later called for. The difficulty was that the English Protestant churches, still psalm-fanatic, were not ready to sing the hymns they needed so much for their highest spiritual development, and which now began to be supplied.

That the idea of singing hymns of “human composure” was making progress is evidenced by the issue in 1659 of the first collection of hymns, _A Century of Select Hymns_, by William Barton (1603-1678). He had issued a collection of versified Psalms in 1644 and a little book of Psalms and hymns of thanksgiving in 1651. A little later he published a review of the current Psalm version discussing its “errors” and “absurdities.” He issued six collections during his lifetime, most of whose content we would recognize as hymns. His work has little interest to us except as it, as well as that of Wither, Baxter, and Mason, helped to clarify the ideas of the young man Watts.

V. THE IDEAL OF THE SINGING HYMN REALIZED

It was the lack of preparation on the part of the churches, rather than any essential inferiority to Isaac Watts, that prevented John Mason (?-1694) from being recognized as the father of English hymnody. Watts’ superiority lay in his having an intenser consciousness of the greater value of the free hymn and the strength and ability to force the issue to a final conclusion.

Mason’s hymns were the first to be used in regular congregational worship. Twenty editions of his _Spiritual Songs_ were issued; considering the times and the small population, this was a marvelous success. This collection may be considered the thin edge of the wedge, later driven by Watts, between the churches and psalmody. Horder in his _Hymn Lover_ declares that “rarely did Watts rise to the height of thought and beauty of expression which are found in Mason’s hymns.”

One of Mason’s most widely used hymns is

“Now from the altar of my heart
Let incense flames arise;
Assist me, Lord, to offer up
Mine evening sacrifice.

Awake, my Love! awake, my Joy;
Awake, my Heart and Tongue:
Sleep not: when Mercies loudly call,
Break forth into a Song.”

High authority claims that Mason’s hymn, “Thou wast, O God, and Thou wast blest,” is one of the best in the language. Its third verse is particularly noble:

“To whom, Lord, should I sing but Thee,
The Maker of my tongue?
Lo, other lords would seize on me,
But I to Thee belong.
As waters hasten to their sea,
And earth unto its earth,
So let my soul return to Thee,
From whom it had its birth.”

His influence on Watts was very considerable. George MacDonald says of Mason’s hymns: “Dr. Watts was very fond of them; would that he had written with similar modesty of style.” Mason was made to supply many a good line to the hymns of Watts, we are told by those who have compared the hymns of the two writers.[3]