Dr. Watts, in more than one hymn, speaks of "wild world;" more vivid than "wide world," to which Dr. Worcester changes it, Bk. ii. 73 and 138. Dr. Watts writes: "We shout with joyful tongues;" more animating than "cheerful tongues," as written by Dr. Worcester, Bk. ii. 42. "And unbelief the spear," is the line of Watts; made less lively by Worcester: "And unbelief a spear," Bk. ii. 95. Cowper writes: "And if her faith was firm and strong, Had strong misgivings too;" which, feeble at best, is still feebler in Worcester's Watts: "Had some misgivings too." (Select Hymn, 76.) Dr. Watts writes: "As potter's earthen work is broke;" Worcester does not mend this line by saying: "As potter's earthen ware is broke," Ps. ii. The following alteration is not disrespectful to the Olney Hymns: John Newton's original. He himself has bid thee pray, Therefore will not say thee nay. Connecticut and Plymouth Collections. waits to hear. The spirit of song often disdains the trammels of a precise philosophy. It flies aloft, and leaves the rules of logic in the low ground of unimpassioned thought. The naked statement of a truth is sometimes poetical; but at other times the truth must be intimated in metaphors, or veiled in some attractive drapery. When the rationalists of the last age gained possession of the German pulpit, they found that the poet had written in their hymn book, concerning the midnight hour: "Now all the world is locked in sleep." But this is not philosophical. The earth is round; therefore the rationalists merged the poet's hyperbole into the more undeniable theorem: "Now half the world is locked in sleep." The Presbyterian (Old School) Collection of hymns has stumbled at the simple line of Watts, concerning that sound which "Bid the new-made heavens go round." This line is not true. It falsifies the Copernican system. The "heavens" do not go round. Hence that Collection has reduced the poetry of the line to accurate astronomy, thus: "That bid the new-made world go round." On the same principle, the Hymn of Watts: "Once more, my soul, the rising day," is changed from an expression of lively praise, "To Him that rolls the skies," into the more philosophical dictum: "To Him thi les the skies." In another instance, however, a scient fic line is metamorphosed by the same Presbyterian Colection into the freer poetical form; the poet wrote: "How most exact is nature's frame;" the critic has preferred to write: "How fair and beauteous nature's frame." The 65th Psalm of Watts affirms that sailors are especially affrighted "When tempests rage, and billows roar, At dreadful distance from the shore." It has been objected that the further off from the shore the sailors are in a tempest, so much the safer are they. But, however this may be in prose, it is not so in poetry. A favorite hymn asserts: "Fire ascending seeks the sun." This is not the fact in midnight prose; but shall we there fore qualify the poetic assertion? If a hymn leaves a decidedly erroneous impression, and is adapted to deprave the moral sentiment by its false doctrine, it should be either omitted or amended. Truth is more essential than poetry. An injurious influence is worse than a prosaic expression. If, however, the hymn does not inculcate an unsound doctrine by its unscientific style; if it merely employ a less technical, or more indirect, or ambiguous phrase, than is demanded by a precise theology, the uses of the hymn require that the old form be retained for the explanation of a didactic hour, rather than that the flow of song be checked by a rigid analytic emendation. We query whether the Presbyterian Old School Manual (Hymn 549,) has at all heightened the moral excellence of Mrs. Steele's stanza, by translating the affectionate words: "'Tis thine, Almighty Saviour, thine, To form the heart anew," into the more accurate language: ""Tis thine, Eternal Spirit, thine," etc. On the other hand, the Connecticut Hymn Book, Hymn 86, has made a more healthful impres sion by describing the divine goodness as "unceasing," than was made by Doddridge, who represents it as "redundant." Whil poetry shrinks from the cold argumentative methods of science, lyrical poetry urges a peculiar demand for the lively impassioned, stirring diction. In the present state of hymnology, we cannot look for a strict adherence to the rules; still, the rules are admirable which are thus laid down in the Preface to the Church Psalmody (p. vi.): "Sentences and clauses should contain, as far as is practicable without occasioning a stiff and tedious uniformity, complete sense in themselves. A succession of clauses bound together by weak connectives, exhausts the performer, by allowing no opportunity for pausing; while, by multiplying unmeaning words, and keeping the mind too long on the same course, it also wearies the hearer. It contributes greatly to the' spirit and force of the hymn, as well as to the ease of the performer, to throw off rapidly, in a concise form, one thought after another, each complete in itself, and with each beginning a new rhetorical clause. The structure of each stanza should be such that the mind shall perceive the meaning immediately. All hypothetical clauses, placed at the beginning, or other clauses containing positions or arguments having reference to some conclusion which is to follow, are to be avoided. They contain no meaning in themselves, and bring nothing before the mind expressive or productive of feeling, till the performer reaches the important words at the close of perhaps the second or fourth line. The only method of wading through such lines, set to music, is for the performer to suspend all thought and feeling, and struggle hard and patiently, till he shall come to the light. The first word should, if possible, express something in itself, and every word should add to it. But, from a spirited clause at the beginning, the mind may derive an impulse which shall carry it through a heavy one that may follow. Clauses, however, which follow the main one, to qualify it, connected by a relative, are always heavy and injurious." In all our hymn books we can discover many violations of this rule. Prof. B. B. Edwards has cited the following violation, in a manual which is remarkably free from this species of fault.1 "The 15th Psalm, 2d part of the Church Psalmody, furnishes a specimen of the complex [structure of hymns]. In the second stanza begins a protasis, and the fifth stanza 1 Writings of Prof. B. B. Edwards, with a Memoir, pp. 143, 144. VOL. XVII. No. 65. 17 contains the apodosis. Thus the second stanza introduces the condition: The man who walks in pious ways, And works with righteous hands; The third and fourth stanzas continue in the same style, and the last two lines of the fifth introduce the consequence: His [whose] hands disdain a golden bribe, And never wrong the poor: : This man shall dwell with God on earth, One of the most radical emendations of a church song is that made by Logan on a hymn of Doddridge, and subsequently modified by an English hymnologist. The main superiority of the amended over the original hymn, is the quicker and more direct expression of its thought, the avoidance of the far-separated protasis and apodosis, and also of the apparently conditional homage. ORIGINAL FORM. O God of Jacob, by whose hand To thee our humble vows we raise, If thou, thro' each perplexing path, If thou wilt spread thy shield around, To Thee, as to our Cov'nant God, AMENDED FORM. O God of Bethel! by whose hand Our vows, our prayers, we now present God of our fathers! be the God Through each perplexing path of life Oh, spread thy covering wings around, Such blessings from thy gracious hand 1 Logan's modified emendation is found in the Sabbath Hymn Book, H. 216, and in nearly all the recent manuals. § 16. The Adaptation of a Hymn to the State of Mind in Worlds are charging-heaven beholding; This lyric, found in one of our church hymn books, is an excellent illustration of certain principles, easily misunderstood. A song may be vivid, vigorous, highly poetical, and still not church-like in its tone. The statements already made in the 12th, 14th, and 15th sections, may be misapprehended as favoring that kind of giddiness which we often find in an Independence ode, but which we never ought to find in a sanctuary hymn. As men of exclusively literary tastes are prone to sigh for the standard old text, so men of exclusively poetical aspirations are prompted to cry for verses that are soul-stirring, that "sound like a trumpet." The flowers of rhetoric cannot grow too luxuriantly and rankly |