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delight," and "Dread sovereign, let my evening song;" Cowper's "Oh! for a closer walk with God," "God of my life, to thee I call," "God moves in a mysterious way;" Montgomery's "Prayer is the soul's sincere desire," and "Hark, the song of jubilee;" Newton's "When any turn from Zion's way;" Toplady's "Rock of Ages rent for me;" Heber's "From Greenland's icy mountains." These form a compact and glorious band.* But any one who diligently searches our English hymns, will find how difficult it is to beat up recruits, while in our poverty we have had recourse to foreigners, and it may surprise some of our readers to learn that some of our best known hymns are translated from the German. We mention only "Lo God is here, let us adore," "Commit thou all thy ways," "Now I have found the blessed ground," "My soul before thee prostrate lies," "Thou hidden love of God, whose height:" and there are many more.

Our collectors, however, are not particular. If we open a popular hymnbook, we find a hymn starting in such ferocious stanzas as these:

"Into a world of ruffians sent,

I walk on hostile ground,

While human bears, on slaughter bent,
And ravening wolves, surround." +
Or the beauty of the dead is sung to this
rollicking measure :—

"Ah, lovely appearance of death!

What sight upon earth is so fair?
Not all the gay pageants that breathe,

Can with a dead body compare!" &c. We shall meet an invocation to a "Tremendous God," while such lines as follow are appointed to be sung in churches :

"My Zerubbabel is near,

I have not believed in vain."

[1857

"Having a desire to depart and be with Christ," breaks out in Josiah Conder after this fashion :—

"O the hour when this material

"wide

Shall have vanish'd like a cloud; When, amid the wide ethereal, All the invisible shall crowd." What "this material," and " ethereal," and the crowding with the invisible may mean, it is not worth while to puzzle over.

Unfortunately, the greater part of our hymns were written during the latter half of the last century, when the fire of poetry was burning dimmest, flickering like life in death. Their writers assumed the conventional language of a hollow conventional time. The "raptures," and "ecstasies," and "balmy sighs," of which, in a degenerate age, lovers sung to their mistresses, were, in the same age, transferred by the sacred poets to their purer lyre. Every line is bristling with tropes and figures; every substantive comes. wearily in, dragging a useless adjective behind it. We have eyes bedewed with pity's tear, musing sorrow weeping the past, smiling patience smoothing the good man's brow. Marble domes, and gilded spires, and curling clouds of incense, are packed within the compass of to address their souls as "deathless printwo lines. Congregations are supposed ciples." Sleep is "a serene oblivion," a bed is "a couch of rest," a shower is "the diffusive rain." In the first of our paraphrases the clouds ascend with a "watery treasure;" the waters over which the Spirit of God brooded are a "liquid element." Meaningless platitudes which have long since descended to the newspaper reporters are here embalmed, and, worse still, taken as models for all time

Dr. Watts states the resurrection of to come. For, if we examine our modern the just in one emphatic line :

"Up to the Lord our flesh shall fly;" and the profound longing of Paul, expressed in those most touching words,

• We speak of hymns which express the feelings and yearnings of the Christian congregation, not those which express only the meditation,

however excellent, of an individual here or there. + Methodist Hymn-book.

+ "Tremendous God, with humble fear, Prostrate before thy awful throne." 190

hymn (we except, of course, Keble's very beautiful "Christian Year"), we find it in the same conventional form, stereotyping the same faults, and as much more unthought in our day is more earnest and real and unimpressive as the tone of searching than it was in the days of

"From marble domes and gilded spires Shall curling clouds of incense rise? +"Deathless principle, arise."-Toplady.

George III. and our great-grandfathers. | class of objection is so futile and so It is one thing to sit industriously buzz- self-contradictory, that we can only acing God's praises,* and another to link count for its holding ground by the the heart-thoughts of a Christian people weight which it derives from the practito enduring verse. cal. The ancient divine Psalms, it is said, touching all hearts, expressing all men's desires, are infinitely better than bad hymns. So far as this would exclude all bad hymns from being sung in the Christian worship, so far as it would preserve the Psalms as a vehicle, but not the exclusive vehicle, of our devotions, we heartily assent. But the dilemma supposed does not exist. Happily, though the prevailing character of our hymns is not such as to make us wish to substitute them for the good old Psalms, there is a sufficient number of them excellent to make it desirable we should be at liberty to use them. Every minister who is careful to choose appropriate Psalms has felt, over and over again, sorely puzzled by the narrow limits in which he moves.* By tacit consent, nearly one-third of the book is passed over. By far the greater part of the other two-thirds does not express the distinctive doctrines, the distinctive feel

How far the character of our hymns has served to perpetuate and strengthen our prejudices against them it is hard to determine. The prejudice fettered the poet, and the bad poetry fed the prejudice. At all events, the hymns were poor enough to afford a plausible plea for standing fast by Rous. But more than plausible it is not. All the objections that are urged against the use of hymns in public worship might be reduced to the theological and the practical. The former are against the principle. Our Church has answered them by recognising the principle, and selecting certain paraphrases and hymns "to be sung in churches:" we are apt to forget that, appended to our Bibles, we carry an authorised hymn-book. We have heard indeed of a minister in the north who took the extreme measure of stitching the paraphrases carefully together, and then to the cover of the book; and, when we consider the poetically and spiritually meagre character of the selec-ings, of the Gospel. Much of the retion, in which such admirable lyrics as the 30th shine out like rare stars in the dark, we confess to a secret sympathy with him. But, notwithstanding, we presume the deliverance of the Assembly is authoritative, and not to be got rid of by any process of stitching.

mainder can become the devotional organ of a Christian congregation only by a complex process in the mind of the singer, realising it as typical, and then following the line of the type to the antitype, and this, too, when we live in the full glory of that revelation which the Psalms Hymns, it is said, are not inspired. dimly foreshadow. The result is, that Neither are prayers. Yet the one belong the minister makes a few passages his as much to the devotional part of the wor- favourites; that our congregations scarce ship as the other. And if stress be laid on ever sing the love of Jesus Christ, the the exclusive use of inspiration, we may precious blessings of His great salvaremark, in passing, that as little as pos- tion; and that the feelings of thousands sible of the inspired Word of God is read of hearts, and what ought to be the deepin our ordinary service. It is said, again, est feelings of all, find no outlet in this that we have a whole book of inspired part of the service. There is another Psalms expressly given us to sing from; objection-that the Psalms are engrained but it is strangely overlooked that that in the memories of the people, and halperfect prayer of prayers, which was ex-lowed by old associations. This assumes, pressly given us to pray from, is scarce ever heard in our churches. This whole

"There will I sit like that industrious flie, Buzzing Thy praises, which shall never die Till death abrupts them."

Sir Thomas Browne.

We have said a minister who is careful to

select the Psalms with some appropriateness,

for, in general, they seem to be taken at hap. hazard; and we have known places where they are sung steadily on till they are finished (no mat. ter what may be the occasion), and then strictly recommenced.

in defiance of all fact to the contrary, that hymns will not seize fast hold on the memory. To take only one instance, there is that anonymous old hymn, familiar to every Scotchman, "O mother dear, Jerusalem!" which has made itself felt in the crisis-hour of many a soul, and about which so many touching and beautiful anecdotes have been told, that they might win favour to its brethren were it only for its sake. If a hymn, learned from a mother's lips, at a mother's knee, has been so blessed, who can fix the limit of its wider sphere had it come laden with memories of the Church and the holy worship of God?

We have not referred to our principle of versifying the Psalms, of which a high authority has recently said, though with more pungency than truth, that "translations of Psalms in rhyme can never be anything but a good thing spoiled." We may have something to say about this and some kindred topics again.

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*

Be thou content.

Sayst thou, I know not how or where,
No help I see where'er I turn;
When of all else we most despair,

The riches of God's love we learn;
When thou and I His hand no longer trace,

Be thou content.

Though long His promised aid delay,

At last it will be surely sent; Though thy heart sink in sore dismay, The trial for thy good is meant.

What

we have won with pains we hold more

fast,

What tarrieth long is sweeter at the last.

Be thou content.

Lay not to heart whate'er of ill

Thy foes may falsely speak of thee;
Let man defame thee as he will,

God hears and judges righteously.

In our next number we shall return to
the treasures, which, in the Lyra Ger-
manica, Miss Winkworth has brought
within the reach of English readers.
They are worthy of close and loving He leads us forth into a pleasant place.
study, not merely from their intrinsic
merit, but as well from the vast sway the
hymns of Germany have exercised over
the people; from the service they have
rendered to vital religion, by keeping
alive the faith and spirit of the elder
Church in days of low ungodliness, and
later still, of low scepticism; from the
interest of the times-the touching cir-
cumstances, national as well as indivi-
duals, in which some of the most popu-
lar had their origin; and from the healthy
and needful influence they are likely to
have on our hymnology. Meanwhile,
we feel we shall be affording a true and
lasting pleasure to our readers by ex-
tracting one of the hymns for their
reading and meditation, and that they
will join with us in the pious hope of the
translator, that "these utterances of
Christian piety, which have comforted
and strengthened the hearts of many true
Christians in their native country, may
speak to the hearts of some among us, to
• Bunsen, in his Hippolytus.

Why shouldst thou fear, if God be on thy side,
Man's cruel anger, or malicious pride?

Be thou content.

We know for us a rest remains,

When God will give us sweet release
From earth and all our mortal chains,

And turn our sufferings into peace.
Sooner or later death will surely come
To end our sorrows, and to take us home.

Be thou content.

Home to the chosen ones, who here

Served their Lord faithfully and well,
Who died in peace, without a fear,

And there in peace for ever dwell.
The Eternal Word himself to them doth say,
The Everlasting is their joy and stay,

Be thou content!

PAUL GERHARDT, 1670.

Sermon.

By J. M. M'CULLOCH, D.D., Minister of the West Church, Greenock.
"Buy the truth, and sell it not."-PROVERBS XXiii. 23.

LIKE other proverbial forms of speech,
these words are elliptical. They mean
more than they say. And, to apprehend
their full import, we must paraphrase
them, and construe them as if they had
run-"Buy the truth" at whatever cost,
"and sell it not" at any price.

And what is "the truth" we are here commanded to buy? It is manifestly the truth in matters of religion, or, as an apostle would express it, "the truth as it is in Jesus." Not that we are prohibited from buying other kinds of truth. Far from it. By divine charter we are free of the whole realm of truth. The Bible, so far from shutting us up within the walls of the temple, and debarring us from general knowledge and free inquiry, encourages us to go forth over the universe, to survey and investigate all the works and ways of God. It enjoins us to "prove all things." It is the friend of truth of every sort, and on every subject, and the foe of nothing but falsehood and sin. Still, as was to be expected in a book which claims to be a divine revelation, its main concern is with religious truth. And accordingly, it is to this highest department of truth that the wise king primarily and especially refers, when he says to his readers, "Buy the truth, and sell it not."

At present I take for my text only the words, "Buy the truth." And from these words I deduce three lessons regarding religious or divine truth, which I would earnestly commend to your serious consideration.

I. Divine truth is worth possessing. This is plainly implied in the text. For we could not be fitly commanded to buy the truth at whatever cost, if it were not a thing above all price-a possession of surpassing worth.

Even when viewed merely as an accession to our intellectual stores, divine

7.-IX.

truth is a desirable possession. A true idea on any subject is a thing which all earnest thinkers highly prize; and he is ever accounted a privileged person who is deeply versed in the truths of science or the facts of history. But what are just ideas about science or history compared with just ideas about religion, about God and Christ, about sin and salvation, about judgment and eternity? To be thoroughly conversant with these is obviously to have at our command a circle of ideas the noblest, the sublimest, the most momentous that can enter or occupy the human mind.

But the intellect is not the only faculty which divine truth is fitted to benefit. It has benefits for all our faculties. It has benefits for the conscience, for the will, for the affections, for our whole spiritual nature. Is there any such sure arouser of a slumbering conscience as the truth in reference to the future eternal retribution? Is there any such sure pacifier of a guilt-stricken conscience as the truth in reference to the sufficiency of Christ's atonement? What is there that can break the human will of its proclivity to evil, and bend it Godward, if not a sure knowledge of the redeeming love and fatherly character of God? What is there that can charm away the human affections from "things on the earth” to “those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God," if not a sure knowledge of the beauty of holiness and the blessedness of heaven. In short, there is no part of our nature which divine truth is not adapted to purify and elevate. There is nothing dark in us which it cannot illumine; nothing low which it cannot exalt; nothing weak which it cannot strengthen; nothing wrong which it cannot rectify. It has light for the dark soul, and life for the dead soul, and salvation for the lost soul.

G

It is the grand emancipator which un-ing the truth within our reach. He has looses the soul from its bonds, and makes further provided and promised the teachit free-free indeed"-free from guilt, ing of His Holy Spirit. In the case of a free from sin, free from sorrow, free from human author, we have usually to be the fear of death, free to love and do content with only such knowledge of his God's will, free of the city and kingdom sentiments as his book supplies. The of God. All this, and far more than all author goes not with the book, and is this, can divine truth achieve. And not present with the reader. I might surely, if the one thing needful for a man wish, while perusing some abstruse or be a clear and calm and holy soul-a profound treatise, to have the writer by soul at peace with God and with itself— my side as its interpreter. I might wish a soul attuned to goodness, and strong to have him near me, that I might ask for duty, and buoyant with hope-then of him to elucidate his doctrines or solve all things worth buying and possessing, my difficulties. But the wish were vain. the best and most precious must be that The writer is far distant from me, or truth which effects such divine enfran- perhaps he has gone to his grave, whence chisement and ennoblement of soul. he cannot come back to help me. But

us.

II. Divine truth may be possessed by quite otherwise is it with the Divine

In commanding us to buy it, the text obviously assumes that it may be bought and possessed. Nor can there be a doubt that, with respect at least to us and our fellow-countrymen, the assumption is

just.

Author of the Bible. He is everywhere present. He is by the side of every reader of His holy Book. Ay, and instead of being reluctant to aid the efforts of the struggling soul, He takes pleasure in opening men's eyes to understand the Scriptures, and in stablishing their There are, indeed, lands which have no hearts in the truth. His promise is, that market where divine truth can be pur- He will be with His people alway, even chased. Among the heathen there is unto the end of the world. And never little on sale pertaining to religion, ex- does that precious promise fail-never cept error and delusion; and it is much does the prayer go up to His throne, the same in Mohammedan countries, and "Open thou mine eyes, that I may see even in those nominally Christian lands wondrous things out of thy law," withwhere the priesthood prohibit the read-out being followed by a divine manifesing of the Scriptures. But, happily, in tation of the truth to the mind and heart this favoured land of ours, truth is in the of the earnest applicant. market, and that market open to all

comers.

Here there is free access to a Book which contains the whole counsel of God-a Book indited by the Spirit of God for the express purpose of revealing "the truth"-and a Book withal so complete in its subject-matter that nothing requires to be added to it, and so perspicuous in its style that nothing but prejudice or indolence can prevent it from being understood. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."

However, then, it may be with those who are without the Scriptures, and have not heard whether there be any Holy Ghost, there can be no doubt that, by every one of us, divine truth may be bought and acquired. And it deserves special remark that, when actually bought and acquired, divine truth becomes a man's own in the fullest and strictest sense of the phrase. We call a man's wealth his own; but in how limited a sense is it his! Though his, to be held and used in trust so long as he has it, yet his it is not, and cannot be, in the sense of enriching him permanently. We call a man's estate his own; but how loose is his hold of it! To-morrow he may have to sell it to meet an unexpect liability; and, sooner or later, he

Nor is the written Word the only means which God has provided for bring-ed

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