Beautiful Old Hymns

“When that whole week beat you up and stress you,

But you hear that organ playing, it remind you of your blessings.

And on another note, she just hit another note –

Chills down my spine, got me crying, make me over, Lord.

You don’t know about it, though, old-school church hymns.”

KB, ‘Church Clap’, Weight and Glory (2012)

 

Remember these snazzy wooden boards they used to slot the hymn numbers into? Good times.

But we all know the old hymns are the really good ones, right?

I mean, when you’re in the main meeting at Soul Survivor¹ and the band has been busy working its way through the very hippest bits of worship music that the twenty-first century has produced, and you reach that awkward moment where the big screens are emptied of written lyrics and someone on the stage suggests that all present should sing their own song to the Lord (and, if you’re anything like me, you produce no more sound than perhaps a bit of indistinct humming and yearn for the chaos to end), the song that ends up taking over the whole tent is never one of the trendy modern collection whose being featured in services is so often touted as a necessity for persuading anyone under the age of fifty to commit to membership of a local church; it’s ‘Amazing Grace’. It’s always ‘Amazing Grace’. ‘Amazing Grace’, might I remind you, was published in 1779.

The thing is, if a song has managed to endure like that, still being considered worthy of inclusion in hymnals and services decades and centuries after it was initially written, that implies that it probably possesses at least one of the following qualities.

First, sound doctrine. In order for a hymn chock full of heresy to have gained much popularity in the first place, it would most likely have to have been consistent with a particular theological fashion or fad that was a big deal in the society that birthed it – but fashions and fads, by their very nature, don’t stick around for very long, and so the hymns attached to them likewise plunge into obscurity. Think, for instance, of the religious patriotism of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which I think it’s fair to say strikes us as rather embarassing these days – and then try to think of any modern worship song that says anything even vaguely patriotic. That fad has died, and though the odd favourite will always slip through the net (my school song was ‘Jerusalem’²), most of its hymns have died with it. Theological fashions change, but the gospel endures, and so a hymn that’s faithful to the gospel is more likely to endure for a decent chunk of time as well.

And second, artistic excellence. If the reason people continue to be fond of a song isn’t because it stirs their regenerate hearts to contemplate and grasp the glory of God more fully, then it might be because it’s just good poetry set to a cracking tune. People don’t remember boring songs, and if they can’t remember it, they’re not going to keep including it in the hymn books. What they will keep including is those uplifting favourites that everybody knows and loves. (Like ‘Jerusalem’. Which unfortunately does infinitely better in this category than the previous one.)

In other words, it’s not that all the hymns people wrote in Ye Olden Days were brilliant, and God has allowed the Church’s skill in songwriting simply to trail off miserably into only fractional brilliance in more recent years; rather, it’s that the passage of time tends to confine faddish or dull hymns to the scrapheap, leaving behind only those that actually have enough lyrical or musical merit to remain appealing to subsequent generations. It isn’t that old hymns are automatically good, but that good hymns tend to be enduring. It’ll be interesting to see which of the favourites of our current era stand the test of time.

One of the many notebook-filling projects that I keep is a collection of what I call ‘beautiful old hymns, and some beautiful new hymns that sound like old ones’.³ It would seem fitting to finish this post with a few highlights from it. If you know the hymns from which the below selections were taken, then consider this a reminder of how excellent they are; and if you don’t, consider it a recommendation of them on my part.⁴

From the seventeenth century:

In life, no house, no home

My Lord on Earth might have,

In death, no friendly tomb,

But what a stranger gave.

What may I say?

Heav’n was his home,

But mine the tomb

Wherein he lay.

- ‘My song is love unknown’, Samuel Crossman, 1664

Praise to the Lord, who doth nourish thy life and restore thee,

Fitting thee well for the tasks that are ever before thee.

Then to thy need

He like a mother doth speed,

Spreading the wings of grace o’er thee.

- ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty’, Joachim Neander, 1680

My knowledge of that life is small;

The eye of faith is dim,

But ’tis enough that Christ knows all,

And I shall be with him.

- ‘Lord, it belongs not to my care’, Richard Baxter, 1681

From the eighteenth:

Whence to me this waste of love?

Ask my Advocate above!

See the cause in Jesus’ face,

Now before the throne of grace.

- ‘Depth of mercy’, Charles Wesley, 1740

Not the labours of my hands

Can fulfil thy law’s demands.

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone:

Thou must save and thou alone.

- ‘Rock of ages, cleft for me’, Augustus Montague Toplady, 1776

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose

I will not, I will not desert to its foes.

That soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake,

I’ll never, no, never, no, never forsake.

- ‘How firm a foundation’, Robert Keen, 1787

From the nineteenth:

Crown him the Son of God

Before the worlds began,

And, ye who tread where he hath trod,

Crown him the Son of Man,

Who every grief hath known

That wrings the human breast,

And takes and bears them for his own,

That all in him may rest.

- ‘Crown him with many crowns’, Matthew Bridges and Godfrey Thring, 1851

Brothers, this Lord Jesus shall return again

With his Father’s glory, with his angel train,

For all wreaths of empire meet upon his brow,

And our hearts confess him king of glory now.

- ‘At the name of Jesus’, Caroline M. Noel, 1870

O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,

To every believer the promise of God;

The vilest offender who truly believes,

That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

- ‘To God be the glory’, Fanny J. Crosby, 1875

From the twentieth:

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,

Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow:

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

- ‘Great is thy faithfulness’, Thomas O. Chisholm, 1923

I cannot tell why he whom angels worship

Should set his love upon the sons of men,

Or why, as shepherd, he should seek the wanderers

To bring them back; they know not how or when.

- ‘I cannot tell’, William Young Fullerton, 1929

Priestly King, enthroned forever

High in heav’n above,

Sin and death and hell shall never

Stifle hymns of love.

- ‘Christ triumphant’, Michael Saward, 1964

And so they never shall. Keep singing old hymns – not because their antiquity automatically makes them worth singing, but because, i.e. if, you find in them the same gospel-focussed lyrical brilliance that earned them the enduring place they occupy in the hymnals. (And because everyone loves a cracking tune.)

Footnotes

¹ It’s a massive Christian youth festival thing: https://soulsurvivor.com/. If you haven’t been, I bet you know someone who has. Ask around.

² Which is also, of course, a key feature of the Last Night of the Proms – and prom season is almost upon us and I am determined to make it to at least one of them this year: https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms.

³ I have many such projects. If for some bizarre reason you’re anxious to know further details, then by all means check out my post ‘Thing to Do with an Empty Notebook’ under ‘2016’ then ‘April’ in the box on the right.

⁴ Hymnary is an excellent website for looking up the details of beautiful old hymns: http://hymnary.org/.