The Great Hymns
It is a remarkable fact that the finest hymns in the EngHsh language were not composed by celebrated poets; but, with the exception of those by Cowper and Montgomery, they are the productions of ministers of the Gospel and of godly women. The list of the ministers is headed by Watts, Charles Wesley, Toplady, Doddridge, Newton, Keble, Newman, Lyte, Bonar, and Ray Palmer. The list of female hymn-writers is headed by Charlotte Elliott, Mrs. Sarah F. Adams, Miss Havergall, and Mrs. Prentiss. To these may be added our blind songstress, Fanny Crosby, whose productions have not much poetic merit, and yet are sung by millions all round the globe.
A perfect hymn need not be artistically a perfect poem; much less is it a mere expres- 149 sion of devout spiritual experience; but it must be addressed directly to the Divine Being. The immortal hymns that never wear out are not pious self-colloquies, or sermons to our fellow-creatures; they all point upward. If my readers will run their eyes over the thirty or forty universal favorites that have stood the test of wide usage, and voice the heart sentiments of God’s people in all lands, they will find that they are either metrical prayer, or metrical praise, or both combined. Millions of pious verses have been written; but the standard songs of solid gold could all be contained in a small booklet, and they were composed by men or women whose genius was largely a genius for godliness.
By almost universal acclamation, the king of English hymns is ‘’Rock of Ages.” Augustus Toplady was the son of a British officer, and was converted by the simple, fervid sermon of an uneducated exhorter, delivered in a barn, in Codymain, Ireland. He became the vicar of Broad Hembury, in Devonshire, and his zealous career, which
1=^0 was like that “of a race-horse, all nerve and fire,” ended at the early age of thirty-eight. He was waging a hot doctrinal controversy with John Wesley (in which both combatants indulged in some astonishing personalities), and one day in March, 1776, he published in the Gospel Magazine four stanzas, entitled ‘’A living and dying Prayer for the holiest believer in the world.” These four hurriedly written verses are the immortal “Rock of Ages,” which Prince Albert repeated on his dying bed, which Gladstone translated into Latin, which are in every evangelical hymn-book, and of which it has been truly said that “no other English hymn has laid so broad and firm a grasp on the English speaking world.” A gentleman residing among the Mendip Hills has lately claimed that Toplady got his first idea of the imagery of the hymn while riding through a deep cleft of rocks in that neighborhood during a thunderstorm; but I can discover no good historical foundation for this singular claim. The core-idea of this sublime production is the fervid outcry of a broken, 151 penitent heart to the Saviour Christ. It begins in lowly prostration before the cross; it begs for cleansing in the atoning blood; it reaches on to the hour when the heart-strings break in death; it sweeps out into eternity and soars to the judgment-seat; it closes with the glorified believer in presence of the great white Throne. What a magnificent upward movement! I would rather be the author of this matchless prayer-song than of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”
It is a curious fact that the next most popular hymn in our language should have been composed by one of the two brothers with whom Toplady had his warm conflict. I rather rejoice in this fact, for it shows how all Christian controversialists must ground arms before the cross of Christ. Charles Wesley, the greatest of Methodist singers, and Chalmers, the greatest of Presbyterian preachers, hang side by side on my study wall in loving fellowship. If ever there was a born singer it was Charles Wesley; he ate, drank, slept and dreamed of little else but making hymns. Of all his over six thousand 152 hymns, the unquestioned masterpiece is “J^sus, lover of my soul.” It is the queen of all the lays of holy love, the passionate yearning of a redeemed soul for its Redeemer. Its figures of speech vary; in one line we see a storm-tossed voyager crying out for shelter from the tempest; in another line we see a child nestling in its mother’s arms; but the central thought never changes. O, how many of us in dark hours of trial have poured out our troubled hearts in these two beseeching lines,
Leave, ah, leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me!
Wesley composed this superb hymn in early life, within a few months of the date of the beginning of Alethodism. Many apocryphal stories have been circulated as to the origin of the hymn, such as that its author saw a bird pursued by a hawk, and that he saw a dove fly into his window, etc., etc. They only belittle the glorious thought which filled his soul when he threw himself, like the beloved disciple, on the bosom of Jesus.
Is there any American hymn that can be named after these two crown- jewels of British hymnology? Yes, there is one, and the only one that I can now think of. In the year 1830, a young teacher in a school in New York City, who had been a dry goods clerk in Boston, and had just graduated from Yale College (at the age of twenty-two), sat down one afternoon and wrote four verses, which he said were “born of my own soul.” His eyes swam with tears while he wrote. Two years afterwards the young Mr. Ray Palmer was met by Lowell Mason in Boston, and asked to furnish a hymn for a new music-book soon to be issued. Palmer drew out from his pocket the four verses beginning with the words, “My faith looks up to Thee.” He handed them to Mason and — thus secured his own immortality!
This beautiful hymn of the cross — inspired by the love of Jesus in his own heart — was addressed, not to his fellow-creatures, but directly to the Son of God; and, like Toplady’s great hymn, it rises from before 154 the cross of Calvary up through consecration and consolation under trials to the glories of the ‘’ransomed’”! During his longministry, my beloved friend Palmer wrote several graceful and devout hymns; but he had struck twelve at the start. A few years before his death he officiated at a communion service in my Lafayette Avenue church in Brooklyn. While the cup was being passed to the communicants the dear old man broke out, and with tremulous voice sang his own heavenly lines.
My faith looks up to Thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Saviour divine!
It was like listening to a rehearsal for the celestial choir, and the whole assembly were most deeply moved.
Next to these three absolutely perfect productions, if I were called upon to name a fourth, I would indicate Charlotte Elliott’s “Just as I am, without one plea.” When in frail health, she composed at her brother’s, the Rev. Henry V. Elliott’s house in Brighton, these exquisitely tender lines, and pub- 155 lished them in the Invalid’s Hymn Book. Although written by an invahd, they have, by God’s blessing, made many a sick soul well. This is the hymn pre-eminently for revival meetings, and to be sung after a discourse to awakened sinners. It is a penitent’s prayer in verse, and the person who can sing these words ‘’with the spirit and the understanding” is already on the way to Jesus.
In one brief article it is impossible to discuss all the hymns that lie closest to my own heart, and which are likewise universal favorites. Each one is adapted to a particular mood of mind. At the communion table we want to sing, ‘’When I survey the wondrous cross,” or, “There is a fountain filled with blood.” These were Spurgeon’s favorites, and contained the keynote of his preaching. In a prayer-meeting nothing can be better than Bonar’s “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” or Mrs. Prentiss’s “More love to Thee, O Christ!” or Perronet’s “All hail the power of Jesus’s name!” This last is a grand song on which to launch a meet- 156 ing. For hours of bewilderment we are inclined to try Newman’s wonderful lines, “Lead, kindly light!” The last two of those lines are unsurpassed for sweetness. At evening worship, what hymn can excel Keble’s “Sun of my soul. Thou Saviour dear!” No missionary gathering would be complete without Bishop Heber’s “From Greenland’s icy mountains.” Never can I forget the scene when a lovely member of my church in her dying moments repeated, with thrilling emotion, those infinitely tender lines of Henry Lyte, “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.” It was the last of earth, and sounded like the first strain of heaven. God be praised for all these magnificent hymns. They are the marching music to which all of Christ’s vast army keep step, through sunshine or storm, on their upward way to glory.