HYMNS OF THE GREEK CHURCH.
Hymns of the Greek Church. Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by the Rev. John Brownlie. (Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier. 2s.)—The increasing interest in the Eastern Church, partly due to the study of the Eastern Empire, partly to the increasing sway and importance of the Slavonic people, who have taken the place of the ancient Byzantines, ought to gain many readers for the only translation of the hymns of that Church since the collection of John Mason Neale. The trans- lator thinks that the ignorance which prevails in England as to Greek in comparison with Latin hymnology is due largely to the decadent Greek used by the former. But the Latin hymnology was also produced when the Latin language was in a state of decline. The cause seems to us to be the age-long sovereignty of the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe, and the fact that we have, as a matter of fact, derived from it, and not in any appreciable sense from the Eastern Church. But now we have arrived at a period when theology is taking up the dropped threads of Eastern Christian thought. The imperialistic idea of God, which the Roman Church has moulded into a cult, is manifestly giving way to the idea of the divine immanence, which in the Eastern writers was tinged with Greek and Neo-Greek philosophy. It is therefore time we paid more heed to Eastern Christianity, especially as it is far more likely to make its way in the far Orient than the forms of the Western Church. These ancient Greek hymns were produced during some six centuries of our era. The majority are by John of Damascus, but there are others by Athenogenes, Methodius, Gregory, Synesius, and Leo VI., the Byzantine Emperor. There is a certain tone and feeling common to all these hymns, and that tone is well stated by the translator to be objective. Most of the Latin hymns which are in use in the Western Church, or have found their way in a mutilated or modified form into our own hymn-books, are introspective, and in many cases sorrowful, in some morbid, as Matthew Arnold pointed out in his too sweeping diatribe against hymns. But the Greek hymns are mostly bright, objective, triumphant ; the passion and crucifixion are but the prelude to resurrection and glory. Indeed, here we think we see an analogy to Eastern Christian art, so brilliant, so glowing, so firm, such an opening to a new world to those who have seen nothing but the Christian art of the West. One must not view these hymns as literature, or expect to find any reproduction of the old classic Greek forms. But as devout, if at times ebullient, expressions of religious faith and feeling, they are deeply inter- esting and even beautiful.
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