DR. WATTS ' S HYMNS.
ETo as EDITOR OF TIE " EINCCTATOIL") Si a,—Islay I, in view of the correspondence upon Dr. Watts's noble hymn, "O God, our help in ages past," say that the use of the Church, and of Christian congregations generally, has sanctioned, not, I think, wrongly, some departure from the original language of most of the best-known hymns P The student of hymnology is apt to begin his work by assuming that every hymn ought to be sung exactly as it was written; but lie comes to realize the difficulty of treating all hymns in so conservative a spirit. I do not refer to alterations made, it would seem, upon doctrinal grounds, such as the omission of all reference to " the Cross of Jesus " in " Onward, Christian soldiers," or the addition of a verse to "Lead, kindly light." But hymns so popular as Charles Wesley's " Hark, the herald angels sing," Toplady's " Rock of ages," and Dean Milman's "]tide on, ride on in majesty," were all in their original form a little spoilt owing to particular phrases which have since been modified by common consent.
The treatment of Dr. Watts's hymns is peculiarly interest- ing. In publishing his hymns, he enclosed certain stanzas of them within brackets, or, as ho called them, crotchets, by way of indicating what seemed to him the best way of shortening the hymns, if need were, in public worship. But the Church as a whole has not always endorsed hie judgment upon his own hymns. Thus, if I may take the three most familiar of his hymns, it appears that in "Jesus shall reign Where'er the sun " he bracketed four of, its eight stanzas. But one of the stanzas which he bracketed, the eighth, is almost everywhere sung as the natural climax of the hymn, viz. :—
" Let every creature rise, and bring
Peculiar honours to our King;
Angels descend with songs again,
And earth repeat the loud Amen"— although be wrote, I think, not "the loud" but "the long Amen." His hymn, "When I survey the wondrous Cross," originally contained five stanzas." But of these the fourth, although not bracketed by him, is generally omitted, as being, I suppose, a little too artificial in its imagery:— " ffis dying crimson, like a robe, Spreads o'er His body on tho tree, Then am I dead to all the globe, And all the globe is dead to me."
The hymn " 0 God "—or, as Dr. Watts wrote it, " Our God " —" our help in ages past," is probably the best-known hymn in the English language, as it is perhaps the finest, except Bishop Heber's hymn for Trinity Sunday. Yet he bracketed three of its stanzas, one being the stanza beginning "Time, like an ever-rolling stream," to which your correspondents have especially referred. Of the other two bracketed stanzas, one is seldom sung, viz.:— " The busy tribes of flesh and blood, With all their lives and cares, Are carried downwards by thy flood And lost in following years";
and there is one more which has fallen into such oblivion that it may be said to be practically dead, viz. :—
" Like flow'ry fields the nations stand, Pleas'd with the morning light; The flowers beneath the mower's hand Lio withering ere 'tie night."
But the strange fact is that the silent verdict of the Church has discarded one stanza which Dr. Watts himself regarded as an essential part of that hymn; for I suppose few worshippers in any church of any Christian denomination now hear the stanza:—
"Thy word commands our flesh to.dust, Return, ye sons of men I All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again."
It seems, then, to be the general law that the author of a hymn Submits his composition to the taste and judgment of
the Christian world, and the Christian world claims the right of abbreviating or altering Sir, Sze.,
Previous page
