Religion: Singing In Church

Christian congregations have not always been allowed to lift up their hearts in songs of praise. St. Ambrose, 4th Century Bishop of Milan and teacher of St. Augustine, seems to have started congregational hymn singing in the Western church. Some of the church, fathers opposed his innovation on the grounds that it permitted women to raise their voices,* but the practice persisted. Martin Luther was strong for congregational hymns, but it was not until the 18th Century that English congregations generally took up hymn singing. What happened after that is the subject of a new book published last week: Hymns in Christian Worship (Macmillan; $3.50).

A Dreadful Hell. The author, scholarly Anglican Rector Herbert A. L. Jefferson, 60, ascribes England’s lag in hymnody to the influence of Calvin, who limited congregational singing to hymns provided in the Scriptures, i.e., the Psalms. Metrical versions of the Psalms were prepared and set to popular airs. Queen Elizabeth referred to them slightingly as “Geneva Jigs,” but she approved them for public worship. The results were sometimes inspiring, sometimes not. Example, from Psalm 58:

The teeth, 0 Lord, which fast are set

in their mouth round about:

The lions’ teeth that are so great,

do thou, 0 Lord, break out.

Pioneer in the composition of English congregational hymns was Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Author of Our* God, our help in ages past, often voted the greatest English hymn of all, Watts was also a writer of hymns for children, authored the well-known query, “How doth the little busy bee . . .” and the warning that “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” But his touch for juvenile hymns is not always suited to modern taste. For example:

There is a dreadful hell,

And everlasting pains:

There sinners must with devils dwell

In darkness, fire and chains.

Can such a wretch as I

Escape this cursed end?

And may I hope, whene’er I die,

I shall to heaven ascend?

An Eye to God. Author Jefferson complains that many British and U.S. writers of hymns for children “have had what one can only term ‘the lamb obsession.’ ‘Lambs’ appear over and over again, while ‘little lambkin’ is not unknown … It is extremely doubtful whether any child finds the term agreeable … It was long before hymns, deliberately written for the young, could be cleared of the constant, and quite untrue suggestion, that the child’s constant concern was with the thought of heaven and the life hereafter.”

Perhaps the most prolific hymn writer of all was Methodism’s Charles Wesley, who turned out the words of some 7,000. Hymns were an important means of spreading the Methodist doctrine of salvation for all, as opposed to the dour Puritan teaching of predestination. Wesley’s most successful effort: Jesu, lover of my soul, of which Henry Ward Beecher said: “I would rather have written that hymn than to have the fame of all the kings that ever sat upon the earth.” Brother John Wesley, a busy hymn writer himself, issued some precepts to choirs which, thinks Jefferson, might well be applied to modern congregations:

“Learn the tunes. Sing them as printed . . . Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you are half dead, or half asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor ashamed of its being heard, than when you sing the songs of Satan. Sing modestly. Do not bawl . . . Strive to unite your voices together so as to make one clear melodious sound. Sing in time. Do not run before or stay behind . . .

“Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in. every word you sing … In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually.”

British Methodists last week issued a new hymnal written especially for town & city children. Excerpt:

Come, let us remember the joys of the

town; Gay vans and bright buses that roar up

and down, Shop windows and playgrounds and

swings in the park, And street lamps that twinkle in rows

after dark . . .

And let us remember the chorus that swells

From hooters and hammers and whistles and bells;

From fierce-panting engines and clear-striking clocks,

And sirens of vessels afloat in the docks.

We thank thee, O God, for the numberless things,

And friends and adventures which every day brings;

0, may we not rest until all that we see

In towns and in cities is pleasing to Thee.

Some of the hymns contain lines to be sung only by the boys in the congregation, because, say the compilers: “Often the boys are content to let the girls do all the work.”

*”Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak.”—I Corinthians 14:34. *Not O God, etc. The gratuitous change was made by Methodism’s Founder John Wesley in his Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1737).