Religion: Hymns for 8,000,000

Seven years ago the Methodist Church appointed a commission to revise its Hymnal, which had been in use since 1905. The commission expanded to 36 members -bishops, ministers, laymen-when the Methodist Church, South accepted an invitation to join and the Methodist Protestant Church begged to be allowed to collaborate too. In their labors the united commission, according to Secretary John William Langdale. “achieved a unity of mind and spirit which may be prophetic of the unification of the three communions” (TIME, Aug. 26). The new Hymnal, now to be official for 8,000,000 Methodists, was published last week. It contains 210 new hymns, 206 new tunes. The numbers of hymns by Methodism’s greatest hymnists, Charles and John Wesley, have been reduced respectively from 121 to 54 and from 50 to 17. But in those hymns retained are to be found Methodism’s “whole evangelical experience, from the meltings of a penitent to the rapture of consecration.” Once the commission was reported ready to delete numerous “distasteful”‘ hymns. It did omit Isaac Watts’s

To the blest fountain of thy blood, Incarnate God, I fly: Here let me wash my spotted soul, From crimes of deepest dye.

But because it “means too much to too many people,” the following by William Cowper was included: There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; And sinners,plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.

Guided in general by sectarian and sectional feeling, the commission put in the favorite hymn of the Methodist Protestants : Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord: Abide in him always, and feed on His Word; Make friends of God’s children, help those that arc weak, Forgetting in nothing his blessing to seek.

The favorite hymn of the Southern Methodists: Spirit of faith, come down, reveal the things of God; And make to us the Godhead known, and witness with the blood. ‘Tis thine the blood to apply, and give us eyes to see, Who did for every sinner die, hath surely died for me. The favorite Negro Methodist hymn: Joy is a fruit that will not grow In nature’s barren soil; All we can boast, till Christ we know, Is vanity and toil.

Far from being strictly evangelical, the Methodist hymnal contains a hymn by a Roman Catholic nun named Sister Mary Xavier and a hymn beginning Bless the four corners of this house by Arthur Guiterman, skittish versifier for magazines. It also contains some authentic poetry. Thus, Sidney Lanier:Into the woods my Blaster went, clean forspent, forspent; Into the woods my Master went, forspent withlove and shame. But the olives they were not blind to him, The little grey leaves were kind to him, The thorn-tree had a mind to him, When into the woods he came.

Hymn No. 467 was written by that great U. S. statesman, John Hay. It begins: Not in dumb resignation we lift our hands on high; Not like the nerveless fatalist content to trust and die: Our faith springs like the eagle, which soars to meet the sun, And cries exulting unto thee, “O Lord, thy will be done!”

And Hymn No. 279 was written by the most famed U. S. pulpit orator of this generation, Harry Emerson Fosdick: God of grace and God of glory, on thy people pour thy power; Crown thine ancient Church’s story, bring her bud to glorious flower. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage. For the facing of this hour, for the facing of this hour. Thanks to Dean Robert Guy Mc-Cutchan of DePauw University, Methodists are given some tunes new to the hymnal. Against strong opposition, the commission voted to include Auld Lang Syne and the famed Irish Londonderry Air for hymns beginning It singeth low in every heart and Above the hills of time the Cross is gleaming. The broad, soaring principal theme of Jan Sibelius’ tone poem Finlandia has been reharmonized, paired with a 16th Century lyric.