Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/611

595 BRITISH.] HYMNS 595 of his name. Among them arc &quot; Hark, my soul, it is the Lord,&quot; &quot;There .is a fountain filled with blood,&quot; &quot;Far from the world, O Lord, I flee/ &quot; God moves in a mysterious way,&quot; and &quot; Sometimes a light surprises.&quot; Some, perhaps, even of these, and others of equal excellence (such as &quot; O for a closer walk with God&quot;), speak the language of a special experience, which, in Cowper s case, was only too real, but which could not (without a degree of unreality not desirable in exercises of public worship) be applied to themselves by all ordinary Christians. During the first quarter of the present century there were not many indications of the tendency, which after wards became manifest, to enlarge the boundaries of British hymnody. A few, indeed, of Bishop Heber s hymns, and those of Sir Kobert Grant (which, though offending rather too much against John Newton s canon, are well known and popular), appeared between 1811 and 1816, in the Christian Observer. In John Bowdler s Remains, published soon after his death in 1815, there are a few more of the same, perhaps too scholarlike, character. But the chief hymn-writers of that period were two clergymen of the Established Church one in Ireland, Thomas Kelly, and the other in England, William Hum who both became Nonconformists, and the Moravian poet, James Montgomery, a native of Scotland. Kelly was the son of an Irish judge, and in 1804 pub lished a small volume of ninety-six hymns, which grew in successive editions till, in the last before his death in 1854, they amounted to 765. There is (as might be expected) in this great number a large preponderance of the didactic and commonplace. But not a few very excellent hymns may be gathered from them. Simple and natural, without the vivacity and terseness of Watts or the severity of Newton, Kelly has some points in common with both those writers, and he is less subjective than most of the &quot; Methodist &quot; school His hymns beginning &quot; Lo ! He comes, let all adore Him,&quot; and &quot; Through the clay Thy love hath spared us,&quot; have a rich melodious movement ; and another, &quot; We sing the praise of Him who died,&quot; is distinguished by a calm subdued power, rising gradually from a rather low to a very high key. Hum published in 1813 a volume of 370 hymns, which were increased after his secession to 420. There is little in them which deserves to be saved from oblivion ; but one at least, &quot; There is a river deep and broad,&quot; may bear com parison with the best of those which have been produced upon the same (and it is rather a favourite) theme. The Psalms and Hymns of James Montgomery were published in 1822 and 1825, though written earlier. More cultivated and artistic than Kelly, he is less simple and natural. The number of his valuable contributions to our hymnals is, upon the whole, considerable ; and, though it may be doubted whether he ever attains to the first rank, all must acknowledge that he stands high in the second. His &quot; Hail to the Lord s Anointed,&quot; &quot; Songs of praise the angels sang,&quot; and &quot; Mercy alone can meet my case &quot; are among his most successful efforts. During this first quarter of the present century, the collections of miscellaneous hymns for congregational use, of which the example was set by the Wesleys, Whitfield, Toplady, and Lady Huntingdon, had greatly multiplied ; and with them the practice (for which, indeed, too many precedents existed in the history of Latin and German hymnody) of every collector altering the compositions of other men without scruple, to suit his own doctrine or taste ; with the effect, too generally, of patching and dis figuring, spoiling, and emasculating the works so altered, substituting neutral tints for natural colouring, and a dead for a living sense. In the Church of England, the use of these collections had become frequent in churches and chapels (principally in cities and towns) where the senti ments of the clergy approximated to those of the Noncon formists. In rural parishes, when the clergy were not of the &quot; Evangelical &quot; school, they were generally held in disfavoiir; for which (even if doetrinal prepossessions had not entered into the question) the great want of taste and judgment often manifested in their compilation, and perhaps also the prevailing mediocrity of the bulk. of the original compositions from which most of them were derived, would be enough to account. In addition to this, the idea that no hymns ought to be used in any services of the Church of England (except prose anthems after the third Collect), without express royal or ecclesiastical authority, continued down to that time largely to prevail among churchmen of the higher school. Two publications, which appeared almost simultaneously Heber, in 1827, Bishop Heber s Hymns, with a few added by Milman, Dean Milman, and Keble s Christian Year (not ahymn-book, KeWe - but one from which several admirable hymns have been taken, and the well-spring of many streams of thought and feeling by which good hymns have since been produced), introduced a new epoch, breaking down the barrier as to hymnody which had till then existed between the different theological schools of the Church of England. In Mant. this movement Bishop Mant was also one of the first to cooperate. It soon received a great additional impulse from the increased attention which, about the same time, began to be paid to ancient hymnody, and from the publication in 1833 of Bunsen s Gesangbuch. Among its earliest fruits was the Lyra Apostolica, containing hymns, sonnets, and other devotional poems, most of them originally contributed by some of the leading authors of the Tracts for the Times to the &quot;British Magazine&quot;; the finest of which is the pathetic &quot; Lead, kindly Light, amid th encircling gloom,&quot; by John Henry (now Cardinal) Newman,- well known, and uni- Newman, versally admired. From that time hymns and hymn- writers rapidly multiplied in the Church of England, and in Scotland also, and their number is still on the increase. Nearly 600 authors, whose publications were later than 1827, are enumerated in Mr Sedgwick s catalogue of 1863, and many more have since appeared. Works, critical and historical, upon the subject of hymns, have also multiplied; and collections for church use have become innumerable, several of the various religious denominations, and many of the leading ecclesiastical and religious societies, having issued hymn-books of their own, in addition to those com piled for particular dioceses, churches, and chapels, and to books (like Hymns Ancient and Modern} which have become popular without any sanction from authority. In these more recent collections, an improved standard of taste has become generally apparent. There is a larger and more liberal admission of good hymns from all sources than might have been expected from the jealousy, so often felt by churches, parties, and denominations, of everything which does not bear their own mint-mark ; a considerable (perhaps too large) use of translations, especially from the Latin ; and an increased (though not as yet sufficient) scrupulousness about tampering with the text of other men s works. To mention all the authors of good hymns since the commence ment of this new epoch would be impossible ; but probably no names could be chosen more fairly representative of its characteristic merits, and perhaps also of some of its defects, than those of Josiah Conder and James Edmeston among English Nonconformists; Henry Francis Lyte and Charlotte Elliott among evangelicals in the Church of England ; John Mason Neale and Bishop Christopher Wordsworth among English churchmen of the higher school ; and, in Scotland, Dr Horatius Bonar. Criticism, in this place, of the works of these and other living or recent authors, or of those of Heber and Keble, which are on everybody s lips, and in every body s hands, would be at once premature and superfluous.