Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/41

Rh The metrical paraphrases, which were partly liturgical, but mainly drawn from Scripture, gradually prepared the way for hymns. 'The real cradle of English hymns is the English Bible'. That volume seemed to the Reformers the divinely given wellspring of praise. Much of it actually consisted of songs of praise, and in those days of heated theological debate rigid adherence to the actual language of the Bible appeared to be the one safeguard against error. The Song of Solomon was most frequently reproduced in these paraphrases, but twelve chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul's Epistles, and other somewhat unlikely parts of Scripture were versified. It was thought that the Bible was universally capable of musical expression. This feeling, though strained unnaturally, bore good fruit. 'That grand note of our greatest hymns, impregnation with Scripture, is in great measure the heritage of the paraphrases'. Dr. Watts is careful to state in the preface to his hymns that he 'might have brought some text. . . and applied it to the margin of every verse'. To the paraphrases, also, we owe the division of our hymns into objective and subjective. Their free and joyous praise with the less introspective expressions of sorrow and penitence are a heritage from the Psalms; the delineation of more subtle emotions and moods is mainly the reflection of the New Testament paraphrases. The free grouping of texts which characterized the later paraphrases naturally led to the type of hymn with which we are familiar in Watts. 'The habit of sermon and commentary made it an almost irresistible impulse to interweave the familiar parallel passages, to make one passage a theme of expansion by others, to omit and combine for the sake of unity; all the while, as they believed, keeping within the letter of Scripture. Then came the license of some connecting verse as a piece of machinery. And only one step more converted the Scriptural Paraphrase into the Scriptural Hymn'. Dr. Watts gave a somewhat loose interpretation to the word 'paraphrase', but he kept the thought steadily in view. His first hymn, 'Behold the glories of the Lamb', is based on Rev. v., and his best poetry bears the same stamp.

Before the publication of Wither's collection our hymns were few in number. They had already, however, won a place in English devotion. Dr. Donne often had his own verses, 'Wilt Thou forgive that sin?' sung in his presence at St. Paul's. George Herbert, on the last Sunday of his life, called for his