“The Case for Traditional Songs”
Terry Johnson
You should have a number of sheets in your notebook, the first being an outline of what I intend to cover, and then some elaboration on that in the pages that follow.
Let me give you some personal background on this whole matter of singing the Psalms. Let me take you back to my freshman year at the University of Southern California. I attended a Bible study that was being conducted by Marshall Foster. Does that ring any bells with anyone? Marshall Foster was an associate of Hal Lindsey, and was leading Bible studies on Fraternity Row at Southern Cal, and I began to attend those; and Marshall then went on and has written a number of books on God-and-country type themes. Anyway, he was very charismatic, very outgoing, really a tremendous fellow. And one day when we were at the Bible study, he told us all to take out our New American Standard Bibles and turn to Psalm 92, which we did. And we then began to sing it to the tune, If I Were a Rich Man! And it worked! I still remember it. [Sings…”It is good to give thanks, and sing praises to the name of the Lord, O Most High. To declare Thy lovingkindness…” [Laughter] “…in the morning and by night.” (And then you repeat) “…And with the ten-stringed lute and with the harp with resounding music on the lyre, for Thou O God hast made me glad by….” It goes on! It works! [Laughter] And I had this immediate self-authenticating response! I did! In which I said, “This is what we’re supposed to do. Maybe not that tune, but what we’re supposed to do is sing the Psalms.” In my little California way, I thought that was neat – that here were the Psalms; Psalms are songs; they’re supposed to be sung; we sang a Psalm. I thought, “This is a great idea! We ought to do this more!”
Well, as it turned out we didn’t do any more of that at all during those undergraduate years, but then after I graduated I went to Great Britain and studied at Trinity College in Bristol, and among our requirements was that we go for one month in the middle of the school year and participate in internship. So I went to St. David’s Broomhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the first Sunday that I was there I sat down in a pew, and next to me was this blue hymnbook (or so I thought), and they started the service. They told us to take our hymnbooks and to turn to a Psalm. And I opened the thing up, and there in the beginning of the hymnbook was all 150 Psalms, rhymed and metered for singing. And I thought, “Oh, my goodness! Where has this thing been hiding all of my life? Why, this is the most amazing thing, that we have this resource right here. They’ve been using this in Scotland.” (As I later learned, they’d been using it since 1650, so it wasn’t like this was a novelty.) But I thought, “This is the greatest thing in the world! This is what I’ve always wanted to be able to do, and here it all is!” And I spent a month, then, at St. David’s singing. Basically, we’d sing three or four Psalms in every service and we worked our way through a good bit of the Psalter in a matter of morning and evening worship over the period of a month, singing three or four Psalms in every service. And I came back from that experience convinced from that point forward that one way or another I was going to be involved in promoting the singing of Psalms.
Now, to my surprise, others do not seem to have had the same kind of self-authenticating experience with the Psalter that I have had. To me, it’s obvious. To me, it was immediately apparent that this is the right thing to do. It wasn’t dissimilar from my experience the first time I went and visited John MacArthur’s church out in the San Fernando Valley. He was preaching verse by verse through I John, explaining word by word and phrase by phrase, verse by verse, the meaning of John and making application and exhortation as he was doing it. I walked out of there saying, “That’s what we’re supposed to do. That’s the way you’re supposed to teach the Bible. That’s what preaching is supposed to be. You’re supposed to explain the Bible.”
The same with the Psalms: the Psalms are supposed to be sung. We’re supposed to sing the Bible. That just seemed obvious to me, and I just never understood why everyone else just doesn’t jump on that bandwagon! God wrote the Psalms; they are the Bible’s hymnbook; they were meant to be sung; they’re available to sing; well, let’s get on with it! What is the hesitation? Why are you holding back? Why are we not doing this? Why are we not thrilled to be doing this, and rejoicing that we have these resources available and making use of them? So that’s always been a little bit confusing to me that that is not what we’re doing more of, and yet I came back from Great Britain convinced that that’s something that we needed to do.
The first church I served, I went from cover to cover through the hymnal and found that it had two Psalms: the obligatory Twenty-third and One Hundred. But I’ll tell you – when I was choosing hymns, I’ll tell you what we sang! I’ll bet you every time I had opportunity to choose them, we sang those two Psalms! And this was at Granada Presbyterian down in Coral Gables, Florida. I then went from there to the Independent Presbyterian Church, and they had the old burgundy hymnal…some of you may be familiar with that. It was actually, aside from a sort of liberal bias in the editing, which hadn’t got too Politically Correctly Wacky at that point…they just didn’t like things like worm…they edited out words like that… “Such a worm as I.” They toned some of that down, but otherwise it’s a great hymnal. It had sixty to seventy Psalm settings in it, and as soon as I began my ministry in Savannah, I started putting as a line in the bulletin, “Psalter.” I identified the hymn selections that were actually Psalm selections. I identified them as such so that the people started getting used to the idea that they were singing a Psalm. And I would always point it out: “This is Psalm 22, you know, set to this tune.” And we would sing it, and they would realize that they were singing Psalms.
I was pretty happy with that for a couple of years, and then I went and visited Westminster Seminary in California and got in some conversations with Dr. Godfrey and Joey Pipa, and we were talking about the Psalms. I can’t remember what all we talked about, but I came away thinking, “All right, enough of this trifling with having Psalms to sing. We need to have an effort to actually produce a Psalter that churches can use.” And so I personally overtured Central Georgia Presbytery, and the overture passed at Central Georgia, and then that became Central Georgia’s overture to the General Assembly, and that passed – that we set up a study commission.
The study commission did its work, came back and recommended that a Psalter be produced. That passed. And, by the way, I’ve always felt like the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and so when we had the big vote at General Assembly on whether or not to produce the Trinity Psalter, I invested a little bit in printing a mini-Psalter that had – I don’t know - ten or twelve selections. And we passed those out in General Assembly, and rather than just start into a report defending—you know, giving you all the reasons for why we ought to do this— instead we sang about half a dozen Psalms, with a thousand male voices in assembly. It was very moving and powerful, and everything just swept right through.
We had, of course, a couple of inane [laughter] questions and comments from the oddest sources. One person stood up and said, “If we go back to singing the Psalms we’ll be pulling the veil of Moses over the face of the bride of Christ.” When I recovered from that one… [Laughter]…I did have a couple of softballs thrown to me by sympathetic people who made it possible to respond in turn, politely. And it overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, passed. And the result was The Trinity Psalter, which you have before you.
Now let me say a few things about how The Trinity Psalter was put together and what it is attempting to do. As a committee, we looked at all of the available psalters – all the ones that we knew about – such as The Scottish Psalter of 165; The Irish Psalter of 1880; The Psalter; The 1912 Psalter – which is… the preponderance of the Psalm selections in The Trinity Hymnal and in “The Hymnbook” (the burgundy one), were from The 1912 Psalter. It really is poetically very, very good, I think. I think it is the best in its poetic rendering even if it’s not as literal as The Scottish Psalter. There was The East Australian Psalter; The Complete Book of Psalms for Singing; The Anglo-Genevan Psalter… all of these had certain liabilities. The Covenanter Psalter was the one that we thought was the most useful, mainly because of metrical variety.
Now a number of you probably don’t even read music. If you don’t, then you’re in the same boat as I am. For all the involvement I’ve had in The Trinity Psalter, I can’t read a note, and so everything is by ear and I try to listen carefully and pay attention as closely as I can, so part of what I learned about is meter.
You know, you have tunes that are written in a certain meter – that means a certain number of beats per…what?...whatever…per stanza! So if you have the same meter, you can use the tunes interchangeably. And The Scottish Psalter was all Common Meter, except for five. So you could sing all 150 Psalms to Amazing Grace, and that was useful at a time when people didn’t know very many tunes and they could just know one tune, basically, and sing all 150 Psalms. But that can…try to “Common Meter” your way four stanzas at a time through the Psalms! It can become very tedious, and it’s limiting musically, and so in that respect The French Psalter…The Anglo-Genevan or The French Psalter…has a great advantage. It’s got tremendous metrical variety, but the tunes, I think are very difficult. “The Old One-Hundredth,” for example, is from that. That’s one of the better known. “The Old One-Twenty-Fourth” (‘Now let Israel say…’) is one that you might recognize. But many of them are difficult to sing…kind of irregular, and I didn’t think that really was an alternative. But the principle of metrical variety is very helpful. That means you can go and just plunder the hymnbook for all the good tunes, and then if you’ve got significant metrical variety, you can start mixing and matching tunes to go with words so that you can take the very best out of the church’s treasury of tunes and combine them with Psalms. I found as well that a number of the hymn tunes are actually Psalm tunes that the hymnal stole from the psalters, so in some ways we were restoring stolen property when we went and tried to reverse that trend!
So what The Trinity Psalter is, it takes the 500-page Book of Psalms for Singing, that is, the (are you with me?) psalter of the RPCNA, that little four-thousand-member exclusive Psalm-singing denomination. It has the musical score; it has multiple versions of many Psalms – sometimes three and four versions. What we did is we said, “All right, let’s get this thing down to where it’s cheap, thin, inexpensive, fits in the hymnal rack alongside of the hymnal, because the PCA is a hymnal-using denomination. It’s not exclusively Psalm-singing, so we need to have a practical product that can be used alongside of the hymnal.” So we for the most part eliminated multiple versions and said this one is the best one, we’re going to go with it.
They often broke up Psalms using many different tunes. We said let’s get one tune and ideally we’ll get words and tunes associated with each other. You know how hymns are often beloved because of the tune, and the hymn is associated with the tune? Like Amazing Grace, or you know…any number…Praise to the Lord! The Almighty. You want to have that kind of close association of a tune with words, and for that to be pervasive. That’s one reason why I’m eager that people try to stick with the tunes that are in The Trinity Psalter, so that it becomes pervasive, so that we all sing Psalm Twenty-Three to CRIMON. We all know that, we all love that. We hear CRIMON, we think Psalm Twenty-Three, and those words come to mind. I think there’s something positive and healthy and worthwhile about making that kind of association. So, unlike The Covenanter Psalter, we went with The Geneva Psalter ideal of one tune per Psalm, one setting per Psalm, so that we have a much thinner book.
We also decided not to print music, in order to keep it slim, but also because of another of my biases, which is that I think that there is great value in seeing the message of the Psalm in paragraph form (or in stanzas) rather than broken up by the music score. And it was interesting. Louis Benson, who was the great American hymnologist at the turn of the century, had a hand in The Presbyterian Hymnbook which was produced at that time. He fought for having one line of words in the hymnbook, with all of the words beneath…do you see what I’m saying? Not having all four stanzas in the musical score, where you’re breaking it up and going up and down, but one stanza, and then all the words underneath. He thought it was so important that you be able to see and comprehend the message of the hymn, and breaking it up into the musical score inhibited that. But he wanted most of the words underneath the musical score. He lost that debate! And that’s not what we’ve done.
But I especially found this. When we first started singing the Psalms – and I remember on Sanctity of Human Life Sunday we sang the One-Hundred-Thirty-Ninth Psalm, and when we sang with it right there in stanzas where it could be clearly seen,
“My inward parts were formed by Thee;
within the womb Thou fashioned me,
and I Thy praises will proclaim,
for strange and wondrous is my frame.
My inward substance Thou did see,
the days that were ordained for me
Were written in Thy book each one,
When as then there was none.”
That was a powerful moment that I think might have escaped the perspective of some if it hadn’t been sung in this form.
I don’t think this is the best. I think the best would be to have the musical score with a line of the words within the musical score, and the words beneath so that you would have music and words together. But life’s full of compromises, and The Trinity Psalter is, you know, one of those compromises, and hopefully a product that is going to be most serviceable to the church.
So that’s why it looks as it does.
Most of the words are from The Book of Psalms for Singing, but we labored to find sources, and so you’ll find written throughout this that it will refer to other psalters. As an example, Psalm Two at the bottom says, ‘The Book of Psalms, 1871’… (That’s a great psalter, by the way. It was produced by the old United Presbyterian Church, which at that time was exclusively Psalm-singing) and The Psalter, which took the 1871 and revised it slightly. So it goes back to those two sources. If you look at Psalm Three – ‘Based on Scottish Psalter.’ Some of them say ‘Elements from Scottish Psalter.’ And if you start adding it up, you’ll find a significant portion of this is derived from the older psalters – Scottish Psalter, the 1871, the 1912, and then The Book of Psalms for Singing, 1950 and 1973.
In addition, we did plunder the best that we could find from The Irish Psalter and The Australian Psalter and some others, and I list those on Page 8 for you, just so you’ll know where some of the settings have come from. We altered a few of the settings, and most of the tunes you’ll find in The Book of Psalms for Singing, as well as three-quarters of them are in The Trinity Hymnal or the old Trinity Hymnal. All in all, then, we have a psalter that the tunes are fairly familiar to hymnal-using PCA congregations. The words are words that are historic, that are rooted in our Psalm-singing tradition, and have yet been thoroughly reviewed and selected because they seem to be the optimum in terms of alternatives for the comprehension of congregations today.
So, that said, I think that while there are things that are lawful and may be done in a worship service, I think we always need to remember that the decision to do that one thing is at the same time a decision not to do another thing, and so as I’m going through picking hymns and things that we’re going to sing, hymns and Psalms, I’m looking for the best thing…the best thing to sing. All things considered, what’s going to be the best thing to read in our Scripture reading? What’s going to be the best thing to sing when we sing? We can’t sing everything. We can’t read the whole Bible. We have a finite amount of time. What is the proper balance for each of the elements of worship? How much reading, how much preaching, how much singing, how much praying? I don’t want to cheat any one of the elements. You have a finite amount of time. The decision to do one thing is at the same time a decision not to do another thing, so that’s one of my assumptions.
Another is that my argument for traditional hymnody is not an argument for all traditional hymns. I think that there are a lot of things that are just flat un-singable, that are difficult, that are too distant from us culturally, and we’re not going to get it; or, it’s going to take too long, it’s going to be too hard. The argument for traditional hymnody is not an argument for classical music. I think a lot of things that were written by Bach and Handel should not be sung by congregations. They might be good for choirs. I think a lot that Amy Grant sings should not be sung by congregations. They’re too difficult. The rhythms are too irregular. They’re too hard to follow. As David Hall was saying, you know, contemporary congregations don’t sing any more; they moan, because it’s so difficult to follow other rhythms of so much of contemporary music!
In “The Pastor’s Public Ministry” on Page 26, I have some provisional criteria for deciding what to sing. To me the decision is not when it was written. It’s not if the words are old, it’s not if the music’s been around forever. The question, as Bill Wymond said last night, is “Is it good?” Are the lyrics good lyrics? Well, then we’ll use them. Is the music good music? (Good as defined by what? Well, there are criteria for deciding if music if good.)
The science of esthetics has been around for about 2,500 years…at least since Plato there have been criteria that have been discussed by all the major thinkers as to what makes beauty, beauty; and, what makes the things that are ugly, ugly. So there are some criteria, and in the worship service there are criteria for deciding what should be used and what shouldn’t. And among the criteria that I ask in “The Pastor’s Public Ministry” is, one, is it singable? Can a congregation sing it?
Two, is it biblically and theologically sound?
Three, is it biblically and theologically mature? We could sing “Deep and Wide.” You know, there’s not a Bible verse prohibiting… you know, God doesn’t say somewhere, ‘Thou shalt not sing ‘Deep and Wide.’ You could do it, right? It’s biblical – or sort of. Right? Or “The B-I-B-L-E.” That’s certainly biblical! [Laughter] But is it appropriate to a congregation gathered for worship? Is it mature, as well as being biblically rich and full?
Fourth, is it emotionally balanced? Does the music overwhelm the words, or is the music not suited to the words? You know different music produces different kinds of responses. The John Phillip Sousa marches would not be appropriate music for O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, would it? Or The Beach Boys’ Fun, Fun, Fun [till her daddy took the T-Bird away] would not work with Praise to the Lord! The Almighty, the King of creation.
The group Glad likes to argue that music is interchangeable in that way, but I don’t think so. Why did some of David’s music soothe Saul? Not all music is soothing. Some of it’s very disorienting and disruptive, and produces anxiety. Different music produces different responses. Some is suited for worship, some is not. Some is suited…the words, the lyrics of a given song and others are not. So there are criteria for deciding what should be sung. The case for traditional hymnody is not a case for every traditional hymn in every circumstance.
All right, here’s my argument. Look at your outline. This is basically my argument for traditional worship: “Why Ought You to Prefer Traditional Hymns?”
Number one, it’s because traditional hymnody is God-centered. Follow the pronouns. Look at contemporary songs. It is amazing how frequently the pronouns “I” and “me” appear in those songs. Whatever you say about them, in the end it all ends up being about me, and not in the way the Psalms are. The Psalms’ subjectivity always ends up having an objective reference point. It is my subjectivity in light of God’s objectivity and who God is. But it just seems that with so much of the contemporary stuff it all is really about me, and with traditional hymnody it’s not. It’s all about God, and that’s a good thing. That’s what worship is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be about the praise and the worship of God, and confessing to God, and so forth.
Number two, they’re Bible-filled. David Wells has run some of the numbers. I think that’s in The Case for Truth…but he’s run some of the numbers. [That’s not the name of his book, is it? No Place for Truth! I’m talking about “the case”! This is the case for traditional songs. Right! He talked about no place for truth.] He’s run some of the numbers, like two-percent of all the contemporary songs in The Maranatha Songbook deal with the theme of the church. In traditional hymnody, you know, it’s a significantly higher percentage. The whole range of biblical and theological themes are dealt with.
For example, we’ve been talking about the imputation of Christ’s righteousness: “Jesus, Thy Blood…” [there is His passive obedience] “…and righteousness”—you know, Count Zinzendorf’s great hymn that’s in The Trinity Hymnal. But that’s just one of a half a dozen hymns that talk about the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.
Any theological theme that you care to discuss probably has a hymn in the hymnal. The hymnal is filled with Scripture. It has a breadth of themes; it is rich in Scriptural content. I would urge you to follow the trajectory from the Romantic era somewhere in the nineteenth century to the present day, and measure biblical content in the worship services of the people of God as you move from metrical psalmody to the didactic, theologically rich hymns of the eighteenth century of Watts, and Wesley, and Doddridge, and Toplady, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and then into the contemporary worship scene. Follow the trajectory in terms of biblical content in what we sing, and you will see a sharp decline, with a drop-off as you come to the present day. Look at the whole worship service and how much biblical content is there in the singing of God’s people, and it has been a drastic reduction. And I think that is an unmitigated disaster for God’s people! Faith comes by hearing the word of Christ…sanctified by the truth…truth is evaporating from our songs.
So, if it’s Bible-filled (third), it’s gospel-focused (that I’ve just mentioned). You want to know about the imputation of Christ’s righteousness? Sing a traditional hymn. Toplady’s hymns are…there’s no greater hymn writer on the themes of Sola Gratia and Sola Fide, Sola Christe. They are gospel-rich, gospel-centered—gospel-driven, shall we say?—in ways that contemporary songs just have not managed to be. So, they are rich with Christ-focused content and work well with services that have in mind moving from praise to confession, to the cross and assurance of forgiveness, to thanksgiving for what Christ has done, and then leading on into the means of grace.
Fourth, church-honoring. As I’ve mentioned, this is a treasure of devotional expression. It is a treasure of musical composition. In the hymnal you have music that was written by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Hayden, Mendelssohn – to name a few. You have lyrics that were written by Ambrose, under whose preaching Augustine was converted and grew as a young Christian. You have Gregory the Great. You have from the Middle Ages, St. Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux, to name two; Watts, Doddridge, Toplady, Newton, and on into the present day.
You have great leaders, great theologians, and the great poets of the Christian tradition writing the finest devotional expressions that the church has possessed. It’s a treasure! It doesn’t have to do with when things were written; it has to do with what we now have that is a gift of God to us. Why would we neglect it? Why would we not expose our people to it? Why would we choose to only use those things that have been produced in our own generation? I think our generation will make some contributions.
I have to say, I don’t think the twentieth century was a great century for hymn lyrics. Not every century has been equally proficient at writing great devotional lyric. It just hasn’t been the case, and I don’t think the twentieth century was particularly proficient. Maybe the twenty-first century will do better. I reckon our generation will make its contribution, and those contributions will work their way into the hymnody…into the hymnal. The hymnal is a kind of canon to which each generation gains access as its music and lyrics prove worthy by general acceptance in the church, and I think the use of the hymnal honors that.
I think that PCA congregations ought to be using Trinity hymnals. This is what our leadership deems to be the best that’s available by way of a devotional expression and musical excellence. This honors the movement of the Holy Spirit over the last two thousand years in inspiring the music and the lyrics of the church. This is the church’s tradition. This is the church’s culture. This is not the music of my father’s generation; if it were (I mentioned this last year, I think), Benny Goodman would be in here, right? If it were my sister’s generation, we’d have some tunes that Elvis sang in here, or something of that genre. This is not their book! This is the book of the whole church, and when people get converted we introduce them to the tradition. We expose them to the treasury. We initiate them into the richness of devotional expression that God has given to the church, and to the musical excellence that He has given to us as well.
So, the hymnal honors the church.
And then, fifthly, Spirit-dependent. That’s more of an argument for traditional worship, but you know there are five or six major prayers that are in a traditional worship service. The hymnody of the church corresponds well with those prayers. As well, there are a number of hymns that deal directly with the third Person of the Trinity – His praise, His work as the one who applies redemption – and so the Holy Spirit is honored as well as we express our dependence on the Spirit through use of the hymnal.
Implementation? Here’s what I recommend to you. Study the hymnal. I just am amazed how many people reject the hymnal who have no idea what’s in it, and I think that’s especially true for my generation down. I think that for many, many pastors in the PCA, they got converted in college. They went off to seminary and into the church. The only thing they know is what they sang in small group studies. They have no idea what’s in the hymnal. Never studied the hymnal. It’s almost willful and culpable ignorance, I would say. I just urge you to study the hymnal. Get a pianist and work your way through every hymn. Listen to the music, read the words. Learn the hymnal. Learn the genre of the hymnal. Learn the history of the hymns and the uses of the hymns.
Third, I’d encourage a hymn or Psalm of the month, and use it every week. Encourage their use in family devotions. And in the attachment there, there’s a calendar for a ten-year period for use of Psalms and hymns to introduce to your congregations.
Brief introductions – I think it helps. Very brief introductions, in my opinion! A couple of lines to introduce a metrical Psalm, to introduce a hymn. Just enough to stimulate interest. Not a dissertation, just a short introduction to what’s being sung. It’s really helped with the Psalms. Just to give a little context and explanation has helped very much with our singing of metrical Psalms.
First Presbyterian…I don’t know if you’ve put them on your website…but they have produced a lot of introductions, short introductions. I commend them to you. [Are they at the website?] And we’re working on…I’ve written a whole bunch of Psalm introductions. I gave you some of those last year; I’m still working on them, but I think they help. They help to cultivate an appreciation for the hymnal and the psalter.
Fifth, Hymns Triumphant and The Trinity Psalter CD’s. Hymns Triumphant, I think, still is the leader in its class. You have two CD’s…72 outstanding hymns. If you really want people to learn the genre, this is easy listening. This really is as responsible as anything for teaching me the hymnal. I highly commend it to you. It’s an outstanding production. Likewise The Trinity Psalter CD’s…sixty of the Psalms are there. Between the two of these, that’s 132 Psalms and hymns that people can be informally exposed to. Also, The Psalms of Scotland. And all this is in the back and available to you. I strongly encourage your encouraging the use of those.
Choral calls to worship. If you have a choir, the choir can use the same call to worship for a month at a time. It’s good exposure. Holy, Holy, Holy…if they don’t know Holy, Holy, Holy, have the choir sing one stanza as a call to worship for a given month.
And then, teach a class on hymnody in the Sunday School to further expose your people.
Turn the page… Pages 2, 3, and 4 are just an outline of where we’re going. Let’s try to get some exposure to the hymnal itself and its richness so that we’re not just talking in theory, but beginning to groom an appreciation for what’s there.
Patristic Hymns
Let’s start with some patristic hymns from the time of the Apostles to Gregory the Great. If you want to make checks, I’m going to check the ones that I think that you really should begin to use. And when I say “double check,” that means that you’re really…failing in your duty [laughter] if you haven’t.
Okay. Under “Patristic Hymns”, No. 58 – O Splendor of God’s Glory Bright, written by Ambrose. Amazing! We’re using his devotional language still, 1700 years later. That’s a one-checker. We just sang Holy God, We Praise Your Name. That gets a double-check. If you have any recognition of Trinity Sunday or preach on the Trinity, that last stanza…beautiful, beautiful tune…beautiful words expressing the mystery of the Trinity.
No. 162 (four down from there), Of the Father’s Love Begotten…Prudentius, 348-413 A.D. Drop down a couple more. Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, from the fifth century. Drop down two…Welcome, Happy Morning, Fortunatus, from the sixth century. Drop down one more…420, At the Lamb’s High Feast uses the tune ST. GEORGE’S, WINDSOR. That’s from the sixth century.
Sing with the church of the fathers. You know Dr. Olds’ book, The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship. These people are for the most part our friends! They would appreciate what we do.
Medieval hymns…All Creatures of Our God and King, double-check that one. St. Francis of Assisi. The Reformers liked Francis and Bernard, by the way, so don’t be too frightened of all the Medieval monks.
Drop down two. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel…that gets a double-check. Music from the twelfth century…words, rather, from the twelfth century. Drop down two more from that. All Glory, Laud, and Honor, Theodolph of Orleans, 820 B.C. Double-check, and we’ll sing 247, if you’ll turn to that: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded…a great illustration of how the hymnal is the treasury of the church. These are Bernard’s lyrics and Bach’s music…247. Let’s sing the first stanza. [Group sings.]
Just remain standing…265, 266…Come Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain, John of Damascus, the eighth century. Check that. Check the next one, The Day of Resurrection! uses the tune, LANCASHIRE, also John of Damascus. No. 271 – Sing, Choirs of New Jerusalem! You should recognize this tune. It was the same or similar to the one we used last night. Let’s sing the first stanza. It will just give you an idea of what I felt in Chapel at Trinity College…. [Group sings.]
Okay, you may be seated. No. 275, you want a check there: The Strife is O’er, the Battle Won…Latin hymn; No. 289, A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing, uses the same tune as All Creatures of Our God and King; 342, 343, check; Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation. That uses REGENT SQUARE, very singable. Goes back to the seventh century…also has an alternative tune that’s a lot more difficult, but it’s a fine tune as well; 642, Be Thou My Vision. Let’s sing the first stanza of 642. [Group sings.]
Turn a couple of pages to 645, Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee. The tune is ST. AGNES. It goes back to the eleventh century, sometimes attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, as is the next one as well, Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts. Here again, the richness of the devotional expression in these two hymns is something of which you do not deprive yourself and your people. This comes right out of the Middle Ages. This is our tradition as well. There was no per se Roman Catholic Church. There was just the Western church, and there was a breadth of theological understanding and conviction in that church that perhaps embraces us. You’ll see much in these hymns with which you can identify. Don’t deprive yourselves of this. So, 645…we’ll sing the first stanza. [Group sings.]
All right. Did I make it clear that double-checks now (just for those who are keeping score) All Creatures of Our God and King; O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; O Sacred Head, Now Wounded; Be Thou My Vision; and Jesus the Very Thought of Thee. I just think you just have to use these at least every year.
Reformation Hymns
Turn the page …. “Reformation…Second Reformation Hymns.” Richard Baxter’s You Holy Angels Bright, check that; John Calvin, 168, I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art, check that. Drop down to Paul Gerhardt (who had the good sense to translate O Sacred Head, Now Wounded and to revive its use)…but 156 is quite usable: O Lord, How Shall I Meet You?
Let’s sing the first stanza of 217. I thank Scott Reiber for introducing this hymn to me about fifteen years ago. Again, because of the poverty of my background in hymns, I had no idea about this. I think it’s one of the most beautiful in all the hymnal. Let’s sing the first stanza, and then the sixth stanza, “Come, then, banish all your sadness….” First and sixth. [Group sings.]
I’m just curious. For how many of you is that new?... My word! All right! I feel like I’ve done a good day’s work if I just convinced you that that is one to use every Christmas!
All right, drop down a few numbers to 609: Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me? uses that same tune; 669, Commit Now All Your Griefs, uses DIADEMATA (Crown Him with Many Crowns). Those get checks….248, check that: Ah, Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended…Johann Heermann. Martin Luther…we sang already today, No. 92, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Definitely a double-check, Luther’s version of Psalm 46!
John Milton, regarded by some as the greatest epic poet of the English language, wrote No. 33. I’m going to have you turn there. We’re going to use…the tune is MONKLAND. Why they dropped that tune from the blue Trinity and replaced it with what they replaced it with in the red Trinity…this is one of those things I have to say I don’t understand what they were thinking of. But anyway, 33, to the tune MONKLAND.[Group sings.] That’s Milton’s version, Psalm 136. You know, he wrote a number of poetic versions of the Psalms. That was his skilled hand at work in the producing of that hymn.
NEANDER, you know…No. 53, that gets a double-check for sure: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation.” Probably less well-known, No. 166. Let’s sing two stanzas of it, Wondrous King, All-Glorious. Let’s stand and sing this one. [Group sings.] All right, you may be seated.
Under Philipp Nicolai, 317, is Bach’s arrangement of WACHET AUF, Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying. Down a couple, Martin Rinkart, Now Thank We All Our God, that’s a double-check. Every Thanksgiving season that should be sung. The next, Johann Schutz, No. 4 in the hymnal, we already sang: All Praise to God, Who Reigns Above…just absolutely packed with Scripture, including that wonderful stanza that clearly is alluding to I Kings 18: “The Lord, He is God! Yahweh Elohim!” [I still remember that from Hebrew!] Magnificent hymn.
Put a check by the next one, 198: Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates! To TRURO, a very usable tune.
The Evangelical Awakenings and the Evangelical Hymns
Turn the pages to page 11. We come now to “The Evangelical Awakenings and the Evangelical Hymns” beginning with Isaac Watts, known as the father of English hymnody. He’s the father because up till then everybody was singing metrical Psalms virtually exclusively…the Anglicans included, as well as the Dissenters. The Anglicans don’t begin singing hymns until the middle of the nineteenth century. They’re singing Psalms. Insofar as they’re singing at all, they’re singing Psalms. So Isaac Watts can rightly claim that title as the father of the English hymn, and I believe still today the greatest of all of the English hymn writers. That’s not just my opinion. Hughes Olds says the devotional quality of Watts’ hymns is unsurpassed. With Charles Wesley, Olds says, he shares the honor of being the greatest hymnodist of English-speaking Christendom. And I still think they deserve the title. I don’t think they’ve been surpassed; not because they wrote 300 years ago, but because of the quality of it. There are certain eras that excel at certain things. I don’t know who would excel the political writings of the American founding fathers, even though it’s old stuff. It’s the quality, it’s not when and who. It’s not what race, it’s not what ethnic group; it has to do with the quality of it. And Watts is unsurpassed.
Page 11, The new Trinity numbers are the numbers in the middle now, so don’t get confused…try not to. But I would put double checks by When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, third one down; the next one, Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed? Just great Christ-centered, cross-centered hymns. The next one, How Sweet and Awful Is the Place is the way Watts wrote it. They Valley-girled it in the red Trinity! [Laughter] But I double-check that…highly, highly recommend it to you. Drop down about five, Come, We That Love the Lord. That’s No. 700. To the end of that category, How Bright These Glorious…that’s No. 544. I’d give that a check. Turn to No. 176 in the hymnal: Not All the Blood of Beasts. Let’s sing two stanzas of that. I suspect that this is not that well known, but it’s a…oh, yeah, I see. I did get confused…242…242, FESTAL SONG. [Group sings.] Christ’s death as atoning sacrifice very clearly stated in that hymn.
Turn the page. Top of page 12, hymn No. 340, Come, Dearest Lord, give that a check. Skip down to….I’m Not Ashamed does not have a good tune, I don’t think, in the Trinity. AZMON was used in the old burgundy hymnbook, and that’s what I prefer to use. Or BELMONT also is a good tune.
Divine and Moral Songs for Children
Next classification, 1715, has “Divine and Moral Songs for Children.” Let’s sing No. 119. As we do, note that 119, I Sing the Almighty Power of God, looks like a song and note that it was written for children. [Group sings.] Now is there a clearer sign that Christendom is in sharp decline than if Watts is writing that for children?
Issac Watts and the Eighteenth Century
All right. Next, “The Songs of David Imitated.” These are Watts’ Psalms. To tell you the truth, I would be content if that’s all we ever used, Watts’ “Songs of David Imitated.” They are so outstanding. I know he’s been criticized, and he was a bit arrogant maybe in speaking of the metrical Psalms as pulling the veil of Moses over the eyes of the saints, but let’s forgive him for that and recognize that these are brilliant, Christ-centered interpretations of the Psalms, paraphrases of the Psalms. We won’t necessarily sing any of them, but let me just have you check some off. The first one then, which is No. 7, From All That Dwell Below the Skies, that’s Psalm 117; go down two, and double-check Our God, Our Help in Ages Past. That’s his version of Psalm 90, one of the great hymns of the church. Go down two more, Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne, that’s his Psalm 100 to PARK STREET…great hymn. Go down several more to O Bless the Lord, My Soul; that’s his Psalm 103…uses the tune ST. MICHAEL from The Genevan Psalter. Drop down a few more. Double check Joy to the World. That’s his Psalm 98. If you see the whole text, you’ll get it. It really does follow Psalm 98 very closely. One of the great hymns, and again an example of the treasury, ANTIOCH. That’s attributed to Handel, arranged by Lowell Mason, words by Isaac Watts. It just doesn’t get any better than that! That’s the treasure that we have in the hymnal.
Drop down a few more. Let Children Hear is Psalm 78 to the tune DUNDEE. Check that. Check the one after it, Lord of the Worlds Above. That’s his Psalm 84, to DARWALL. Drop down three more and double-check Jesus Shall Reign. I think that’s the greatest of all missionary hymns. That’s Watts’ version of Psalm 72, sung to DUKE STREET. (That’s the only tune to sing it to!) [Laughter] Drop down one more, his version of Psalm 51, O Thou That Hears When… that’s No. 45 in the new Trinity, to the tune HAMBURG. You know that as When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. That’s a great setting, a great rendering of Psalm 51, and should be used.
All right, turn the page. I reckon Watts wrote at least six of the greatest hymns ever written, and you ought to use them every year. Charles Wesley, the sweet singer of Methodism, arranged these a little differently. The famous ones, every one of them has a check. Every one of them. The ones that get double checks: O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing; Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim, sung to either LYONS or HANOVER; Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus should be sung at the beginning of the Christmas season each year; Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, music by Mendelssohn, words by Charles Wesley – it’s just amazing, isn’t it? It’s a wonderful thing that we have in this collection.
The next, Jesus Christ Is Risen Today to GWALCHMAI– it’s a Welsh tune. I dare not say it, or he’ll mock me afterwards, but it looks like LLANFAIR or something like that. It’s a wonderful hymn. The next one, Christ the Lord Is Risen Today. Virtually everybody uses that every Easter Sunday. It should be. That’s a double-check if there ever was one. And who’s responsible for the music? Is it attributed? No. Okay.
Rejoice, the Lord Is King gets a double-check, to DARWALL. At the bottom of page 14, you can single-check Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending, but I’ve heard an arrangement of it with the tune HELMSLEY that makes it a double-check, if we can ever get it universally accepted and used. It is absolutely perfect…match of words and music.
Jesus, Lover of My Soul, to ABERYSTWYTH. That’s a double-check. You just have to sing that hymn. The next one, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, is a double-check. Soldiers of Christ, Arise, one check. And Can It Be? And I’m going to insist that we sing the last stanza of 455. What a great gospel hymn! And again, they goo-gooed down the red Trinity where you were pleading, “Amazing love! How can it be?” That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it! Do it
A cappella? Yes! But instead of repeating “Amazing love,” what you repeat is “Bold, I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ, my own.” The refrain is the last line. You don’t go back to the last line of the first stanza, you use the last line of the last stanza.
Are you with me? I see a lot of blank stares…..All right, let’s stand and sing “No condemnation….” [Group sings] You can be seated!
I just don’t think there is any hymn that better expresses the heart of the saved saint and the sheer joy of it as does And Can It Be?
All right, turn the page. Philip Doddridge, another of the evangelical hymn writers of the eighteenth century…turn to No. 390 in the hymnal, Lord of the Sabbath, Hear Us Pray. Doddridge’s hymns virtually always end up with you gazing to heaven and setting your hope there. [Group sings]
Speak about legalistic view of the Sabbath… let’s sing a cappella the sixth stanza, and it expresses how the Sabbath encourages us to anticipate the eternal Sabbath in heaven, our eternal rest. [Group sings]
Now, if you’ll move down about five to Awake, My Soul! Stretch Every Nerve. That’s a very fine hymn, No. 576 in the hymnal. Give it a check. The one after that, 498, is not in the hymnal, O God of Bethel. The interesting thing is it’s almost always on the old list. Previous generations loved that hymn, and I don’t know what’s happened to it. It’s just dropped off somehow. The next one, How Gentle God’s Commands, to the tune DENNIS, Blest Be the Tie That Binds. Give that a check, and then double-check the last one, Great God, We Sing That Mighty Hand is not in the red Trinity. It’s another one of those inexplicable deletions to me. It’s a great new year hymn to a great tune. It’s just magnificent! I don’t know what happened, but it somehow got lost. [Laughter]
There’s a number of things that are inexplicable. El Shaddai is one of them! If you want an object lesson in music that doesn’t fit words, that would be it! All right, enough of that.
Page 17, TOPLADY. One of the Calvinists within the Church of England, a severe critic of John Wesley, whom he called Pope John, TOPLADY is really…no one speaks more of God’s grace…justification by faith alone, by grace alone, by Christ alone, than did he. Put a check by No. 95, which is 470 in the New Trinity.
Let’s sing No. 463, which I suspect some of us will not know, A Debtor to Mercy Alone. Great Welsh tune. Let’s try to sing the first and last stanzas. [Group sings] Hold it. “My Savior’s…” what? [“Obedience and blood”] There’s the active and the passive. The imputation of Christ’s righteousness, His obedience to the Law, and His death on the cross. Let’s sing the last stanza. [Group sings]
Drop down about five, double-check Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, whatever tune you use. That’s 499; 519, Fountain of Never-ceasing Grace, another great hymn of justification by faith. It should be used. Give that a check.
Turn the page to John Newton, former slave-trader, the one involved in the slave trade…became a Christian, and a Christian minister. We sang this morning Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder. I think that’s one of the greatest hymns ever written. We were going to sing it, but we already did! The one above it, Though Troubles Assail Us to the tune JOANNA, very usable.
Drop down four. Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken, double-check that. That should be used every year. Right below it, Now May He Who From the Dead, to the tune MERCY, that gets one check. Drop down three more to Amazing Grace! You think that’s one or two checks? Three checks! Drop down four more, Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare, great hymn on the subject of prayer. Give that a check, then below that, How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds in the believer’s ear, that gets a check.
Across the page, William Cowper, a member of Newton’s church and one who struggled a great deal with depression, and who tried to even kill himself several times. And yet, Chesterton, who wrote the book Orthodoxy regards him as one of the great poets of the English language. Did he call him “the greatest lyric poet of the English language?” His hymns, as you saw this morning as we sang the first of those, God Moves in a Mysterious Way, a superb statement of providence and frowning providences, and our interpreting and understanding of them. That ought to be sung.
The next one, There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood, certainly. The next after that, The Spirit Breathes Upon the Word, to the tune BELMONT, as it is in the New Trinity. Very good; 262 from the old hymnbook was not used in the New Trinity for some reason. But if you’ll flip the page, we’re going to sing a stanza because I love it so much! As we sang this in England, again, Scripture rich. Play it good and loud so they can hear it. Everybody know this tune,
ST. BEES? [Group sings]
All right, page 23, Joseph Addison’s The Spacious Firmament on High. Joseph Addison…we will sing that. That’s on page 117, unless I’m continuing to confuse myself with my numbers. Sing the first stanza. This is Addison’s version of Psalm 19. [Group sings] All right, remain standing. That’s a double-checker.
Joseph Hart, No. 472 [Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched] in your hymnals, a difficult Welsh tune, but I think much repays the effort to learn it. [Group sings] William Williams, converted under the ministry of Howell Harris during The Great Awakening, contributed No. 598, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah. I know you all know that. Next, John Cennick, like Williams, converted during The Great Awakening, Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending, though not to the tunes – I don’t think – not to the tunes in the Trinity. HELMSLEY! You must find HELMSLEY and use HELMSLEY.
Thomas Oliver, converted through Whitefield’s preaching in Bristol, The God of Abraham Praise, LEONI, the tune. That’s a double-checker, by the way, as was Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah. That tune is rooted somewhere in the Hebrew tradition. Who knows how far back it goes? The next page, turn to No. 297, All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name. That should be sung every year, that’s a double-check, and we’ll sing that first stanza together. Go ahead and stand for that. Standing and sitting is helping you to stay awake, so 297 to DIADEM. [Group sings] You may be seated.
Page 25-26 is my attempt to contextualize. I gave you a “Top 40 of the Eighteenth Century.”
The Hymnody of the Early Nineteenth Century
Turn to page 29, “The Hymnody of the Early Nineteenth Century.” With the Romantic movement, Christian hymnody begins to change. It makes more of an overt appeal to the senses, to the emotions; it makes reference to idealized and romanticized images from nature and from the past: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, that would be a good example, you know. It didn’t just come one night! When Morning Gilds the Skies…so you have this kind of a much looser poetic expression – some would argue superior poetic expression. You’re not just getting rhymed theology as you did in the eighteenth century, you’re getting now a much more poetic license and this appeal…. “…The virgin sings her lullaby”—that’s a romanticized image that doesn’t come from the Bible, but it’s a romanticized view of the past and of motherhood, and you’re going to find more and more of that creeping into our hymnody.
James Montgomery, I’ve not double-checked any of them, but there are a number of good ones. The second one, Angels, from the Realms of Glory; the next one, Hail to the Lord’s Anointed to AURELIA; the next one, Spirit of the Living God, to WINCHESTER NEW. Drop down about five to According to Thy Gracious Word, but the Christian Reformed Church uses the tune MERTON, and that’s a wonderful tune with that hymn.
The next, Shepherd of Souls, Refresh and Bless, to ST. AGNES, which we sang earlier. Lift Up Your Heads to ALL SAINTS NEW is an outstanding hymn. In the Hour of Trial, another one to check.
And then, Call Jehovah Thy Salvation to HYFRODOL, that’s Montgomery’s view of Psalm 91. If you can combine those two, that, I think, should be used every year. Page 31, Reginald Heber, Holy, Holy, Holy we sang earlier today. That’s a double-check. And 405, God, That Madest Earth and Heaven. Let’s sing one stanza of that. Most of you perhaps know…
[Group sings.] Now for how many of you was that new? Isn’t it a beautiful melody? It’s another Welsh tune; I highly commend it to you. The last two for Heber should also get checks: From Greenland’s Icy Mountains; The Son of God Goes Forth to War.
Turn the page. Thomas Kelley. The second, The Head That Once Was Crowned with Thorns to ST. MAGNUS, gets a check, and then drop down five to Who is This That Comes from Edom? It fell right out of the red Trinity, again for inexplicable reasons, but that is a great hymn to a great tune. I would double-check that. I love that hymn, and I love the tune to that hymn. And yet it vanished. If you have the blue Trinity’s or can get permission to photocopy, I would use it.
Horatius Bonar. We come to virtually the first great Presbyterian hymn writer. Presbyterians are singing Psalms, but he’s written a number of them that I think should be used frequently. Drop down to the fourth of those, No. 304, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say. Let’s sing the first stanza of 304. [Group sings.] One thing I love about that hymn is when you respond in “I came to Jesus…” it shifts to major key there. Did you catch it? It’s minor key when he’s hearing the voice of Jesus, but when he responds it shifts to a major key, which seems to me singularly appropriate.
Turn to 378, his wonderful communion hymn, Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face. It gets a double-check. [Group sings.]
The richness of the sacramental piety in that hymn is a thing to be pondered. I just recently read the book, Holy Fairs, by Schmidt, and it makes the point that I think I had missed – maybe you missed it as well. But the matter of the importance of the sacraments should not be confused with frequency of observation…or observance, I should say.
The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper played a central, unparalleled role in Scottish Presbyterianism for over 200 years with the sacramental seasons that were the forerunners of our revivals in this country. And that book, Holy Fairs, powerfully makes the point. If you were dealing with God as a Scottish Presbyterian, it would be at the Table. You are baptized, you’re going to get confirmed at that Table. You’re unbaptized and unconverted, it’s going to be the privilege of the Table that’s going to mark your conversion. If you’re backslidden, you’re going to get right with God at the Table. You’re faithful, you reaffirm the covenant at the Table. And that was the place, more than…what I’m saying is it had a central role, and the high view of the sacrament found in this hymn is not atypical at all. It’s rather expressive of that whole tradition of sacramental piety in Scottish and American Presbyterianism.
All right. Next, No. 461. We’ll sing one stanza of Not What My Hands Have Done. This is another just outstanding statement of faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone. Verse after verse… “Not what my hands…Thy work alone…Thy grace alone…I bless the Christ…I praise the God of grace.” Let’s sing the first stanza. [Group sings.] For how many of you was that new? Not as many…good. At the bottom, go up three…A Few More Years Shall Roll, to the same tune as a wonderful New Year hymn.
On the next page, 34, Frances Riddley Havergal wrote a number of outstanding hymns. The second one, 293 in your hymnal, Golden Harps are Sounding; then drop down five, Who is On the Lord’s Side? Let’s turn to No. 588 and stand and sing the first stanza. [Group sings.] We did that so poorly, as compared to how wonderful that hymn is, that we’re going to sing the last stanza again, and we’re going to pick up the pace, though. Let’s really pick up the pace quite a bit. [Group sings.] Remain standing and turn back a page to…forward a page, it’s 699, Like a River Glorious. [Group sings.] Okay, you may be seated. Havergal probably slips into a little bit of “higher-life-ism” in that hymn, but I’m willing to overlook it, the third stanza is so good.
Page 35, the high church movement got into the act. It couldn’t allow just evangelicals to write hymns, and so John Mason Neale really did the whole church a real favor by resurrecting so many of those older medieval and patristic church hymns that we sang earlier. Frederick Faber would be another.
Cecil Frances Alexander. Most of her hymns were written as illustrations of The Apostles’ Creed. She took a doctrine and wrote a hymn for it from out of the Creed for children. The second one down, There is a Green Hill Far Away is one of those. The second from the bottom, Once in Royal David’s City…we often use that at Christmastime. William Whiting’s Eternal Father, Strong to Save – you all do know that, don’t you? That’s the Navy hymn. I think that should be sung every year…great hymn. Sir Henry Baker’s The King of Love My Shepherd Is, that’s a beautiful hymn. Matthew Bridges, next down, Crown Him with Many Crowns. That’s every year. That’s a double-check. For the Beauty of the Earth, by Pierpointe, I would use that. That gets one check. Onward, Christian Soldiers gets one check. William Howe, O Word of God Incarnate gets one check, but For All the Saints gets two. And I think we’re going to sing that before we leave this Conference. After that, 394, This Day at Thy Creating Word to WINCHESTER NEW is good.
Across the page, John Ellerton. Three songs down, Savior, Again to Thy Dear Name to ELLERS is a good hymn. The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended…that’s 407. That gets a check. And Shine Thou Upon Us, one from the bottom to LEONI, that gets one.
Edward H. Bickersteth, his third hymn, ‘Till He Come!’ O Let the Words to REDHEAD is a good hymn.
Catherine Winkworth, third hymn, Whate’er My God Ordains is Right should be sung. That’s a double-check. That is a great hymn for a Presbyterian especially.
Turn the page. “Hymns of the Twentieth Century.” With words and tunes, I’m down to this: Margaret Clarkson, O Father, You are Sovereign to ST. THEODOLPH; We Come, O Christ, to You to DARWALL – those two.
Timothy Dudley Smith, Tell Out My Soul. That’s Mary’s Magnificat…that’s his second.
Under “Others” – double checks by Great Is Thy Faithfulness and How Great Thou Art. And then all the others I would give a single check.
And we’ll close with No. 660, which I suspect some of us will not know, but is a gorgeous hymn. Let’s sing the first stanza of No. 660. [Group sings ‘O God Beyond All Praising’]
That concludes my presentation.