ilMiM LIBRARY University of California. Class THE VOICE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN SONG; HYMN'S AND HYMN-WMTERS i\\m 'i\\\\h aab %m BT 1 111! or THE . £5 -NEBAI EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY BALLANTyNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK. PREFACE. Tin-: translations in the following pages are all new, unless when the contrary is stated; because, the object of the translator being rather historical than literary, it was more essential than in ordinary cases that the colouring of the present should not be thrown over the faith of the past. The first aim, tore, has been to represent faithfully the creed of the hymn-writers — the next, to reproduce their thoughts and images. Wherever this has been found practicable, the original metres have been imitated. It is hoped that this volume will explain its own purpose; and it therefore only remains to state the authorities on which the hymns and biographies are given. The historical facts are drawn from the ordinary IV PREFACE. histories and biographies — German, French, and English. The Oriental, Ambrosian, and Mediaeval hymns have been selected and translated from those in Da- niel's " Thesaurus Hymnologicus," Mone's " Hymni Latini Medii jEvi," and Trench's "'Sacred Latin Poetry." The hymns of Ephraem Syrus have been re-translated from the German version of the Syriac given in Daniel's "Thesaurus;" all the rest have been rendered from the original languages, and are commended to the charity of those whose greater familiarity with classical literature may detect blem- ishes unperceived by the translator. The German hymns have been translated from Dr Leopold Pasig's edition of Luther's " Geistliche Lieder," Albert Knapp's " Liederschatz," and a " Sammlung von Kirchenliedern aus dem Gesang- buche der evangelischen Briidergemeinen ; " the Swedish, from hymns kindly sent to the writer by Swedish friends. If the Christian men of former times cannot be our perfect examples, since we and they may own but One, they are still our fathers ; and their creed, v although not our Bible, is nevertheless our precious Bud sacred heritage. It is trusted that the treasures of sacred song, faintly reflected in these translations, may serve to illustrate that unity of faith which binds one age to another through the Commuiiimi of Saints. If they help to raise any hearts to lliin in whom alone that unity is life, the first and dearest purpose of the writer will be attained. CONTENTS. PACK Chap. I. Hymns of the Bible, 1 II. The u Tersanctus," the "Gloria in Ex- CELSIS," AND THE " Te DEOM," . . 12 III. The Anonymous Greek Hymns, ... 22 IV. Clement of Alexandria, Ephraem Syrus, and Gregory of Nazianzum, ... 88 V. St Ambrose and the Ambrosian Hymns, . 71 VI. Gregory the Great, Venantius Fortunatus, and the Venerable Bede, . . .113 VII. St Bernard, 145 VIII. Medleval Hymns, 1C7 IX. Medleval Religion, 199 X. The Hymns of Germany, . .215 XI. Swedish Hymns, 245 XII. ExGLisn Hymns, XIII. Hymns of the Church of Rome since the Reformation, 283 Xiv. Conclusion, , . 296 CHAPTER I. INS OF THE BIBLE. If church history be anything different from secular history, it should be the record of Christian truth, speak- ing through the lives of Christian men ; the story of the n selfishness and Divine love, of th< whieh has pierced through and outlived the corruption and decay of States ; the echo of the accents of truth and love, penetrating, like a musical tone, through the market- din and battle-tumult of the world. But, too often, how different is the fact ! With what a weariness of disappoint- ment we turn from pages which seem but the transferring of the old, selfish, secular ambitions to a new arena; the name of truth, and even of God, being merely the weapon of the strife, whilst Self is the god whose glory is con- tended for ! Yet we are sure, since the Prince of life arose from the tomb, the life of Christianity has never been altogether I again ; and to watch for it, and rejoice in it when 1, seem the only objects for which church history is worth being studied. And as we watch, much is revealed to us. "We trace Christian life through its various manifestations of love, A 2 HYMNS OF THE BIBLE. and find the golden chain unbroken through the ages, however dim at times the gold may shine. It manifests itself in its expansive form of love to man, in countless works of mercy, in missions, and hospitals, and ransomings of captives, and individual acts of love and self-sacrifice which cannot be numbered. We trace it in its direct manifestation of love to God, in martyrdoms and in hymns; the yielding up of the life to death for truth, and the breathing out of the soul to God in song. The object of these pages is to follow the last track, by listening to the voice of that stream of spiritual song which has never been altogether silent on earth; by attempting to reproduce some notes of the song, and some likeness of the singers. And may not such a search have its peculiar use, in a day and a land like ours 1 It is, no doubt, difficult to ascertain the true characteristics of the nation or the times we live amongst; partly because we are too near to make the perspective correct, and partly because the atmosphere which colours the scene also colours our own minds. The rumble of the highway we are treading over- powers the roar of the retreating thunder-storm ; the riot of to-day sounds louder than the revolution of the last century ; and thus age after age has seemed to hear in its own tumults the echo of those chariot-wheels which are still long in coming. Yet some of the characteristics of the sea we are sailing on we must know, for safety, if not for science. Would it not, for instance, be generally admitted, that the cha- racter of Christian life, in our own time, is rather humane than devotional, its tendency rather outward than upward, Tin: mm \\i> UK HI 3 its utterance rather in works of ni< ivy than in songs of praise ? Have we not all to be especially on our guard that we do not make our worship merely public service, and so fail to make our service worship 1 In our own free age and country, when opportunities for doing good are so multiplied, when there is not a talent or a grace but may find its own full and appropriate exercise in the great field of work, may we not learn something from the nun of those more fettered days, when Christian life, hemmed in on all sides but one, rose with ill its force towards the heavens, from which no human tyranny could shut it out ? And thus may we learn more to seek com- munion with God, not merely as the strength for work, but as the end and crown of all work ; not chiefly as the means of life, but its highest object Not, indeed, that active and contemplative piety are opposed to each other. Martha's service would have been more efficient had it been less cumbered, had she listened as well as served. Mary, when the time came, could anoint the feet at which she had loved to sit, with ointment whose perfume filled the house. And those who serve God best of all are those who " see His face." Nor in these busy times of ours has the service of song ceased on earth; the melody in the heart flows on still, and gushes forth in music; and it is not of an exthn -t species that we think when we search out those old hymns. The accents of the first singers are no dead lan- guage to us, and their life is ours. The first hymn re- corded in the Bible is also the last : the song chanted first on the shores of the Red Sea, echoes back to us from the " sea of glass mingled with fire," 4 HYMNS OF THE BIBLE. Of the mode of worship in the old patriarchal times, we know little; but, surely, music was not only heard in the city of Cain. Earth can never have been without her song to God. The first wave of promise which flowed in to cover the first wave of sin, must have found its response in the heart of man ; but after the first universal hymn of Eden was broken, and the music of creation fell into a minor, whilst the wail of human sin and sorrow ran across all its harmonies, a long silence reigns in the hymn-book of the Church universal ; and through all the records of violence and judgment, from the flood and the ark, from patriarchal tent and Egyptian kingdom, the only song which has reached us is the wail of a murderer echoing the curse of Cain. We read of altar and sacrifice, of meditations in the fields at eventide, of visions, and prayers, and accepted intercessions, and we feel sure that those who walked in the light, like Enoch or Abraham, must have had their hearts kindled into music. But from the green earth rising out of the flood; from the shadow of the great oak at Mamre; from the fountains and valleys and upland pastures of the Promised Land, where the tents of the patriarchs rose amidst their flocks ; from the prisons and palaces of Egypt, we catch no sound of sacred song. So far the stream flows for us underground. The first recorded hymn in the Bible is the utterance of the national thanksgiving of Israel by the Bed Sea. When the Church becomes visible, her voice becomes audible. The waves flowed back to their ancient tide-marks, the pathway through the sea was hidden for ever, and, with it, the hosts of the enemies of God and of Israel. The way THE SONQ OP MOSES. 5 of escape had become the wall <.f demarcation, and looking on that sea, with all its buried secrets, above its ripple and its roar the song burst from the lips of Moses and the children of Israel It was a type of all the psalms which have been sung on earth since. It was a song of victory. It was a song lemption. It was " sung to the Lord." T of the dead was beneath that sea, the silence of the desert was around it, and there first it is written that the Song oed through the long wail of the FalL There the first notes of that great chant of victory were chanted which echo along the crystal sea, far, far b< our hearing, into the depths of eternity. That song has never ceased since on this earth. One dying voice has carried on its accents to another. From time to time it burst on our ears in a chorus of triumph ; at times, even Elijah can hear no voice but his own. But God has heard it ceaselessly, we may not doubt while some tones, loud and musical in man's ears, failed to pierce beyond the atmosphere of earth, conn melodies, inaudible to us, have reached His ear, and been welcomed by His smile. Among the many books which God has caused to be written for us to make up His One Book, — family records, royal chronicles, histories of the past and future, proverb and prophecy, — we have one book which speaks not so much to man from God as to God for man. In the Book of Psalms the third person of the historical narratives, the " Thus saith the Lord" of the law and the prophets, is exchanged for the supplicating or rejoicing " O Lord, my God," " Unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing." Beginning 6 HYMNS OF THE BIBLE. often in the tumultuous depths, these psalms soar into the calm light of heaven. An inspired liturgy for all time, and the prophetic utterance of a sorrow which knew no equal, they are yet the natural expression of the struggles and hopes, the repentings and thanksgivings of the human hearts who first spoke them. These also are part of that one wondrous hymn of redeemed man to God. It is one warfare, and, therefore, one battle-song suits all alike. Like the other true hymns of the Church militant, David's psalms were written in no soft literary retire- ment, but amidst the struggles of a most eventful and active life. The battle-songs of the Church are written on the battle-field ; her poets are singers because they are believers. When David fled from Absalom his son, his heart lifted itself up to "the Lord, his shield;" when Shimei cursed him, he sang praises to the name of the Lord most high ; looking up to the rocks and the wild hill-fortresses among which he had taken refuge from Saul, he called on " the Lord, his fortress and his high tower;" from the flocks he led by green pastures and still waters, in his peaceful youth, his heart turned to " the Lord, his shepherd;" awak- ing in agony from his great sin, he uttered those self- despairing, yet most trustful words, on which the sighs of repenting sinners have taken wing to God during three thousand years. It cannot be without purpose that more is revealed to us of the life of the sweet Singer of Israel than of any other man. Otherwise, might we not have thought the song of praise is only for the comparatively sinless ; that sighs, not songs, become the penitent, however freely the " much" 1U SAO OF SONGS. 7 is forgiven t and thus many a precious box of costly per- fume mi^ht haw been held back in shame, and w.> mi-jlit haw msned the leeeon that the d ee p ed music of the Church is mingled with her tears. David did indeed appoint an " order of singers,** and he set them, we are told by Nehemiah, over the business of the house of God. And, no doubt, the Lord of the temple has also His own " order," especially endowed and trained for this work, to whom, as the king to those singers of the old temple, He appoints a certain portion "due every day." Yet in that new temple, which is rising silently day by day, all the stones are musical when struck by the right hand ; every voice has its own especial psalm for its own especial joy ; and the richest songs have sometimes been sung by those who sang but one, and whose names are lost to us for ever. From time to time, throughout the Old Testament, we catch fresh notes of the song. There is the mystical Song of Songs, reaching, in its full meaning, to the great mar- riage-day, when the Voice which can be heard in the grave shall say, " Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, and the time of the singing is come." There is the chant of Deborah the prophetess, and the hymn of Hannah, borne along through her own individual joy to the great undying source of joy, the Child born to redeem. There is the song of Jehoshaphat and his army, the chant of victory sung in faith before the battle, and itself doing batth •. in that the Lord fought for those who trusted Him, and they had nothing to do but to divide the spoil and return to Jerusalem, with psalteries and harps and trumpets, into 8 HYMNS OF THE BIBLE. the house of the Lord. There is the song of Hezekiah, when he recovered from his sickness, and the psalm of Jonah, from the depths of «the sea. There was a song by the waters of Babylon, though not for the ear of the oppressor. There was the song of liberated Israel, at the dedication of the wall of the Holy City, when " the singers sang loud, and they all rejoiced : for God had made them rejoice with great joy: the wives also and the children rejoiced : so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar off." There were new songs in the prophets for the new joy which was to descend on earth, until at last the joy came, and the songs of the angels broke on the ears of the shep- herds keeping watch over their flocks by night. Even on earth the morning awakes with music. Not a day is born but finds some creature ready to welcome it with a song — some echo of that birth-day hymn which the morning stars sang together when all the sons of God shouted for joy. No wonder, then, that a burst of inspired song greets that Dayspring from on high. The theme, not creation, but the Son, "the Child Jesus, Christ the Lord!" The singers; from heaven a multi- tude of the heavenly host, and on earth the blessed virgin-mother, and two old men. Humble voices, heard by few then, yet pouring out their full hearts to God, and so forming a new channel of praise, never since left dry. The first recorded Jewish hymn was chanted by the great lawgiver, with a nation for his chorus. The first Christian hymn was sung by Mary the mother of Jesus, with no audience, as far as we know, but one other faith- ful woman. The contrast, doubtless, has its meaning. TIIREE FIRST I I HYMNS. 9 The heart of Mary, like a sweet flower with its cup tamed op to the morning sky, in it- lowliness drank in Hit light and dew of heaven, and sent them back in fragrance; full of God, ami therefor* lull of joy. And yet her hymn is no angelic song, no thanksgiving of an unfallen spirit who looks on adoring at the great mi] of Divine love. That human tone, which gives its deepest musk- to the new song of heaven, is not wantin Mary's. She can say, " My Saviour," that she also may sing hereafter, " Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us by Thy blood!" The Magnificat of the blessed Virgin is but another strain in the great Song of Redemption. Then Zacharias, when the seal is taken oft' his lips, and his mouth is opened to praise God, at one heart is borne away beyond his own special blessing, on the great tide of joy, which is the common element of all the redeemed, and the natal hymn of the Baptist soars away into a Christmas carol. For a moment his song alights on the peculiar gladness which had visited his house, the child of his old age, who was to be the pro- phet of the Highest; but then again it soars upward, until it is lost in the early beams of the Dayspring from on high. One other hymn completes that first cluster; and this, unlike the other two, was uttered in the temple. It must have been long indeed since any fire from heaven had touched the mercenary sacrifices there, or any gush of fresh inspiration had pierced the icy routine of the services. At length, however, the heavens, which had seemed so impenetrable, opened, and before the vail was rent, and they melted away for ever, service and sacrifice 10 HYMNS OF THE BIBLE. shone with a new and Divine radiance from the Sun which was rising behind them. Once more the music of inspired song was heard in the temple; not from the choir of David's priestly singers, but from the lips of an old man, as he held the infant Saviour in his arms. Yet, in the few simple words with which Simeon welcomed the joy he had waited for so long, he rose to a height at which even Pentecostal gifts did not always sustain apostles. The old man's vision reached to the universal promise, and he saw in Jesus, not only the Glory of Israel, but the Light to lighten the Gentiles. With such a vision well might he depart in peace ! Thus the first triad of Christian hymns, the three matin-songs of Christianity, were completed. Ere another was added to the sacred list, the great victory which had been thus sung had to be won, not with songs, but with strong crying, and tears, and unutterable anguish. To human ears the completion of the great victory was an- nounced, not with shouts of triumph and songs of angelic hosts, but by one dying human voice, speaking in dark- ness from the cross. " When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished : and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." Yet are those dying words the fountain-head of every hymn of joy and triumph which men have ever sung since Eden was closed, or ever will sing, throughout eternity. The Bible records the words of but one other hymn; for a hymn it was, whether said or sung. FIUST HYMN AFTER PENTECOST. 1 1 I Jod had buret the bands of the grave, and had ascended to be where He is now, at the right hand of God, and, as He promised, the Comforter had come, and, knit together in living unity l»y Him, the Church had appeared a living temple of God in the world. Tims the only hymn 'recorded in the Acts is not, like those in the Gospels, sung by solitary voices. It is a choral burst of praise; and, like so many since, it is struck frtiB the heart of the Church by the hand of persecution. The first persecution of the Church gave birth to her first hymn. Peter and John came back from their night in prison to the band of believers; and they lifted up their voices to God with one accord, and the place where they met was shaken by an earthquake. After that we have no record of any hymn, (unless the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians, rising sublime and detached, as it does, from the general level of the epistle, may be called one,) until the songs of heaven fall on our hearts from the heights of the Apocalyptic vision. Then from within the gates of pearl, from the city which is also a paradise, from beside the fountain of life, and from before the throne of God and the Lamb, we catch the tones of the new song, and find it the ever new Song of Redemption, the psalm of the new creation ; the song which Moses sang, and David, Hannah, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and the early Church, when she first tasted the bitter cup of her Lord ; the song which every sinner that repenteth sings, and the angels echo, which we are singing, and still learning now, and which will be new in its inexhaustible depths of joy for ever and ever. 12 THE " TERSAXCTUS," THE " GLORIA IX EXCELSIS." CHAPTER II. THE " TERSAXCTUS," THE " GLORIA IX EXCELSIS," AXD THE " TE DEUM." Three Hymns and three Creeds have come down to us from early times, and have been incorporated into our Liturgy, besides the hymn preserved in our Ordination Services. They have descended to us pure and distinct, through the gradually thickening corruptions of many centuries! Fragments of the language of Heaven, often preserved by those who knew not the interpretation, they must, through those dark and confused ages, have formed channels of communication with God for many a perplexed but believing heart. In the preservation of the Holy Scriptures themselves, through similar perils, we recognise, with adoration, the controlling hand of God; and we may surely also attri- bute it to His merciful providence, that through those centuries, when so many would receive no spiritual food, except through the external Church, and the Church so often gave the stone, if not the serpent, to her children, rjristead of bread, anything so pure and life-giving should have been enshrined in her daily Offices, as the Creeds of the Apostles, of Nice, and of Athanasius, the two Hymns now in our Communion Service, and the " Te Deum." i: DEUM." 13 The preservation of the Creeds is, however, scarcely so remarkable as that of the Hymns. That the Creeds should . tw&t have become what they arc, i- indeed more wonderful than that once formed they should have re* niained intact. That out of the fierce word-battles of the Orient ;il C lunches, when eternal truths were made the subject of courtly intrigue and popular tumult, and the populace of Greek and Syrian cities were ready to shed each other s blood on account of the relations of the Persons in the Trinity to one another, meanwhile concerning themselves very httle about their own relations to God; when an abstract Trinity in Unity was in danger of being wor- shipped instead of the living and redeeming God; that from such passionate and godless controversies those sim- ple and living Creeds should have been evolved, n indr.d wonderful And since the formation of the Creeds was no miraculous inspiration, the fact may surely teach us a comforting lesson in ecclesiastical history. Living words cannot proceed from lifeless souls; and the ages which compacted the Creeds must surely, beneath that tumult of noisy controversies and strife "who should be greatest," whose echoes, as they reach us, we are apt to call church history, have borne to heaven many a cry of true prayer, and many a soft chorus of thanksgiving. As St Augus- tine said,* "We look on the surface and see only the scum ; beneath we should find the oil." — j Thus the Creeds are witnesses not only for the truth they utter, but for the Church which uttered them. Once formed, however, the great difficulty as regarded * Meander's Church History. 14 THE " TERSANCTUS," THE " GLORIA IN EXCELSIS," tliem was over. They were sealed with all the authority of Church and State; they were systematic documents with sharply denned edges; they were fenced in with anathemas, and the anathemas were fortified with civil penalties. The subtle and tumultuous, yet servile populace, who entered into doctrinal controversies with the eager- ness with which their forefathers had contended for poli- tical rights, might have made the abstraction of a particle the signal for a riot. And when that acute and excitable race had been crushed under the strong fanaticism of Mo- hammedan armies, or silenced beneath the dead pressure of Mohammedan fatalism and tyranny; when church his- tory passed over to the West and to another range of con- troversies, the two earlier Creeds had already the sacred halo of antiquity on them ; the crystals were set, and no foreign element could blend with them to alter their form. With the Hymns it might have been otherwise. The strictest research can, it seems, only ascertain their exist- ence in the earliest records, but cannot trace their be- ginning. That before such a date the " Te Deum" can- not be found, and that in the earliest known Liturgies the "Thrice Holy" can be found, appears nearly all that can be discovered. Whether they sprang first to light in a burst of choral song, like that inspired hymn in the Acts; or were bestowed on the Church through the hea- venly meditations of one solitary believer ; or gradually, like a river, by its tributary streams, rose to what they are, we can perhaps never know. We all know the tradition, that the " Te Deum" gushed forth in sudden inspiration from the lips of Ambrose, as he baptized Augustine; or (as it exists in another form) i: DEUM." 14 that St Ambrose and St Augustine, touched at the same moment by the same sacred fire, sang it together in re- sponses. But beautiful as this legend is, and of early ori- I hose who have searched into the subject most deeply seem to think it must be classed among other U-antihil typical stories of the heroic ages of Christendom. Than is, however, another theory of the origin of the " Te Deum" (to which Daniel seems to lean), more beautiful and ap- propriate than even this old legend. It is believed by mauy to have sprung from an earlier Oriental morning hymn, perhaps to have grown out of fragments of many such hymns. Gradually, therefore, if this be true, it may have flowed on from age to age, gathering fresh tides of truth and melody, till, as you trace back the sa- end stream to its source, your exploring feet are checked among the snowy mountains of the distant past, :ui joy of redeemed creatures set free from all bondage; sinful yet forgiven, and fighting with God against sin; cliildren, yet children of God, coming before their Father with the song He loves to hear; little indeed, and as nothing among the countless hosts of heavenly wor- shippers, yet still actually amongst them, and no strangers there, because, in God's household, whilst the greatest are as dust before His majesty, the least shine as the sun in His love? It is as if the veil were for a moment withdrawn, and the whole family in earth and heaven were united in one song. Myriads who sang it once on earth have passed through the veil one by one, and have taken their places in the other choir; and soon the veil must be visibly rent, and the two choirs made one. The second Hymn after the Communion, like the first, B 18 THE " TERSANCTUS," THE "GLORIA IN EXCELSIS," soars away at once from self to God, and rests not on our joy in God, but on God who is our joy, giving thanks to the Father for His great glory, and to the Son for His re- deeming love. Like the " Te Deum," it is chiefly addressed to Christ. But its accents are to accompany us back into the outer world; and the hymn, which began, as it were, among the angels, ends with a Miserere such as befits those yet in the body of death, well as it befitted those many martyrs of early times who, we are told, sang this hymn on their way to martyrdom. Happy for us if the music of those words sings on in our hearts through the temptations and toils of the fol- lowing days, and so from hour to hour we make our work keep time to that heavenly melody! " Glory to God on high, and on earth peace, good will towards men. We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory, Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty. O Lord, the only-begotten Son Jesu Christ; Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy on us. "For Thou only art holy; Thou only art the Lord; Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father." Happy for us when the Gloria and the Miserere are ever thus intertwined ! The " Te Deum" completes and crowns this second triad "TE DE! 19 of Christian hymns. It is at once a hymn, a cree