Spiritual Songs Hymnbook, Preface of 1881
A new edition of this Hymn Book being required, the
present editor was asked by the publisher to take charge of it. Of course the
responsibility of its new contents and form must rest with him; but as it was
meant for all, he took counsel with brethren in various places who came in his
way, who he thought would be likely to aid in the work - a work far more
difficult than those imagine who have never undertaken it.
Three things are needed for a hymn book. A basis of
truth and sound doctrine. Something at least of the spirit of poetry, though
not poetry itself, which is objectionable, as merely the spirit and imagination
of man; and thirdly, the most difficult to find of all, that experimental
acquaintance with truth in the affections which enables a person to make his
hymn (if led of God to compose one) the vehicle in sustained thought and
language of practical grace and truth, which sets the soul in communion with
Christ and rises even to the Father, and yet this in such sort that it is not
mere individual experience which, for assembly-worship, is out of place. In a word,
the Father's love, and Christ developed in the soul's affections, rising in
praise back again to its source. God alone can give this so as to meet the
wants of an assembly. Like assembly-prayer, it must not rise too completely
beyond the state of the assembly, yet must reach up to God, and raise the
assembly's affections up to Him, so that what He is in grace developed in the
affections of the soul should be jointly proclaimed. It is not mere wants -
that would be a hymn for a prayer-meeting. A basis of truth has been spoken of,
or, to speak more justly, the truth; this is evidently fundamentally necessary,
but much more is. There is based on this truth a large sphere of scriptural
thoughts, feelings, experiences and hopes, in which the soul moves, which ought
to be scriptural.
Now in a vast number of hymns there is real piety in
the affections, but connected with statements which may not touch any great
foundational truth, but are unscriptural, and thus the best affections are
connected with unscriptural thoughts, and this is a very real injury to the
soul. Thus, suppose uncertainty as to salvation the absence of the spirit of
adoption, a bright hope of being in glory when we die; these are merely taken
as instances, for it applies to very many points, and souls are quite angry at
losing a hymn which their piety has enjoyed, but which has connected their
hopes and affections with what is not scriptural. Many such have been
eliminated heretofore from the collection, but there remained still something
to do. Hymns should be simple, full of Christ and the Father's love,
unaffected, and in some measure elevated so as not to be mere prose. The singer
must be there, but the singer associated in his thoughts with God filled from
on high; yet so as not to individualise himself and leave the assembly behind
him. Many most sweet hymns are too individual, too experimental, for an
assembly. In this collection an Appendix is therefore added where there may be
as beautiful hymns, but the assembly has been less thought of. Where possible,
the hymns for the assembly are in the plural. There are hymns which suit
prayer-meetings, home-devotion, even the gospel; though there the difficulty is
very great. Abstractedly you are making people sing as having certain feelings,
and then preaching to them because they have not.
But in actual Christendom things are not so sharply
defined, and there are hidden souls and hidden wants which the hymn may give
expression to, and set a soul free or make it apprehend God's love sometimes
more effectually than the sermon; still there is very great danger of
widespread delusion and loose apprehension of sin and grace, and the difficulty
is very real. You may often find the loudest singers where the conscience is
the least reached.
Finally is added what perhaps should have come first:
the great principle in selecting and correcting has been that there should be
nothing in the hymns for the assembly but what was the expression of, or at
least consistent with, the Christian's conscious place in Christ before the
Father.
The reader will kindly remark that there are changes
necessitated by putting "we" for "I." which, but for that,
there would have been no occasion for.
The book is commended to Him who alone can give songs
in the night, trusting that a hymn book, already the best known to the editor,
may be still more useful to brethren sure that the Spirit, who alone can indite
a genuine hymn, can alone enable it to be sung aright.
J. N. D.