Illuminations
Godward Bound
by Anthony Esolen
Here is some good advice from the editors of the Service Book and Hymnal of the Lutheran Church in America (1958):
The hymns should be devotional rather than didactic or homiletical, and their direction Godward, not manward; the hymnal must be ecumenical in character, expressing the continuity and catholicity of the life of the Church; the final criterion is not Lutheran authorship, but agreement with the teachings of the Word of God; the hymnal must have the highest standards of literary excellence, and each hymn, being an act of worship, should be exalted in language, noble in thou . . .
