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 thought and reverent in feeling.
I could now fill a large book with flagrant violations of these standards, across all the Christian denominations, and particularly in my own Roman Catholic Church, such are the dreadful hymnals littering parishes in the United States and Canada. Those hymnals are notable for jingles that are political rather than devotional, with a manward (or people-ward, or us-ward, or what have you) rather than Godward direction, celebrating a “newchurch” that severs its ties from the past, replacing the Word of God with social fads. They are stocked with hymns that are banal or clumsy in language, foolish or babyish in thought, and smug or silly in feeling.
Noble Simplicity
But let me bring a light into the darkness. It is the light of Epiphany, as sung by the poet and translator John Mason Neale (1818–1866). I will set here all four stanzas. They are short, and they really make no sense singly:
O thou, who by a star didst guide
The wise men on their way,
Until it came and stood beside
The place where Jesus lay,Although by stars thou dost not lead
Thy servants now below,
Thy Holy Spirit, when they need,
Will show them how to go.As yet we know thee but in part,
But still we trust thy word
That blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see the Lord.O Savior, give us then thy grace
To make us pure in heart,
That we may see thee, face to face,
Hereafter as thou art.
The stanzas are in common ballad meter, so there are countless melodies to which these words may be sung, but I like the sweet and lilting tune Crediton, the first of two tunes specified in the Lutheran hymnal. It fits the pattern of the stanzas very nicely, as the first couplet ends low, and not on the tonic note—here, a C# in the key of B major, while the second couplet ends high, with joy—here on the B just below high C. Note that in each stanza there is a sort of meditative hesitancy at the end of the second line, but a turn to confidence and fulfillment and joy as the stanza ends.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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