The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

VI. Revivalism and Development of Hymnody

1. HYMNS OF THE HEART REPLACE THE PSALMS

In order to understand the place of related sacred song both in the Great Awakening and in the Great Revival, we must briefly trace congregational singing from the time of the Reformation. Luther replaced the Latin choir hymn with the congregational hymn, but in Great Britain the versified psalms held sway for two centuries. ³⁹ PFF4 46.4

The few poets who wrote hymns did not intend them for public devotions-men like Herbert, Milton, Baxter, Bunyan, and others. They never sought to compete with the best-known Psalters. Not until shortly before the Methodist movement gave to the common man the popular Wesleyan hymns in harmony with the powerful revival preaching of the time, did the paraphrases and hymns of Isaac Watts (1674-1748), “Father of English hymnody,” begin to supplement and replace the psalms in the dissenting churches. ⁴⁰ Watts, becoming thoroughly disgusted with the restricted and unwieldy psalms sung, the “heavy slow motion and tedious syllables of the time,” set forth the provisions of the gospel with remarkable fullness, ‘balance, and clarity in hymns that won the hearts of the people. ⁴¹ But the Wesleyan songs did not affect American revivalism until some time later. Let us now trace the development from psalms to hymns in the colonies. PFF4 47.1

2. WATTS’S HYMNS COME TO AMERICA

For nearly a century and a quarter psalmody alone was used in the English-speaking Colonial churches-and instrumental music was not used until Thomas Brattle’s organ was introduced in 1713. ⁴² PFF4 47.2

When Whitefield began his American tour in 1739, the churches still relied on the old psalmody, though he used Watts’s hymns freely. But the Great Awakening put Watts’s hymns, breathing the fervent spirit of revival, on the lips of the multitude, not only in the churches, but also in the streets and on the ferryboats going to and from meetings. Although the anti revivalists were censorious, Jonathan Edwards defended these new hymns of Watts as expressing the feelings aroused by the Great Awakening. ⁴³ So it was that the religious revival was borne along on the buoyant wings of song. PFF4 47.3

The Wesleyan hymns were not popularized in America in this period, although John Wesley’s first songbook was published here. The Wesleyan forces were divided into two groups-the Arminians under the Wesley’s, and the Calvinists under Whitefield. The latter preferred Watts because they were not at all enthusiastic over the basic theology of the Wesleyan hymns. PFF4 48.1

3. WESLEYS INTRODUCE HYMNS OF EXPERIENCE

The pulsating hymns that kindled and kept aflame the great Wesleyan revival in England were a radically new type of congregational song—the subjective utterance of awakened hearts that sang because they could not keep from singing. Watts had nobly sought to improve the service of praise in the church, but many of his hymns were objective-sheer praise of God-and definitely Calvinistic. The Wesleys struck a higher note—the proclamation of Christ’s unlimited atonement, His free grace for all, and the personal appeal to human hearts. Evangelistic preaching depends largely for its effectiveness upon the “obbligato” of such songs-songs that have the power, beyond that of the spoken or written word, to penetrate and uplift the heart, to illuminate religious thought and Christian experience, and to educate in the faith. ⁴⁴ PFF4 48.2

John Wesley translated German hymns of the Moravian Brethren—who had revealed to him the spiritual potentialities of gospel song as an aid to devotion ⁴⁵ and he had a definite part in many of his brother’s hymns. But Charles Wesley, the poet of the movement, whose glorious gift of song never failed him, mirrored in verse his own Christian experience. ⁴⁶ PFF4 48.3

These new revival hymns reflected a heightened emotion, expressing the inward aspirations and experiences of the soul. They exalted the atonement and glowed with the fire of God’s free grace. They reached the heart, for their concept of definite release from sin through personal conversion made each singer feel that the songs truly meant “even me.” They described the intense struggle of the soul-together with the grace, hope, light, and peace held out by faith, the bursting of the bonds of sin, and the subsequent rejoicing in liberation and redemption. ⁴⁷ PFF4 49.1