Golden Age of Hymns Issue 31 | 1991 Purchase this issue

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Church sanctuaries still ring out with the two-hundred-year-old hymns of Watts, Wesley, Newton, and Cowper. But is lasting popularity alone an indicator of true literary quality? Literary historian W. J. Courthope observes that “the critical world is yet to be half-persuaded that a hymn can be poetry.”

Early hymns were written in an age that produced the rhymed couplets of Pope, the satires of Swift, and the novels of Defoe, Fielding, and Johnson. These works demonstrate form, elegance, urbanity, and wit. Can hymns measure up?

First, we must admit that not all the poetry of any age or any poet will attain excellence. The hymns of this age are uneven.

The best hymns, however, represent a kind of literary counterculture. Contemporary poetry tended to be ornate and contrived. It was intended for a sophisticated audience that demanded a polished style.

The hymns were characterized by a plain style and simple expression. Yet because they were vivid and direct, the best hymns not only equaled, but even surpassed, much of the literature of the day. Literary critic George Saintsbury, for example, pronounced “Rock of Ages” a “great poem.”

Hymns took a simple, forceful style because they had a distinct purpose and audience. The purpose of eighteenth-century poetry was enlightenment and entertainment. The purpose of the hymn, however, was public and private worship. Hymns were designed not to glorify the poet but to aid worshipers in expressing their feelings to God.

In his introduction to The Oxford Book of Christian Verse, Donald Davie asks what sort of language is most appropriate when speaking to or about God. He concludes that it is “a language stripped of fripperies and seductive indulgences, the most ...