others are traceable. Toplady's Hymns have been widely appreciated and largely used. In Denham's Selection (Baptist), a considerable body of them is still available, but on the whole the number in actual use is constantly diminishing. His polemic Hymns have died a natural death: his deep and sincere Hymns of Christian experience invite a sympathetic reading rather than a congregational employment: and the conviction can hardly be resisted that his poetic inspiration and even metrical method were borrowed from Charles Wesley. His "Rock of Ages" isolates itself from the body of his work in its impressiveness and usefulness, and maintains its place at the head of English Hymns.

Mention must also be made of the Select Psalms and Hymns of David Simpson (Macclesfield, 1776; 2nd ed., 1780; new ed. 1795). It was made for the great congregation in the church built for him at Macclesfield after the rector of the parish church had thrown him bodily out of his pulpit; and is chiefly notable for the new Hymns it introduced and for the inclusion of anthems.

We thus have before us the first group of Church of England hymn books. Their dates of publication cover only seventeen years, and they have much in common. Generally entitled Psalms and Hymns they show no concern with the old metrical Psalmody. They are collections of Hymns, gradually expanding from the 170 of Madan to the 600 and over of Simpson. The Hymns are thrown together without arrangement and without indications of their authorship, and there are no musical notes or suggestions. From the prefaces we may infer that Madan stood alone among the editors in giving attention to the musical side. In the body of Hymns also, there was much that was common to the books. Watts, and to a less degree the Wesleys and Joseph Hart, furnished a nucleus and a considerable share of their contents. Watts' followers, especially Doddridge and the new Baptist Hymn writers, were drawn upon; and also the group more or less affiliated with Whitezine, the source of so many evangelical Hymns, ran from 1766 to 1772, and was revived in 1774. Toplady became its editor at the end of 1775.

field or using The Gospel Magazine as their medium of publication. Of the editors themselves, only Toplady and Berridge contributed Hymns of note, but Newton and Cowper offered their first-fruits.

The group of hymn books shows a very determined purpose to introduce Hymn singing and great activity in providing materials for it. They do not of course represent the Church but a small party within it. The new movement was an intrusion of the outside Revival forces. The Hymnody showed its revival origin and character in the evangelistic note, in its concern with experimentai religion, and its warmth amid chilling surroundings; and once within the dikes, revealed it yet further by its obliviousness of principles and practices distinguishing church from dissent, and its subordination of the sacramental side of religion. Inspired as it was by a Calvinistic movement the Hymnody was inevitably consistent with Calvinism. This showed itself negatively in its omissions or alterations of Methodist Songs. Positively it was in general content to express a deep sense of sin, an entire dependence on God for deliverance and the discovery of his method in Scripture. With Toplady came more of the terminology and specific statements of Calvinism. It is from this adhesion to the principles of the Revival rather than of the Church of England that these early hymn books derive their larger import; for they helped to establish the foundations of an Evangelical Hymnody not only within but beyond the Church of England.

2. "OLNEY HYMNS": THE EVANGELICAL MANUAL

In line with the earlier Evangelical hymn books, but an event important enough to stand alone, came the publication in 1779 by John Newton, then curate of Olney, of 280 of his own Hymns and 68 of his friend William Cowper, under the title of Olney Hymns, in three Books. Book I. On select texts of Scripture. Book II. On occasional subjects. Book III. On the progress and changes of the spirit

ual life (London: W. Oliver, 1779). Both men had contributed Hymns to The Gospel Magazine, and to one or other of the Evangelical hymn books. Newton had appended eighteen pages of "Hymns, &c." to his Twenty-Six Letters on Religious Subjects of 1774.* 48 As early as 1771 Newton proposed to Cowper that they jointly compose a volume of Hymns, partly from "a desire of promoting the faith and comfort of sincere Christians", partly "as a monument to perpetuate the remembrance of an intimate and endeared friendship".49 Before the work had proceeded far, Cowper was prostrated by brain trouble, and Newton ultimately completed it alone.

The Hymns were conceived in the very spirit of their time and surroundings. From them we could reconstruct the actual working of the Revival in an English parish under Evangelical leadership; and they may be regarded as bringing the Hymnody of the Evangelical Revival to a close. In them the offices of the Prayer Book yield to the sermon, the Church Year is superseded by the civil, the sacraments are subordinated, and the Revival method expresses itself in the evangelical theology, the strenuous activity in the sphere of individual emotion, the didactic element employed to instruct and edify the simple believer, and the expository dealings with Scripture. Many of the Hymns had been actually a part of the revival services at Olney, being written for special occasions, or to be sung after some special appeal from the pulpit, or to be made the theme of an exposition by Newton in the prayer meetings held at the Great House.50

In the making of these Hymns Cowper, as long as he was able, wrought with the feeling and craftmanship of a true poet, and clothed them with the tender charm of his own spirit. Newton poured into them the pulsing life of an intense and commanding personality, and proved himself

48

* Including Cowper's “God moves in a mysterious way”, and his own "While with ceaseless course" and "I asked the Lord".

"Preface, p. vi.

E.g. (Diary, Dec. 6, 1772) "Expounded my new hymn at the Great House on the subject of a burdened sinner". Josiah Bull, John Newton, London, n.d., p. 183.

capable at his best of producing great Hymns. When his inspiration failed it was like him to have "done his best" to fill the spaces left by his friend's silence. And even when most prosaic and homiletical Newton's work has the quality of being alive and the gift of appealing to other minds. Indeed the Olney Hymns are to be taken as a whole,51 and measured by the unity of the impression they created. Their appeal was immediate, and to an unusual degree permanent. Even in our own day, Faber, the Roman Catholic Hymn writer, speaks of their "acting like a spell upon him for years, strong enough to be for long a counter-influence to very grave convictions, and even now to come back from time to time unbidden into the mind".5

52

This influence of Olney Hymns, securing for it so many reprintings53 and so wide a circulation, was much more than that of a hymn book. In form the book was available for congregational use (being arranged precisely as Watts' Hymns had been), though some of its materials were not suitable. To what extent it was so employed is not now discoverable. But it furnished many with their favorite songs and devotional reading. It played a part among Evangelicals akin to that of Wesley's Collection of the following year among Methodists. It became a people's manual of evangelical doctrine and an instrument of spiritual discipline.

But the place of its Hymns in Hymnody itself is a very considerable one. They were inevitably recognized as a very notable accession to the store available for Evangelical use. They began at once to furnish materials for the hymn books. The proportion of them that became familiar and endeared to various denominations is surprisingly large. In

51 The best study of the Olney Hymns is Montgomery's "Introductory Essay", written for Collins' Glasgow ed., and often reprinted. In his contentment with Cowper's poetic grace, Montgomery perhaps overlooks something of Newton's bluff virility.

52 Frederick Wm. Faber, Hymns, preface to ed. of 1861.

53

'3rd ed., 1783; 9th, 1810. It was kept in print during most, if not all, of the XIXth century. The numerous American reprints seem to have begun in New York in 1787 (Evans' American Bibliography, vol. vii, item 20588.

the Church of England a number won a place from which even the reconstructions of the Oxford Revival have been unable to dislodge them.54 At the lowest estimate six must be accorded a classical position: three of Cowper's -"Hark my soul! it is the Lord", "Oh! for a closer walk with God", "God moves in a mysterious way", and three of Newton's "Come, my soul, thy suit prepare", "Glorious things of thee are spoken", "How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds".

The Hymns exercised also a decided influence upon the Evangelical ideal of the Hymn, not so much in the way of modifying as in the way of confirming and deepening it. Like Charles Wesley's it was an influence favoring the use of Hymns as an expression of the most private experience, and like his again, Newton's method was autobiographical. If indeed he intended all his Hymns for public use, he was careless of Whitefield's dictum that Congregational Hymns should confine themselves to sentiments common to the singers. This inward-looking of "the old blasphemer" begat intense remorse and measureless self-contempt, and made the Hymn of Experience an instrument of self-reproach. In the same way Cowper's dreadful depression, and Newton's sympathy with him, tinged the Olney Hymns at times with the shadow of the cloud hiding the divine Presence. It can hardly be denied that the indiscriminate use of such materials by congregations introduced an element of unreality and morbidness into Evangelical Hymnody, from which it was slow to recover. On the other hand, Newton's perfect faith in the salvation offered, his glorying in its efficacy, his wonder at its grace, the tender note of his love for the Saviour, the exultation of his triumphant faith; -all these things entered into the warp and woof of the Evangelical Hymnody, and Newton's close relating of personal experience with the truths and narratives of Scripture became preeminently the accepted method of that Hymnody.

"In the latest edition of Hymns ancient and modern there are six by Newton and seven by Cowper.