OUT-OF-DATE HYMNS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 939, 10 January 1911, Page 4

OUT-OF-DATE HYMNS.

An interesting controversy is now raging in the American religious periodicals over the action of the Hymnal Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church, recommending that the famous missionary hymn, “ From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” be eliminated from the revised volume. The Episcopal General Convention meets at Cincinnati in a few weeks, when a fight to save the hymn which for ninety-one years has been sung all over the world promises to be bitter and prolonged. Four years ago the American Methodists dropped several favourite hymns from their new book on the ground that many of the verses written by Charles Wesley were mere jingles, or were too doleful, or were entirely contrary to the growing spirit of classicism prevalent in the churches ot the New World. Eike the Episcopalians, they objected to this missionary hymn, particularly to the lines : What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle, Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile. Correspondents declare that the symposium conducted in Eon don fifteen years ago gave the three best-loved hymns in the English language as “ Rock ot Ages,” ‘‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” and ‘‘Lead, Kindly Eight.” The committee point cut that Reginald Heber’s appeal to the beautiful of Nature tends to lessen Christian students’ reverence for Omnipotence, whereupon the critics retort that the 65th Psalm represents the valleys covered with grain shouting and singing, and the little hills rejoicing on every side. Other hymns which, according to this remarkable Episcopal revision commission, have outlived their usefulness are *' Christian Dost Thou See Them ?” “O, Eove Divine that Stooped to Share,” ‘‘Our Blest Redeemer, ere He Breathed,” and ‘‘ The King of Love my Shepherd Is.” Christendom has not produced more beautiful examples of hymuology than the last two, and the action of the committee will cause even more astonishment in the Old Country than over here.