In Prayer and Praises, Nathaneal Micklem frequently uses a hymn as part of the ritual of private devotion. In so doing he is following a long line of Reformed practice. John Calvin made the translation of the psalms into metrical verse not just for public worship but for private devotion. There is a scene in Thomas Hardy where at the end of the day workers down tools and sing together a hymn or psalm. Erik Routley wrote a number of devotional commentaries on a variety of hymn. Songs sung in public worship also used for private devotion seems to be the norm within the Reformed tradition.
It may be St Augustine of Hippo who said “He who sings prays twice” but the Reformed tradition seems to have built a whole way of being a Christian around the singing of psalms and hymns. There is something that resonates deep with Presbyterian about “Ye Gates lift up your heads” as I have found since I came to St Andrews, and have you noticed your Congregational friends often put down their hymn book to sing “When I survey the wondrous cross”. These hymn/psalm becomes part of who we are.
Then hymns speak at different levels not just the words that you sing, many people recall the hymns sung at a parent’s funeral or on their wedding day. However lots of little events equally shape our understanding of a hymn, I cannot think of “Glorious things of thee are spoken Zion city of our God” without also recalling my child hood church of Zion Wakefield, equally “We are marching in the light of God” always recalls singing it while walking around St George’s Jerusalem with a pilgrimage group.
It is often said that in the old hymns you sang theology but this is too simple. For the last rather two hundred years hymnody has been split into two strands, one appealing more to the head, the other more to heart. The mission hall hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus” by Joseph Scrivens is very much a heart song and yet I can recall as a child hearing my Grandmother sing it. The well formed Christian needs both.
I sometimes find myself humming a hymn while I am doing something else. The range is enormous, from “All people that on Earth do dwell” through Brian Wren’s “Great God, your love has called us here” and onto “When I was lost you came and rescued me” by Kate and Miles Simmonds a modern Charismatic worship song. However if I stop the hymn I am humming often captures something of my mood that I need to, in the words of the old hymn, “take it to the Lord in prayer”.
