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cause these effusions of Ray Palmer, Muhlenberg, Coxe, Sears, Whittier, Hunter, Bethune, Bryant, etc., were meritorious and suitable enough—even in higher degree than those of foreign competitors for the uses of private and public worship.

REVISION OF HYMNS.

Comparison of the Committee's work with Dr. Floy's version will detect many alterations in the arrangement, in the meter, and in the text of the hymns. Hymn-tinkers are very plentiful. "Critical inquiries into the history of hymnology open up some curious scenes. The Wesleys are seen mending Herbert and Watts. Toplady and Madan are found hashing and recooking Charles Wesley. Somebody else is trying to improve Toplady. Heber makes free with Jeremy Taylor. Montgomery is altering and altered. Keble, and Milman, and Alford are all pinched, and twisted, and redressed in turn."

Hymn-tinkers are divisible into two classes. The one consists of genuine poets, whose enthusiastic admiration of the beauties and excellences of less gifted singers makes them more keenly alive to what is redundant, meager, excrescent, or in any way exceptionable, and who cannot rest until they have really improved what they admire by removing that to which they object. In this class John Wesley must be placed. "He was positively sure that nobody could mend his own hymns; but he was not scrupulous about mending other people's." His critical acumen and fastidious taste were of the utmost service in pruning his brother's effusions. His touch was delicate, but masterly and effective.

The second class of hymn-tinkers consists of dull, prosy, unimaginative souls, who cannot think except in syllogisms, nor discover any beauty except in lines and angles. In the department of hymnology they are intolerable bores, immitigable nuisances. Strong language this, but not too strong to express the utter nausea and disgust felt by thousands at the barbarous and even atrocious manner in which some of Charles Wesley's choicest hymns have been mangled. There are hymnals in use by Calvinistic Churches in New York and every large city, that contain "dreadful examples" of mutilation, miscalled emendation. The Wesleys had no affinities with

emendations of this class. They touched nothing that they did not improve, and the Committee have wisely retained their improvements.

Watts wrote the first verse of one familiar hymn,

41. "Come, we that love the Lord,

And let our joys be known;

Join in a song with sweet accord,

And thus surround the throne."

Wesley altered it so that it reads

Watts wrote

"Come, ye that love the Lord,
And let your joys be known; " etc.

"The God that rules on high,

And thunders when He please,
That rides upon the stormy sky,
And manages the seas."

Wesley altered it to

"The God that rules on high,

That all the earth surveys,

That rides upon the stormy sky,

And calms the roaring seas."

Here, as one critic remarks, the emendation changes comparative silliness into grandeur.

234. "He dies! the Friend of sinners dies!"

is familiar to all Christians. But how vastly improved from the original of Watts

"He dies! the heavenly Lover dies!

The tidings strike a doleful sound

On my poor heart-strings. Deep he lies

In the cold caverns of the ground."

The testiest objector to hymn-mending would not wish to see restored the girlish fondness of the primary form.

415. "While I draw this fleeting breath,

When my eye-strings crack in death,"

is said to have been Toplady's own language.

"When my eyes shall close in death," etc.,

is a marvelous advance in elegance and beauty on the second line. Written in the heat of controversy, and designed as a

weapon against the Wesleys, the brothers found no difficulty in abridging, altering, and polishing its stanzas, and then in using it as an instrument for the spread of scriptural holiness.

Watts, who had nobility of spirit sufficient to enable him to say of Wesley's "Wrestling Jacob," 737, "That single poem is worth all the verses which I have ever written," does not seem to have been wholly insensible of obligation to the revisory work of his great contemporaries.

The recension of the text of Charles Wesley's, and of all other hymns, has been executed with conscientions and painstaking care. Where restoration could be effected without impairing the unity, dignity, and beauty of the hymn, it has been made, as in the choice litany of Sir Robert Grant. Purity, harmony, effectiveness, have been sought and served throughout the entire recension. Where reconstruction in primitive form has not been deemed advisable, the fact of alteration is honestly stated in connection with the name of the author affixed to the hymn.

HYMNAL WITH TUNES.

One of the biographers of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, states that she had observed the religious value of hymns to the Methodists in their work of revival, and was, therefore, led to engage the service of an eminent Italian composer to make suitable tunes. Horace Walpole, hearing of this said, "It will be a great acquisition to the Methodist sect to have their hymns set by Giardini." It was a great acquisition. Methodism has always sought the best of every thing. John Wesley, whether he caught the idea from Lady Huntingdon or not, acted upon it as early as the year 1761, in the publication of a book entitled "Select Hymns; With Tunes Annexed; Designed Chiefly for the Use of the People called Methodists." That was the first Methodist Hymn-Tune Book. In it "the tune was made wholly subservient to the words, not the words to the tune." Thus the hymn was impressed on the memorythe singers taught to sing "true," and to sing the "best hymns." Wise procedure this; for more stalwart, self-sacrificing, successful Christians were not in those days than those trained Methodist singers. The substitution of ephemeral

trash with jingling tunes for the incomparable hymns and music of the Wesleys has done much to enfeeble piety, to emasculate morality, and to cripple the usefulness of the Church. Hence it is a great acquisition to the Methodists that the sub-committee to whom the preparation of the Hymnal with Tunes was intrusted were able to engage the services of two such eminent composers as Dr. Eben Tourjée, of the Boston Conservatory of Music, and Joseph P. Holbrook, Esq., the musical editor of the leading hymnals with tunes published by the sister denominations. The happiest results may be expected from it.

TITLE.

In closing this article on the revised Methodist Hymnal, a few remarks on the title will not be inappropriate. As defined by Webster, it is a rare, archaic synonym for a sacred lyric, or hymn. The Protestant Churches have lately modified its meaning, so that it now indicates a collection of hymns, and as such will doubtless be defined in the next edition of Webster's "Unabridged Dictionary," nor can any objection to this be valid, since usage makes the lexicon, and not the lexicon the usage. The word "hymnal" as contrasted with "hymn book" has unquestionably the superior merits of sim'plicity and euphony.

FINIS.

The book in its several forms has now entered upon its mission; and long before that mission shall have ended it is more than probable that the majority, if not the whole, of the Revision Committee, will have followed the glorified spirit of the Rev. Dr. William Hunter-one of the ablest of the fifteen -to that "heavenly home" of which he loved to sing, and where he still continues to sing, in strains that

"Outvie the seraph's highest flight,

God's everlasting love to man."

ART. VIII.-WHEN WAS HEROD MADE KING OF

JUDEA?

THE time when Herod was made king of Judea has much to do in determining the time of the birth of Christ. Generally, writers merely make declarative statements of the fact, assigning B. C. 40-41-44; but a recent writer* takes issue with almost all others of modern days in nearly every chronological fact, making the appointment of Herod in the spring of B. C. 39, and the birth of Christ B. C. 2. To ascertain the correctness or inaccuracy of his statement it is necessary to consider the historical facts concerning Herod's becoming king de jure and de facto.

KING DE JURE.-Josephus says (“Antiq.,” xvii, 8, 1) that Herod "reigned since he procured the death of Antigonus thirty-four years, but since he had been declared king by the Romans thirty-seven.". In general terms this clearly indicates three years; but, since some time was taken after the capture of Jerusalem to take Antigonus to Antioch, and for Herod to present his intercession to Antony, it is also clear that three years did not elapse between the appointment and the capture of the city. Josephus gives a more emphatic point in saying ("Antiq.," xiv, 14, 5) that Herod received the appointment by the Roman Senate "on the one hundred and eighty-fourth Olympiad, when Caius Domitius Calvinus was consul the second time, and Caius Asinius Pollio [the first time]." Also, that after this appointment, "when the Senate was dissolved, Antony and Cæsar went out of the Senate-house with Herod between them ("Antiq.," xiv, 14, 5) to offer sacrifice," and to lay up their decrees in the capitol."

These statements, then, involve the necessity of establishing the date of several facts.

1. The time B. C. of the one hundred and eighty-fourth Olympiad.--Caspari makes this Olympiad embrace the years U. C. 715-718, (p. 20,) and B. C. 39-36, (p. 52,) in which he takes issue with Usher, who makes it agree with U. C. 710-713, and Jarvis, who makes it correspond with U. C. 710-713, and

"A Chronological and Geographical Introduction to the Life of Christ," by Ch. Ed. Caspari. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh. New York, Scribner & Co.

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