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J. W. McGarvey Short Essays in Biblical Criticism (1910) |
[Oct. 2, 1897.]
THE THEOLOGY OF HYMNS.
The apostle tells us to teach and admonish one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs; and if we should examine current hymns right closely, we would find that we are teaching one another some things which we ought not to teach, besides a great deal of nonsense. A contributor to The Outlook is writing on the subject of "The Theology in Hymns," and pointing out some strange things which are commonly overlooked. He says some very good things on the subject, yet he shows [237] a wrong bias of his own mind when he comes to speak of hymns, respecting the final judgment. He says:
Most of the hymns on the judgment-day (scarcely a subject to sing about) set it forth as a far-off and awful assize, for which all those who ever dwelt on earth are being treasured up. Where are they meanwhile? It is one of the defects of our earthly courts of justice that prisoners have often to wait for days and weeks before they are brought to trial, and, what is worse, are treated as guilty before they are proven so. But what are these times of waiting to those involved in the idea of one great and simultaneous world-wide assize? Most thinking men have outgrown this idea, and yet it remains within the covers of our hymnals.
"Most thinking men"--that is the expression. Believing men are not now to be considered in comparison with thinking men. Believing men still believe what the Lord and his apostles say about the judgment-day, but "thinking" men have outgrown the idea. The "thinking" men of this generation have outgrown a great many ideas which Christ and his inspired apostles were childish enough to inculcate. But what is strange about these thinking men, they think in very crooked lines when they come to give reasons for their thinking. This writer has outgrown the idea of a great day of world-wide assize, because he thinks that it involves the injustice of earthly courts by keeping in jail all who have lived on the earth, and thus treating them as guilty before they are proved so. It is a pity that he did not think a little about what Jesus says on the subject before he began to grow so fast. If he had, he would have known that during the long waiting-time no man is treated as guilty before he is proved so, as in earthly prisons; but that the guilty are kept where guilty men ought to be kept, in a very disagreeable place; while innocent men are kept in quarters so comfortable that [238] they never grow impatient. They look forward with joy to the coming day, but they are growing happier every day while they wait. If thinking men would learn to think according to the facts in the case, they would never outgrow the ideas of the Son of God. And if they would become believing men, their thinking would not be so likely to inflate them.
[SEBC 237-239]
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