Huntingdonshire, where he was rector before he left the Anglican Church. He had been taught the power of hymns before he went over to Rome. We may add that he learned his art from Protestant models, for he set himself to emulate the simplicity and intense fervour of the Olney hymns and those of the Wesleys. Speaking of them as a whole, Faber's hymns are too luscious and sentimental; nevertheless some of them are treasures which we would be sorry indeed to lack in our Common Book of Praise. Mr. Earle says, 'To these three—Cardinal Newman, Caswall, and Faber—the Roman Catholic hymnody in England principally owes its revival.' Anglicanism produced them all. Roman Catholic congregations thus owe no small debt to the Church of England, and in some sense they have well repaid it. Our noblest hymns are dear alike to all sections of the Church. They show that deep down beneath all our differences lie great fundamental truths in which true Christian people are at one. Such hymns are what Dean Stanley would have called the homely facts which turn away the wrath 'kindled by an anathema, by an opinion, by an argument.' The hymns which Romanist and Protestant alike delight to sing are a step towards that true catholicity of spirit which, amid all our divergences, we delight to cultivate.
As Henry Ward Beecher puts it, 'There is almost no heresy in the hymn-book. In hymns and psalms we have a universal ritual. It is the theology of the heart that unites men. Our very childhood is embalmed in sacred tunes and hymns. Our early lives and the lives of our parents hang in the atmosphere of sacred song. The art of singing together is one that is for ever winding invisible threads about persons.'
England is a nation of hymn-singers. Mr. Stead says, 'The songs of the English-speaking people are for the most part hymns. For the mmense majority of our people to-day the minstrelsy is that of the hymn-book. And this is as true of our race beyond the sea as it is of our race at home. Surely those hymns which have most helped the greatest and best of our race are those which bear, as it were, the hallmark of heaven'.
A guide to the development of the Church's song and to some of its national divisions may be found by studying the names and numbers that follow.
The Psalms: Venite, 982; Jubilate, 985; Cantate, 987: Deus Misereatur, 989.
