Excerpt from Popular Hymns: Their Authors and Teaching

Few things reveal the richness of our Christian inheritance and help us to realise the Communion of Saints more than the study of our Church hymns. They take us back into bygone centuries, introduce us to the saints and martyrs of our common faith, supply us with holy thoughts and burning words, and dispose us to join in the ministry of song. The Book of Psalms was the hymn book of our Blessed Lord and His Apostles. The Song of the Blessed Virgin, the Song of Zacharias, and the Song of Simeon, were the earliest New Testament hymns. The angels song, Glory to God in the highest, was the first Christian hymn sung after the birth of Christ; and there is evidence that the early Christians sang it daily, and gradually enlarged it for general use, that, with the angels, they might praise their God and Saviour. Pliny the younger, a heathen writer of the first century, says, Christians meet at anearly hour, before dawn, for worship, and sing a hymn of praise to Christ as God.

In the Christian Church some of the Psalms soon became great favourites, especially the Hundredth, which alone bears the title, A Psalm of Praise, or Thanksgiving, it being all aglow with gratitude and adoration, for the creative power and goodness of our Lord. For, as The Speaker's Commentary says, This Psalm contains a promise of Christianity, as winter at its close contains a promise of Spring. The trees are ready to bud, the flowers are just hidden by the light soil, the clouds are heavy with rain, the sun shines in his strength; only a genial wind from the south is wanted to give a new life to all things. When that new life came through Christ Jesus, this Psalm was felt to express the Church's gratitude, and, in the Metrical Version so well known to us, it became the regular Hymn of Thanksgiving in all branches of the Reformed Church of Christ. It is one of the few Psalms to which Shakespeare refers in his plays.

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