The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #93597   Message #1813228
Posted By: Haruo
18-Aug-06 - 04:06 PM
Thread Name: What makes a good hymn?
Subject: RE: What makes a good hymn?
Joe wrote The Doxology ("Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow") is a trinitarian verse sung at the beginning or end of various psalms - and it's often sung by itself to the tune of "Old Hundredth" when the offering is brought forward in Protestant churches. The Trinity is not part of Jewish belief, so there aren't any trinitarian verses in the Psalms.

Two things:

First, that doxology (not the only one of course, texts like the Gloria Patri are also doxologies, as are some brief passages in Paul's letters etc etc, but this one is so deeply entrenched in the churches that use it to bless the offering that their people call it "The Doxology") is actually (originally) the last stanza of Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun by Thomas Ken, 1674. This hymn is normally not sung to Old Hundredth (if indeed it is sung at all; one wonders how many decades it's been since a congregation sang the whole 12 stanzas!

Second, while the Psalms in their original form contain no overt Trinitarian formulas, and indeed no overt references to Jesus, this did not keep folks like Watts and Montgomery from coming up with great Advent hymns cast as metrical psalms: Joy to the World! and Hail to the Lord's Anointed come to mind.

Haruo