Today’s hymn is ‘Glory to you, O God’ by Howard Gaunt. It’s another of the hymns from the ‘saints’ section of the book. The suggested tune is that of the hymn ‘My song is love unknown’. John made some changes to the words and used a different tune. But these comments are based on the words in Sing Praise.
The first verse gives glory to God for the saints, using the traditional language of the early Church of winning victory in the fight against the evils of fire and sword. The second gives thanks for those saints who walked in humble paths, speaking God’s word and act as shining lights to inform our own lives. The third verse is about ourselves, asking to know God’s truth and walk his way as ‘saints on earth’.
These are three very different concepts of sainthood. The language of the first verse is not commonly used in most Western churches today. Even British saints such as Alban and Thomas (Becket) who were martyred are not usually spoken of as winning victory so much as showing courage in the face of evil, and other martyrs such as Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and (on the Catholic side) Margaret Clitherow are not usually called ‘saints’ even though they showed equal courage and loyalty to their beliefs. The language of war and victory does however still resonate with those in countries where persecution is still a reality. The imagery of the second verse is more commonly found in our British churches, where we remember ‘home grown’ saints such as Cuthbert, Wilfrid and David whose ascetic lives are held up as a model of discipleship. And the concept of all God’s people, living as well as dead, as being saints, is a popular one in our time.
As I read through this hymn the thing that struck me as being most odd was the use of the word “earth” to end both lines 6&7 in verse 3. Usually hymns in this meter (6.6.6.6.4.4.4.4) have rhyme-schemes ABABCDDC, and except for the “A” lines this hymn conforms with that scheme – but repeating a word in a rhyme-scheme is “not allowed” (that’s to say, a pair of words “rhyme” if they are identical from the last stressed vowel to the end of the word, but the stressed vowel is preceded by different consonants – so a word doesn’t count as a rhyme with itself). I found it hard to believe the author had written this pair of words, and that the compilers of the book should have altered them to such a pair – so I tried to do some background research. I also felt that “Love unknown” was too strongly associated with a particular hymn, and settled on “Harewood” (S S Wesley) as being more appropriate.
It turns out that “Common Praise” does pair the hymn with “Harewood” – but it also turns out that Gaunt set the words out in a different arrangement: in 6 lines with meter 6.6.12.4.4.8. This explains the lack of the “A” rhymes in the scheme above, but by including internal rhymes between line 5 and the mid-point of line 6, Gaunt undermined his scheme: if parts of the hymn are not supposed to rhyme one should make sure that they don’t, because otherwise the ear is misled and then subsequently let down.
But it seemed to me that only minimal adjustments were needed to bring the rhyme-scheme to the full strength of ABABCDDC, and accordingly I did.
Back to the words. Stephen is right that we don’t generally think of martyrs as having “won a victory”, despite the early church’s conviction that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”. I think Gaunt’s words help to express the truth that the difference between saints is one of degree rather than of kind: there is a gradation between those who were martyred in noteworthy manners, those who set forth the faith in ways that helped us personally, and our own conduct as saints praying for God’s kingdom to come. St Paul addresses the whole membership of the various churches he writes to as “saints”, and we need to keep this fact firmly in mind.