My God I love thee

There is a hymn that begins "My God I love thee not because" which has always been something of a source of amusement, because so far as the words themselves go, you can't exactly tell, by the end of the first line, whether you are about to explain to God what exactly is the reason why you don't love him, or what exactly is not the reason why you love him. Indeed the text remains unclear about which is your intention, even when you've added that it is because you hope for heaven thereby—obviously we all know that it would be odd to not love him because that way you hope to get to heaven, so we can make sense of the hymn by bringing our own knowledge to the interpretation. But the words themselves, in the translation we are accustomed to, do not manage to get the sense clear.

There is nothing to choose between the NEH and the EH as regards authenticity of the words of this hymn. Both give the same words and attribute them to Edward Caswall (1506-1552), as a translation of a Latin original beginning "O Deus ego amo te".

1. O Deus, ego amo te,
   Nec amo te, ut salves me,
   Aut, quia non amantes te
   Æterno punis igne.
2. Tu, tu, mi Jesu, totum me
   Amplexus es in cruce;
   Tuliste clavos, lanceam,
   Multamque ignominiam,
3. Innumeros dolores,
   Sudores, et angores,
   Et mortem, et hæc propter me,
   Ac pro me peccatore.
4. Cur igitur non amem te,
   O Jesu amantissime,
   Non, ut in cœlo salves me,
   Aut ne æternum damnes me,
5. Nec præmii ullius spe;
   Sed sicut tu amasti me?
   Sic amo et amabo te,
   Solum quia Rex meus es,
   Et solum, quia Deus es.

Notice that the Latin has the advantage of indicating that the singer declares that he/she does love God, and does not add "not because" in the first line. In English, because "God" and "I" and "love" are monosyllabic in English, you can't complete the line in the same metre by just saying "O God I love thee".

My interest in this hymn is two fold. First it has an interesting history: the Latin is not the original but is a translation of a Spanish original beginning "No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte" (and notice that this line does exactly what the English version does, and starts by saying that I am not moved to love God...)

The author of the Spanish original is not known, but is thought to be St Francis Xavier, who is also credited with the Latin translation, though it seems very doubtful that the Latin is actually by him. Several Latin versions are known (see the account in the Catholic Encyclopedia) starting with one  by Joannes Nadasi in his "Pretiosæ occupationes morientium" (Rome, 1657) which follows the Spanish by beginning "Non me movet, Domine, ad amandum te". The one that begins "O Deus ego amo te" is of unknown authorship and appeared in "Cœleste Palmetum" (Cologne, 1696).

What about Caswall's English translation? I am unsure what the last line of the first verse should be. EH and NEH both make us sing "are lost eternally". This is all very well (a nicely delicate way of describing the fate of those who don't love God) but the rhyme between "eternally in line 4, and "thereby" in line two is not great.

Oremus Hymnal agrees with EH and co. The Nethymnal (aka Cyberhymnal) gives "may eternally die" which rhymes with "thereby" but doesn't scan. This seems implausible.

The Catholic Cornucopia (along with a few other sources I've checked) gives "must burn eternally" which appears to be closer to the Latin, and plausibly what Caswall wrote, though it still suffers from the half rhyme. I can imagine that some editors thought "lost" was a more comfortable phrasing for modern sensibilities. My guess would be that Caswall wrote that, and that it's been altered due to the fashions of theological squeamishness, because we don't much dwell these days on the hell fires that are supposed to torment those who are "lost eternally".

A thing most wonderful

This year, unusually, I was at Little St Mary's on Ash Wednesday, and we sang the hymn that begins "It is a thing most wonderful". Unfortunately we sang the badly corrupted version of it that appears in the New English Hymnal, so I was not sure whether to be delighted (because it's one of my favourite hymns that I first learnt at Little St Mary's in the good old days before they burned their copies of the English Hymnal) or to be distressed because it was so far from being the hymn I knew and loved.

The original words are by Bishop W.W. How, from his Children's Hymns of 1872. They were included in the English Hymnal under the "At Catechism" section, but evidently their success at conveying some profound theology by way of childish words has earned them a place in the grown-up repertoire too, and they now figure in the passiontide section of the NEH.

Or rather a sadly debased construction appears there, attributed quite unfairly to W.W. How (without any obelus at all). It looks as if they suppose that if you leave out the verses that had asterisks in the English Hymnal you have not done any damage to the hymn. But of course, it might be that if you leave both the asterisked verses out, the hymn doesn't really say much any more, or indeed doesn't actually make sense.

Here's how the verses should go:

1 It is a thing most wonderful,
Almost too wonderful to be,
That God’s own Son should come from Heav’n,
And die to save a child like me.

2 And yet I know that it is true;
He chose a poor and humble lot,
And wept, and toiled, and mourned, and died,
For love of those who loved Him not.

3 I cannot tell how He could love
A child so weak and full of sin;
His love must be most wonderful,
If He could die my love to win.

4 I sometimes think about the cross,
And shut my eyes, and try to see
The cruel nails and crown of thorns,
And Jesus crucified for me.

5 But even could I see Him die,
I could but see a little part
Of that great love, which, like a fire,
Is always burning in His heart.

6 It is most wonderful to know
His love for me so free and sure;
But ’tis more wonderful to see
My love for Him so faint and poor.

7 And yet I want to love Thee, Lord;
Oh, light the flame within my heart,
And I will love Thee more and more,
Until I see Thee as Thou art.

The important thing to notice here is the progression between verse 4 and verse 5. When verse 5 says "But even could I see him die", it refers back to the imaginary attempt to see him die described in verse 4 ("I sometimes... shut my eyes and try to see"). Without that, the idea that "even if I could see him, it would be only a small part" makes no sense. Alas, verse 4 has gone from the NEH.

You could almost make some sense of it if you had verse 3 instead ("His love must be most wonderful, if he could die my love to win") because then there's some progression to thinking that in reality the love is even more wonderful than just what the death alone reveals. But, alas, verse 3 has gone too.

But still, even if you had verse 3, too much is lost if you don't precede verse 5 with the vision in verse 4 of what it would be like to undergo the cruel nails and crown of thorns. For it is those—importantly, those terrible things— that would be only a small part of the real love, the real love that we can't see even if we successfully imagine the crucifixion in all its excruciating misery.

So, although the rest of the hymn, apart from verses 3 and 4, is there intact at 84 in the NEH, it seems as if the heart of it has been amputated. What is the good of verse 5 if all you've got is the trivial stuff mentioned in verse 2 "And wept and toiled and mourned and died" as the antecedent of "But even could I see him die"? There's nothing there to ground the argument that the love that we inevitably can't see is so immense, given that what we can see, when we try hard and use our imagination to its uttermost, is just a small part of it.

Another sad case.

I mean, what's so wrong with leaving all How's verses in and supplying the asterisks, in case anyone feels queasy about it? I assume there's some ideological queasiness at work here, no?

Forty Days and Forty Nights

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ENTRY IS PARTLY WRONG, BECAUSE I USED A BAD SOURCE FOR SMYTTAN'S ORIGINAL WORDS. I HOPE TO REVISE THE ENTRY AND REISSUE IT AS A SECOND EDITION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

The first sunday in Lent wouldn't be the first sunday in Lent if we didn't have Forty days and forty nights on the hymn list. And this year, being the year of Mark in the Lectionary, it fits quite well, with its emphasis on Christ's superhuman fasting and endurance during his period in the Wilderness, rather than on the more human side of the temptations that we were looking at in connection with Lead Us Heavenly Father Lead Us (see above, January 15th).

The hymn that we know and love is a composite created originally for Hymns A&M in its first edition (1861). It is partly based on some verses by G.H. Smyttan (1822-70) but heavily altered by Francis Pott (1832-1909). Smyttan published his verses in the Penny Post in 1856, but it's hard to discover exactly what he wrote, and what has been re-written by others. Several of the hymnals on the Web claim to be giving us words by Smyttan, but they actually give us words that are identical to the ones we know, revised by Pott. By contrast, the only one I've found that appears to have Smyttan's original words for verse 3 is a powerpoint file of the hymn downloadable at familyfriendlychurches.org.uk/midihymns/HP130.ppt. But that claims, rather oddly, that the words it gives are by Smyttan and Pott.

Verse 3 is clearly the one that everyone thinks they must have a go at improving.

Here's what I believe Smyttan wrote for verse 3:

Shall not we thy sorrow share,
Learn thy discipline of will,
And, like thee, by fast and prayer
Wrestle with the powers of ill?

There's actually not much wrong with that. It seems to express something of the idea that the lenten discipline is to be modelled on a discipline that was meaningful to Christ himself, in a life in which fasting and prayer were part and parcel of a struggle against evil. Perhaps the phrase "the powers of ill" is not awfully felicitous, but the point it is making is a good one.

Francis Pott offered a re-write of that verse as follows:

Shall not we thy sorrow share,
And from earthly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer,
Glad with thee to suffer pain?

In the English Hymnal 'sorrow' in the first line of that Pott verse has become 'watchings', and in many hymnals 'sorrow' has become 'sorrows'. In one or other of those variants, this is the verse that most of us habitually sing, if we were brought up on Hymns A&M, the English Hymnal, the Public School Hymn Book or whatever.

Theologically, I think it has to be said that the verse by Pott is less good, than the verse by Smyttan. There is no indication of why we should want to engage in these kinds of abstinence and pain (other than solidarity with the apparently pointless sufferings Jesus was undergoing at the time). There is no hint that it might be part of a programme of wrestling against the powers of evil. So in that sense it does appear just to glorify the fun of pain for the sake of pain, and abstinence from earthly joys as if there was something obviously wrong with them.

But as poetry I think there is much to be said for Pott's verse, especially in the version with 'watchings' that appeared in the English Hymnal. The first line has a pleasing pair of alliterations on the sh and w sounds ("Shall not we thy watchings share"). The juxtaposition of the rejection of earthly joys in line 2 and with the notion of taking up pains gladly in the last line, which points up the contrast between the apparent joys of earthly things and the real joys of spiritual commitment, is nicely done; indeed the very oxymoronic structure of the last line, starting with 'glad' and ending with 'pain' is a treat. And the third line, "fasting with unceasing prayer", is neat and comfortable: it fits the metre and rhyme scheme smoothly and without any grammatical awkwardness.

The New English Hymnal follows Songs of Praise in rejecting both Pott's re-write, and Smyttan's original for verse 3, and susbstituting instead something that was created by Percy Dearmer (though the NEH doesn't admit that). For the last appearance of Percy Dearmer in this Blog see above, 12th February. Actually probably the NEH is right not to name Dearmer, but just to put in a double dagger, because they can't even bring themselves to leave that version alone either.

Here's what Dearmer wrote for verse 3:

Let us thy endurance share
And from earthly greed abstain,
With thee watching unto prayer,
With thee strong to suffer pain.

Here we are not glad to suffer pain with Jesus, but rather strong to suffer our own pain perhaps (and do I sense that we get our strength from him, rather than trying to be strong for him?).

We do not abstain from earthly joys but from earthly greed, which is presumably an excessive desire for earthly pleasures. So this is not asceticism or lenten fasting but merely standard virtue, not being greedy. I think that rather reduces the significance of Jesus's fasting in the wilderness: it was perhaps more than just a rejection of greed, no?

And the watchings or sorrows have gone, and have become 'endurance' instead. So again there is less active engagement in extra disciplines— we are not so much invited to share in Jesus's expedition into the wilderness but rather to see our everyday lives as providing opportunities for endurance of suffering and pain (though this is slightly modified by the idea of watching unto prayer in line 3).

And notice the hiatus in the first line of Dearmer's verse: "thy endurance" is not easy to sing without ending up with a word that seems to be "yendurance".

The editors of the NEH have chosen Dearmer's verse, which seems to me, of the three the worst both poetically and theologically. However, they have eliminated the hiatus in the first line by changing 'thy' to 'thine'.
They've also got rid of the greed and put back the joys by changing line 2 to say "And awhile from joys abstain". But that's a disaster too because surely it isn't all joys we abstain from (after all, as Pott had taught us to sing, we are glad and take pleasure in the spiritual endeavours that we can share with Christ). So we needed that 'earthly joys' phrase because it showed that we are not miserable people and kill-joys—we are just checking ourselves and re-orienting ourselves to the real joys, the joys of being a disciple and taking upon ourselves the discipline that goes with that.

Those thoughts, about the worthless joys that we give up and the worthwhile joys that we obtain thereby, were put into this hymn by Francis Pott. They were not the work of Smyttan (it seems, if I've reconstructed this correctly). But they do have something to tell us about the meaning of the lenten fast. But do I detect in the NEH editors' preference for the verse by Dearmer some kind of inability to understand either the poetry of Pott's version, or its delight in ascetic commitment?

Do they perhaps think that abstaining from joy is what it's all about?

How sad! No wonder they think we only want to do it for a while.


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