More than meets the eye

His foundation is in the holy mountains.
      The LORD loves the gates of Zion
            More than all the other dwelling places of Jacob.
      Glorious things are spoken of you,
            O city of God.

I'm sure I haven't sung the old hymn for years, but its sweet familiarity came back to me in a Nano-second. It's one of many that originated in a partnership between William Cowper and John Newton--John Newton of "Amazing Grace" fame, the slave-trader who walked away from a life he came to despise after his abiding conversion to the Christian faith. It was Newton who wrote "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken," the lyric that rode the musical line playing in my ear the moment she read the words.

I'm almost 70, so nostalgia comes to me grippingly, I guess; but I'll admit it anyway: sometimes old things ring so sweetly that I choose to stay with the memory a while. I'll admit it: for several minutes I have no idea what my wife was reading for our devotions that night. I was singing "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," the kind of old hymn that returns with almost shameful reverence when so many worship services we attend these days use music I don't know and don't care to learn. Truth be told, there I was, in the church I attended as a boy, the whole congregation singing "Glorious Things." Nostalgia is ever more inviting these days, even a bit debilitating. 

But then, there are fine reasons to honor that old hymn. Newton, who later in life described his slave-trading days as "a business at which my heart now shudders," got together with Cowper to write hymns, in part, history tells us, as a measure to keep his friend Cowper sane, literally. Think of it "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" as therapy because it was. That old hymn has created its own anthologies of beautiful stories.

And then there's its presumptuous theological underpinnings. I'm told a score of hymnbooks don't use the final stanza of "Glorious Things" because of its shameless Calvinism: 

Saviour, if of Zion's city
  I through grace a member am,
Let the world deride or pity,
  I will glory in Thy name:
Fading is the worldling's pleasure,
  All his boasted pomp and show:
Solid joys and lasting treasure,
  None but Zion's children know.

What I'm saying is, there's good reason that old hymn came out of hiding when my wife read verse 3 of Psalm 87, ample reason. 

But, in public at least, I'll probably never sing Newton's old hymn again. It's traditional musical setting couldn't be more beautiful, a melody created by Frans Joseph Hadyn from an Austrian folk tune so beloved it became the national anthem of Austria, and, eventually, Germany, the Third Reich, in fact. So the Nazis loved it too, used it for worship, nationalistic worship. It rang soulfully from beneath those swastika banners, its fighting men teared up to sing it or hear it sung.

And thus that great hymn became impossible for millions of others to sing or even hear. John Newton's old words have been put into other musical settings, but what I heard in my memory when I heard Psalm 87:3 was John Newton, William Cowper, and Franz Joseph Hadyn. No doubt. 

That there's meaning in words sometimes needs remembering. But there's also meaning in associations; they say something too, sometimes more powerfully than words. 

For a moment, my whole consciousness was high-jacked by nostalgia that turned, in a second, to disgruntlement--why don't we sing great old hymns like that anymore?

And then, just a few minutes later, I couldn't help remembering men and women who lived through the Nazi occupation of Holland, heard them claim with fists clenched how they could not, even if they knew better, sing that damned music when they remembered what so many of them could not forget, even if they wished to.

There's more to life than meets the eye, more than words can tell.