Читать книгу Sing With the Understanding - George Reginald Balleine - Страница 10

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A.M.; E.H.; S.P.; A.M.R.; Meth.; Presb.; Cong.; Cong.P.; Bp.; R.C.; Irish; Can.; Am.

One fairly large group of hymns was inspired by the Name of Jesus. “Jesu, Name all names above,” wrote a ninth-century Eastern Abbot. “To the Name that brings salvation,” sang a fifteenth-century Dutchman. “How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds,” cried an English Evangelical. To understand these we must remember what the Name means. In Palestine in the first century there were many babies called Jesus. There were three in the High Priest’s family, who all became High Priests in time. Two of the most notorious local brigands bore the name of Jesus. In the New Testament we meet Jesus Justus, St. Paul’s fellow-worker in Rome, and Jesus, the father of Elymas the Sorcerer. The book Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha was written by Jesus, the son of Sirach. And all these babies were named after one of the great heroes of Jewish history.

Names often change their spelling as they pass from 50 one language to another. John becomes Juan in Spanish, Hans in German, Giovanni in Italian; and Jesus was the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua, the name of the leader under whom the Jews had conquered Palestine. For years they had wandered in the Wilderness, because the conquest of their inheritance seemed too hard a task. But, when they followed Joshua, every difficulty disappeared. The fortress of Jericho fell in seven days. The armies of the Canaanites were put to flight. And Joshua was able to give each family its own particular holding. No wonder they named their children after him. Moreover the meaning of the name added to its popularity. It meant “the Lord is Salvation.”

According to St. Matthew, before Mary’s Baby was born Joseph was told by an Angel in a dream: “Thou shall call His Name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” His very Name would sum up one side of the Child’s mission. By conquering sin He would win for His followers the blessings they had failed to gain. In the fifteenth century it began to be felt that a special day might well be observed to remind Christians what the Name of Jesus meant. Bishops in various parts of Belgium, Germany, England, Scotland and Spain ordered their dioceses to set apart a day for this purpose. The dates varied. Antwerp, which claimed to have originated the Festival, kept it on January 15th, Liége on January 31st, Meissen on March 15th, Salisbury on August 7th, certain Spanish dioceses on the last Sunday in October. In 1530 the Franciscans persuaded the Pope to authorize officially this Feast of the Most Holy 51 Name to be kept in memory of “what Jesus is to us, what He has done for us, and what He is doing for mankind.” Rome has now transferred this to the Second Sunday after Christmas, or, if there is no Second Sunday, to January 2nd; but the Anglican Calendar still retains the Salisbury date of August 7th.

When once the Feast was established, appropriate hymns were provided. “To the Name of our Salvation” was specially written for it, together with others which are not in our present books; but the most popular was the older Jesu, dulcis memoria, which was divided into three sections, one of which was sung at Vespers, one at Matins, and one at Lauds.

No voice can sing, no heart can frame,

Nor can the memory find,

A sweeter sound than Thy blest Name,

O Saviour of mankind.

Of this hymn Ancient and Modern gives no less than three translations, Caswall’s “Jesu, the very thought of Thee,” Neale’s “Jesu, the very thought is sweet,” and Ray Palmer’s “Jesu, Thou Joy of loving hearts.”

All these are fragments of a long Latin poem of forty-two verses (or in one version of fifty), which is much older than the Festival itself. The earliest manuscript that contains it is dated 1267, and there are several others of this century. In all these early copies the hymn is anonymous; but towards the end of the fourteenth century it began to be known as the Jubilus (i.e. Joy Song) of St. Bernard, the famous Abbot of Clairvaux. This guess seemed reasonable, for his 52 sermons contain sentences extraordinarily like this hymn; for example, “If the thought of Thee is so sweet, how sweet will Thy presence be,” and “How good Thou art to the soul that seeks, but what to him who finds!” So for five hundred years he was almost everywhere accepted as the writer.

In 1902 however an article by a Dom. Pothier in the Revue du Chant Grégorien announced that he had found this hymn in some manuscripts of the eleventh century. This would have meant that the hymn was known before Bernard was born. But now it has been suggested that in Pothier’s article “11th century” may be a misprint for “14th,” and in any case he does not disclose where his new manuscripts can be examined. But, even if we ignore this article, it does not follow that Bernard wrote the hymn. Its resemblance to his sermons may merely mean that he knew it and was fond of quoting it. There are other grounds for doubt. We have two hymns of which St. Bernard was undoubtedly the author; and their lumbering Latin bears no resemblance to the fluent, polished versification of Jesu, dulcis memoria. Moreover Mabillon, the Roman Catholic editor of St. Bernard’s works, wrote in 1667: “We cannot be certain about the Jubilus on the Name of Jesus, hitherto ascribed to St. Bernard, for in a certain codex in the Abbey of Vaux de Cernay it is inscribed, The Meditation of a certain Holy Virgin concerning the Love of Jesus.” So it may be the work of a woman, and, since the oldest manuscripts of the poem all come from English sources, perhaps she was an English nun.

Occasionally a hymn may be written in cold blood as 53 a literary exercise, but all the best are the fruit of intense personal feeling. That is obviously the case with this one. Every line thrills with emotion. Arnold Bennett in his Literary Taste asks, “Why is a Classic a Classic?” Why for example does Shakespeare hold his supremacy year after year? The vast majority of stolid ratepayers find him incredibly boring. His fame is maintained, Bennett insists, entirely by “the passionate few.” He repeats this phrase again and again. “It is by the passionate few that the renown of genius is kept alive from one generation to another.” The life of a cause depends on the intensity of emotion that it can create in its supporters. Shakespearian enthusiasts so revel in their Shakespeare that they cannot help inspiring an interest in others. And Christianity has been kept alive largely by “the passionate few,” who, like the writer of this hymn, dwell on the very Name of Jesus with intense devotion. This spirit appears again and again in the hymns of all ages. A much later hymnist cried:

O Jesus, Jesus, dearest Lord,

Forgive me, if I say

For very love Thy precious Name

A thousand times a day.

Another little hymn, often heard in Missions, begins:

Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!

Sing aloud the Name,

Till it softly, sweetly,

Sets all hearts aflame.

One of the old martyr-legends states that, when the 54 breast of St. Ignatius was torn open by a bear, onlookers saw printed on his heart the Name of Jesus, an exaggerated way of asserting that love for Jesus had been the inspiring motive of his life. And the author of Jesu, dulcis memoria was plainly one of these passionate lovers, turning over and over in his or her mind what the word Saviour means:

To those who fall how kind Thou art!

How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah this

Nor tongue nor pen can show.

The last line of this verse however contains a mistranslation. The Latin clearly declares:

The love of Jesus what it is

None but His lovers know,

a reading which the Roman Catholic book retains. But Victorian prudery shrank from calling ourselves lovers of Jesus; so the line was altered to “None but His loved ones know.” This however entirely spoils the meaning. We all hope we are loved; but only those who return Christ’s love know what that love can do for them.

The thought behind the lines,

Who eat Thee hunger still;

Who drink of Thee still feel a void

Which naught but Thou can fill,

is borrowed from Ecclesiasticus, where the Voice of Wisdom cries: “They that eat me shall still be hungry, 55 and they that drink me shall yet thirst.” No real student ever reaches a point at which he gets “fed up” and wants to learn no more. The more he knows, the keener his appetite for knowledge grows. In the same way, says our hymnist, the more intimate we get with Christ, the more ardently we long to know Him better.

In the Office for the Visitation of the Sick the clergyman is bidden to take the sick man by the hand and say: “Almighty God make thee know and feel that there is none other name under heaven given to man in whom and through whom thou mayest receive health and salvation, but only the Name of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” That is the message of this hymn. It throws light on the Prayer-book petition: “Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name.” But perhaps the best comment is four words added at the end of an old Lambeth manuscript of the hymn, “Jesu, esto mihi Jesus,” “Jesu, be to me all that the Name Jesus implies.”