It seems to me the discussion could be helped by a robust definition of the word 'hymn'. Can you help with that Dr. Strange?
The First paragraph is a general definition. The second has a brief but interesting history on the use of hymns in the early Church. It is long but I think it adds historical context to this debate. The third describes pagan usage of hymns. These last two are provided by James Strong. This is the same Strong behind the famous Strong's Dictionary
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hymn. From Greek hymnos, a song sung to a deity. The field covering the study and practice of church music is called hymnody. The Psalter contains many hymns, and Christians sang these (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16; 1 Cor 14:26) and other compositions (Phil 2:6–11; 1 Tim 3:16), and early on new compositions were welcome (Tert., Apol. 39). Throughout the Middle Ages hymns, mostly the Psalter, were sung by clerical choirs, and not by the laity (in much of the OC singing is done by the *clergy and choir). Modern congregational hymn singing, including newer compositions, essentially began with Luther, though the Calvinist churches tended toward psalm singing. Later Watts composed original hymns sung to the older meters developed for the psalms. Wesley was influenced by the personal emphasis of the pietists (see Routley). The nineteenth century saw the recapturing of the medieval Latin hymns, this time for congregational singing. Many of the well-known English-language hymns sung in churches today are rooted in the later evangelical movements (see gospel song). Revival and evangelistic-meeting songs include “How Great Thou Art!” and “It Is Well with My Soul.” A number of women have written hymns, among them Frances Havergal, Christina Rossetti and Fanny Crosby.
Provance, B. S. (2009). In Pocket Dictionary of Liturgy & Worship (pp. 68–69). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic."
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Hymnology. “Poetry and its twin sister music are the most sublime and spiritual arts, and are much more akin to the genius of Christianity, and minister far more copiously to the purposes of devotion and edification than architecture, painting, and sculpture. They employ word and tone, and can speak thereby more directly to the spirit than the plastic arts by stone and color, and give more adequate expression to the whole wealth of the world of thought and feeling. In the Old Testament, as is well known, they were essential parts of divine worship; and so they have been in all ages, and almost all branches of the Christian Church. Of the various species of religious poetry, the hymn is the earliest and most important. It has a rich history, in which the deepest experiences of Christian life are stored. But it attained full bloom (as we will notice below) in the evangelical Church of the German and English tongue, where it, like the Bible, became for the first time truly the possession of the people, instead of being restricted to priest or choir” (Schaff, Ch. History). “A hymn is a lyrical discourse to the feelings. It should either excite or express feeling. The recitation of historical facts, descriptions of scenery, narrations of events, meditations, may all tend to inspire feeling. Hymns are not to be excluded, therefore, because they are deficient in lyrical form or in feeling, if experience shows that they have power to excite pious emotions. Not many of Newton’s hymns can be called poetical, yet few hymns in the English language are more useful” (Beecher, Preface to the Plymouth Collection). The hymn, as such, is not intended to be didactic, and yet it is one of the surest means of conveying “sound doctrine,” and of perpetuating it in the Church. The Greek and Latin fathers well understood this. Bardesanes (see below) “diffused his Gnostic errors in Syriac hymns; and till that language ceased to be the living organ of thought, the Syrian fathers adopted this mode of inculcating truth in metrical compositions. The hymns of Arius were great favorites, and contributed to spread his peculiar doctrines. Chrysostom found the hymns of Arian worship so attractive that he took care to counteract the effect of them as much as possible by providing the Catholic Church with metrical compositions. Augustine also composed a hymn in order to check the errors of the Donatists, whom he represents as making great use of newly-composed hymns for the propagation of their opinions. The writings of Ephraem Syrus, of the 4th century, contain hymns on various topics, relating chiefly to the religious questions of the day which agitated the Church.” Yet a mere setting forth of Christian doctrine in verse does not constitute a hymn; the thoughts and the language of the Scriptures must be reproduced in a lyrical way in order to serve the needs of song. The most popular and lasting hymns are those which are most lyrical in form, and at the same time most deeply penetrated with Christian life and feeling. Nor can hymns, in the proper sense of the word, be other than popular. The Romish Church discourages congregational worship, and therefore she produces few hymns, notwithstanding the number of beautiful religious compositions which are to be found in her offices, and the fine metrical productions of the Middle Ages, of which more in a later portion of this article. Hymns for Protestants, being “composed for congregational use, must express all the varieties of emotion common to the Christian. They must include in their wide range the trembling of the sinner, the hope and joy of the believer; they must sound the alarm to the impenitent, and cheer the afflicted; they must summon the Church to an earnest following of her Redeemer, go down with the dying to the vale of death, and make it vocal with the notes of triumph; they must attend the Christian in every step of his life as a heavenly melody. There can be nothing esoteric in the hymn. Besides this, the hymn, skilfully linked with music, becomes the companion of a Christian’s solitary hours. It is the property of a good lyric to exist in the mind as a spiritual presence; and thus, as a ‘hidden soul of harmony,’ it dwells, a soul in the soul, and rises, often unsought, into distinct consciousness. The worldly Göthe advised, as a means of making life less commonplace, that one should ‘evéry day, at least, hear a little song or read a good poem.’ Happier he who, from his abundant acquaintance with Christian lyrics, has the song within him; who can follow the purer counsel of Paul, and ‘speak to himself in hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in his heart to the Lord’ (Eph. 5:19)” (Methodist Quarterly, July, 1849). For the vocal execution of hymns as a part of Church service, see SINGING; and for their instrumental accompaniments, see MUSIC.
On the question of the use of hymns of human composition in the Church, there were disputes at a very early period. The Council of Braga (Portugal), A.D. 563, forbade the use of any form of song except psalms and passages of Scripture (Canon xii). On this subject, Bingham remarks that it was in ancient times “
no objection against the psalmody of the Church that she sometimes made use of psalms and hymns of human composition, besides those of the sacred and inspired writers. For though
St. Austin reflects upon the Donatists for their psalms of human composition, yet it was not merely because they were human, but because they preferred them to the divine hymns of Scripture, and their indecent way of chanting them, to the grave and sober method of the Church. St. Austin himself made a psalm of many parts, in imitation of the 119th Psalm; and this he did for the use of his people, to preserve them from the errors of Donatus.
It would be absurd to think that he who made a psalm himself for the people to sing should quarrel with other psalms merely because they were of human composition. It has been demonstrated that there always were such psalms, and hymns, and doxologies composed by pious men, and used in the Church from the first foundation of it; nor did any but Paulus Samosatensis take exception to the use of them; and he did so not because they were of human composition, but because they contained a doctrine contrary to his own private opinions.
St. Hilary and St. Ambrose made many such hymns, which, when some muttered against in the Spanish churches because they were of human composition, the fourth Council of Toledo made a decree to confirm the use of them, together with the doxologies ‘Glory be to the Father,’ etc., ‘Glory be to God on high,’ threatening excommunication to any that should reject them. The only thing of weight to be urged against all this is a canon of the Council of Laodicea, which forbids all ἰδιωτικοὺς ψαλμούς, all private psalms, and all uncanonical books to be read in the Church. For it might seem that by private psalms they mean all hymns of human composition. But it was intended rather to exclude apocryphal hymns, such as went under the name of Solomon, as Balzamon and Zonaras understand it, or else such as were not approved by public authority in the Church. If it be extended further, it contradicts the current practice of the whole Church besides, and cannot, in reason, be construed as any more than a private order for the churches of that province, made upon some particular reasons unknown to us at this day. Notwithstanding, therefore, any argument to be drawn from this canon,
it is evident the ancients made no scruple of using psalms or hymns of human composition, provided they were pious and orthodox for the substance, and composed by men of eminence, and received by just authority, and not brought in clandestinely into the Church” (Orig. Eccles. bk. xiv, ch. i).
Worman, J. H., W. J. R. T. (1891). Hymnology. In Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (Vol. 4, pp. 433–434). New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers.
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Hymn (Ὕμνος). This term, as used by the Greeks, primarily signified simply a song (comp. Homer, Od. viii, 429; Hesiod, Op. et Dies, 659; Pindar, Ol. i, 170; xi, 74; Isthm. iv, 74; Pyth. x, 82; Æsch. Eum. 331; Soph. Antig. 809; Plato, Republ. v, 459, E, etc.); we find instances even in which the cognate verb ὑμνεῖν is used in a bad sense (φαύλως ἐκλαμβάνεται, Eustath. p. 634; comp. Soph. Elect. 382; Œd. Tyr. 1275; Eurip. Med. 425); but usage ultimately appropriated the term to songs in praise of the gods. We know that among the Greeks, as among most of the nations of antiquity, the chanting of songs in praise of their gods was an approved part of their worship (Clem. Alex. Strom. vi, 633, ed. Sylburg., Porphyr. de Abstin. iv, sec. 8; Phurnutus, De Nat. Deor. c. 14; Alex. ab Alex. Gen. Dies, iv, c. 17, s. f.; Spanheim in not. ad Callimachum, p. 2; comp. Meiners, Geschichte aller Religionen, c. 13); and even at their festive entertainments such songs were sometimes sung (Athen. Deipnos. xiv, xv, 14; Polyb. Hist. iv, 20, ed. Ernesti). Besides those hymns to different deities which have come down to us as the composition of Callimachus, Orpheus, Homer, Linus, Cleanthes, Sappho, and others, we may with confidence refer to the choral odes of the tragedians as affording specimens of these sacred songs, such of them, at least, as were of a lyric character (Snedorf, De Hymnis Vet. Græc. p. 19). Such songs were properly called hymns. Hence Arrian says distinctly (De Exped. Alex. iv, 11, 2), ὕμνοι μὲν ἐς τοὺς θεοὺς ποιοῦνται, ἔπαινοι δὲ ἐς ἀνθρώπους. So also Phavorinus: ὕμνος, ἡ πρὸς θεὸν ᾠδή. Augustine (in Psa. lxxii) thus fully states the meaning of the term: “Hymni laudes sunt Dei cum cantico. Hymni cantus sunt, continentes laudes Dei. Si sit laus, et non sit Dei, non est hymnus. Si sit laus et Dei laus, et non cantatur, non est hymnus. Oportet ergo ut si sit hymnus, habeat haec tria, et laudem et Dei et canticum.” See CHANT.
M’Clintock, J., & Strong, J. (1891). Hymn. In Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (Vol. 4, p. 432). New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers."
While some relations reverted to an "a", my gggggggrandfather Coldwell (but pronounced Caldwell) spelled it that way when he came over with the first Scots Irish wave in 1718 from Donegral. Jeri is right, I worked on a small but full psalter for my church making use of those they had learned over the years. Got permission to use from some various psalters. The too many the church was used to from the 1912 we redid those against the predecessor to it (1871 I think) and a few fresh renderings.
