Big movements generate song. If we wish to understand the French, we shall find ourselves singing ‘La Marseillaise’. There is nothing else like it – for national zest, not to mention blood-thirsty language.
The New Testament too was born in song. Simeon was a script-writer. So was Mary. These were not casual utterances; they were complete in form and substance. Snatches of song are also evident in the NT. Paul has one such in mind when he wrote Philippians 2. Even Shakespeare put his sonnets together and expected them to last beyond incised stone. He was much nearer our own time; it is hardly surprising that in NT days we have snatches rather than complete poems, whether on the epic or micro style. In Colossians we have poetic rendering of the early Church’s belief in the primacy of God in creation. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews went out of his or her way to make the point.
The Methodist revival may serve as a guide here. Charles’s hymns were a powerful factor in the travels of his brother John. Newton also made a weighty contribution. Watts and Wesley did some of the heavy lifting while Cowper also put his shoulder to the wheel.
Poetic or prosaic? Which was it to be? People remember what they sing. They forget what they state. This is true of Marxists as much as of any other movement. The red flag is the evidence. Welsh chapels preserved the faith in metered form. We still sing the faith with them.
It is a mistake to think otherwise. Religious faith is not an exercise in box-ticking or exhaustive prescription. It is a message that harnesses the emotions as well as more cerebral activity. It may be studied at university but it is practised amongst the market-stalls. It was found in the stables and is respected in labs.
If it began in song, it ends in the same fashion. We have the words in Revelation 15.
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