There are people who tend to idealize the past, to look to the works of those who came before us and say 'gosh, they really knew how to build/write/compose. etc' and they tend to forget that there has been a natural selection going on: only the best they did, the works that were deemed worthy of preservation has survived down to us. Anything less either fell apart or was tossed long ago. This article is a good reminder that there have always been bad hymns. The hymns of our time are, yes, terrible, but, by the same token, no one today would compose:
O Lord, be thou the rider and we the little ass,
That to God’s Holy City together we may pass.
Ahem.
At any rate, enjoy.
2 comments:
Oh my gosh, that's great. Sometimes funny is just funny, and really, if any population of people deserved opportunities to laugh, it seems like we qualify. There's crap on our door is worthy.
It is hilarious. A lot of the hymns named here were cringingly funny. As I have said here and elsewhere, there are two general mistakes that people make when looking to the past. The first is to look back and say 'everything was lousy then, it's so much better now.' The other is to say 'everything is lousy now, it was so much better back then.' When it comes to hymns and most other art forms, I have a marked preference for the older ones. However, I am also aware that not everything they made was a masterpiece, and sometimes it is good to remember that.
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