Hymns of Devotion: 25 New Hymns for the Church Jonathan Landry Cruse Paperback: 26 pages. Self-published. Available through Reformed Fellowship: $5.00

Two hundred thousand—that’s the number of hymn texts currently catalogued in Calvin University’s Hymnary.org database, from North American sources alone.1 The ever-expanding library of Christian hymnody demands that we ask weighty questions about why we sing hymns, what makes a good hymn, and what our hymns communicate about Reformed doctrine and living. Jonathan Landry Cruse’s Hymns of Devotion: 25 New Hymns for the Church contributes to the ongoing development of Protestant hymnody in the twenty-first- century English-speaking church, and in doing so it illustrates how one Reformed pastor has begun to ask and answer these questions.

Why do we sing hymns? As Rev. Cruse suggests in his introduction, the word “devotion” can refer to the personal spiritual benefits of writing sacred poetry (vii). It can also point to the usefulness of these songs in individual or family “devotions,” or even to the “devotion” of a whole congregation to the service of God. Hymns express our adoration and supplication of God as we remind ourselves of the key doctrines of the Christian faith, as Rev. Cruse recently explained in The Outlook.2 In singing hymns, believers glorify God and edify one another.

What makes a good hymn? Hymns of Devotion conveys a distinct set of values for excellent hymnody: texts “saturated with the language of Scripture” and “employ[ing] the hallmarks of English poetry,” set to “singable and memorable music” (vii). In keeping with these goals, the texts of Hymns of Devotion exhibit simple and memorable verse rooted in scriptural language. Passages such as the following express the core of the gospel with succinct beauty:

Lord, what repayment can I give? There’s nothing, save this life I live, So let me live for Thee. (2, “Thy Mercy, Lord, Is What I Need”)

And:

To those He has defended well Assurance now is given That since He knew their horrid Hell They all will know His Heaven (14, “Our Advocate”)

The poetry is set to a variety of tunes composed between 1543 and 2019. The contemporary composers are all accomplished church musicians, particularly Dr. Paul S. Jones, whose books and collaboration with Rev. James Montgomery Boice have already impacted twenty-first-century Reformed church music.3 Congregations may stumble over a few awkward melodic leaps and poor part-writing passages in Hymns of Devotion, but several of the new melodies will make elegant contributions to the church’s repertoire.

But in regard to the third question—what hymns communicate about faith and life—Hymns of Devotion offers an imbalanced answer. Many of the texts (“Grace Sought Me” and “I Have Such a Gracious Father,” for example) foreground the individual experience of salvation, but only a few (such as “Here We Witness Covenant Surety”) address the broader communal and covenantal context in which that salvation occurs. Likewise, the texts tilt toward themes of sin and salvation but tend to neglect the domain of service—the everyday aspects of grateful Christian stewardship of the new life God has given. Hymns of Devotion stresses the need for personal “devotion” to Jesus Christ and supplies rich “devotional” literature for individuals, but the church’s corporate “devotion” to its covenant Lord remains underdeveloped.

Of course, it is unfair to expect a booklet of twenty-five hymns composed in a seven-year time frame to provide a comprehensive expression of Christian faith. Yet Hymns of Devotion mirrors some broader deficiencies that characterize nineteenth-century British-American hymnody, a period that constitutes the bulk of many traditional hymnals.4 Originating in the pietism of Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and others, this genre of hymnody tends to promote a sentimental evangelicalism in which personal salvation, not covenant theology, becomes the primary focus. The result is that a small canon of traditional hymns representing a relatively limited spectrum of Christian expression has dominated the church’s musical landscape, crowding out the far more historic traditions of singing psalms and other Scripture passages in worship.5 Although Hymns of Devotion arises, as one reviewer states, out of a desire to “rediscover the lost art of exalting God’s majesty and glory” (iii), its style seems reluctant to press beyond the artificial boundaries of a narrow hymnological tradition.

But this recognition represents a profound opportunity for Rev. Cruse and his collaborators. If, indeed, the art of corporate praise has been lost, its recovery will require the church to step outside a nineteenth-century ideal of worship music to include both older and newer sources of psalmody and hymnody. The Trinity Psalter Hymnal represents the most recent concerted effort to broaden and deepen Reformed and Presbyterian churches’ musical repertoire, and it is fitting that the songbook includes four excellent selections from Hymns of Devotion.6 If its author continues to employ his poetic talents to create texts that reflect the full spectrum of a Reformed world-and-life view, then Hymns of Devotion may represent the seeds of a beautiful and substantial project that will enrich the worship of the twentyfirst- century church.

1. “Browse Texts,” Hymnary.org, https://hymnary.org/texts?qu=%20in%3Atexts, accessed December 20, 2019.

2. Jonathan Landry Cruse, “Singing the Sacraments: Introducing a New Hymn on Baptism,” The Outlook 69, no. 6 (November/ December 2019): 30–31.

3. See Paul S. Jones, Singing and Making Music: Issues in Church Music Today (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2006); Paul S. Jones, What Is Worship Music? (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2010); James Montgomery Boice and Paul S. Jones, Hymns for a Modern Reformation (Philadelphia: TenthMusic, 2000).

4. Rev. Brian Lee raises this point in “The Trinity Psalter Hymnal by the Numbers,” Christian Renewal 36, no. 10 (April 13, 2018): 18–19.

5. D. G. Hart, “Psalters, Hymnals, Worship Wars, and American Presbyterian Piety,” in Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm-Singing for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Joel R. Beeke and Anthony T. Selvaggio (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 61–77.

6. “O the Deep, Unbounded Riches (226)”; “Lamb, Precious Lamb” (353); “Thy Mercy, Lord, Is What I Need” (507); “More Than Conquerors” (515).