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Separating the Sheep from the Goats: Victorian Didactic Hymns*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
Charles Kingsley complained in 1848, “We have used the Bible as if it were a mere constable's handbook—an opium-dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded—a mere book to keep the poor in order.” Kingsley was outraged that religion should be used for the utilitarian purpose of keeping the lower classes in their place. And yet, in most societies religion has traditionally served the very practical purpose of supporting the established social order. To this end the Christian church—and in this regard it is no different than any other institutionalized religion—has preached a social ethic of obedience and submission to the government in power and to the established social order. The church does this by sanctioning a given code of behavior: those people who conform to the prescribed behavioral norm will achieve salvation, while those who fail to conform are ostracized from the religious community and, presumably, are damned. In sociological terms, the code of behavior approved by a given society is most often determined by that society's most influential groups, always with a view (not always conscious or deliberate) of maintaining the groups' dominance. From the point of view of the least influential classes, this didactic function of the church may be seen as an effort at social control, at internal colonialism—in Kinglsey's words, an effort simply to keep the “beasts of burden…, the poor in order.” In terms of biblical imagery the church's didactic function is to separate the sheep from the goats, that is, to set a standard of “respectable” behavior to be followed by the compliant sheep, with probable eternal damnation and temporal punishment for the recalcitrant goats.
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- Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1976
Footnotes
*
For his critical reading of an earlier version of this article, I am indebted to Gerald J. Cavanaugh of George Mason University.
References
1 Quoted by Edwards, David L., Religion and Change (New York, 1969), p. 62.Google Scholar
2 Those familiar with the differences between sheep and goats will recognize how apt and revealing such a metaphor is: sheep will be herded, will follow the leader, are meek, stupid and productive; goats are individualists, aggressive, quite intelligent, and, perhaps most telling, sexually active (the horns and cloven hoofs ascribed to the devil are not accidental attributes). Rulers always prefer sheep to goats.
3 Hyams, Edward, trans., Taine's Notes on England (Fair Lawn, N.J., 1958), p. 99Google Scholar. Another example of the Victorian belief that lower class morality was different from upper class morality and potentially dangerous to social well-being can be seen in the attitude of Dr.Acton, William, author of The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (1857)Google Scholar. Acton believed that women had few sexual feelings. The exception to this statement, Acton said, were the “low and vulgar women”—i.e., women of the lower classes—who did experience sexual desires and who consequently tempted men to immoral depravity and probably eventual ruin and/or insanity. From Marcus, Steven, The Other Victorians, A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England (New York, 1964).Google Scholar
Bax, Ernest Belfort, in Reminiscences and Reflexions of a Mid and Late Victorian (New York, 1967; originally London, 1918), pp. 17–18Google Scholar, confirms this belief that religion was a vital support to order and property: “…in discussing Freethought in religion or Radicalism in politics, as a makeweight to the conventional arguments against such subversive doctrines, one often heard it thrown in, that if Freethought prevailed, or the political constitution were overthrown, there would be no security for property and its interests. Apart from the truth of theological doctrine or political theory, religion and the existing English constitution were necessary to keep the lower classes in order.”
4 Hyams, , Taine's Notes, p. 158Google Scholar. Taine wrote about church services: “The ceremony is an ethical meeting [sic] at which the chairman does his talking from the pulpit instead of the platform.
In the sermons, as in the religion itself, dogma always takes a back seat and attention is chiefly paid to the means and will required in order to live a good life. Religion as such, with its emotions and great visions is hardly more than the poetry which informs ethics or a background to morality.”
5 Churchill, Winston S., My Early Life, A Roving Commission (New York, 1930), p. 114.Google Scholar
6 For a more complete view of nineteenth-century hymnody as a source of social history, see my unpublished doctoral dissertation, “Nineteenth-Century English Hymns as a Reflection of Victorian Society” (University of Delaware, 1975)Google Scholar. The hymns in this study have been gathered from a wide variety of sources: denominational hymnals, privately published editions of hymns and poems, and diverse secondary sources. Where possible, the author of a hymn will be identified, followed by the first line of the hymn (which in most cases is the title) and the date of composition. A hymnbook in which I found thee hymn will also be cited. I have not identified hymns according to denomination because it is often misleading to ascribe hymns to the denomination of their author. Hymns were readily borrowed and adapted from one denomination to another during the nineteenth century. An outstanding example of this transdenominational borrowing is Frederick Faber's Faith of our Fathers, which rapidly became a favorite in many nonconformist churches. The obviously Catholic verses were omitted or adapted.
7 Quoted by Young, Kenneth, Chapel (London, 1972), p. 71Google Scholar. This evocation of lost worlds must have been poignantly memorable not only for colonists far from home but also for the many Victorians who had been transplanted from rural to urban communities and for the many Englishmen who simply felt that the uncomplicated world of childhood had been replaced in their adulthood by a less comprehensible industrialized, urbanized world.
8 Many of these “hymns” were never set to music, but were read as poems; they were intended for private or family devotions rather than public worship. Victorian children were frequently expected to learn a given number of hymn verses every week. See my article, “Cultural Imperialism: Victorian Children's Hymns,” Victorian Newsletter (Spring, 1976), for a discussion of the psychological impact of hymns upon children in Victorian England.
If we can take an example from nineteenth-century fiction, we can see the kind of psychological impact which hymns could have on young minds. In the novel Heidi, the young girl Heidi cures a learned doctor of an emotional malaise by repeating a familiar hymn to him; the doctor's response is profound. “Heidi stopped suddenly, for she was not sure that the doctor was still listening. He had laid his hand over his eyes and was sitting motionless. She thought perhaps he had fallen asleep.…Everything was still. The doctor said nothing, but he was not asleep. He had been carried back to days of long ago. He stood as a little boy beside his dear mother's chair; she had placed her arm round his neck and was repeating the hymn which Heidi had just repeated, and which he had not heard for so long. Now he heard his mother's voice again and saw her gentle eyes resting on him lovingly, and when the words of the hymn had ceased, the kind voice seemed to be speaking still other words to him; he must have enjoyed listening to them and have gone far back in his thoughts, for he sat there for a long while, silent and motionless, with his face buried in his hands. When he finally rose he noticed that Heidi was looking at him in amazement. He took the child's hand in his.” A familiar hymn transports the grown man back to a comforting experience of childhood. (Although written by a Swiss woman and about a Swiss girl, Heidfs moral tone and Weltanschauung reflect attitudes that were commonly held by the Victorian middle class.)
9 It is interesting, for instance, that Janey Courtney, the daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar whom she describes as “a God-fearing but timorous father,” connects hymns, subconsciously perhaps, with fear and death. In a brief memoir of her early years, she associates her childhood with the fierce weather of a Lincolnshire winter, the Advent season, hymns about the “last Trump,” and the dead in the churchyard. Janet Courtney, Freethinkers of the Nineteenth Century (Freeport, N.Y., 1967; reprint of 1920 edition), p. 4.
10 General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, staunchly defended the use of such secular music in missionary work. “I rather enjoy robbing the Devil of his choice tunes,” he wrote, “and after the subjects themselves, music is the best commodity he possesses.” Quoted by Davies, Horton, Worship and Theology in England from Newman to Martineau, 1850-1900 (Princeton, 1962), p. 169CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Booth freely used the catchy “gospel songs” which more conservative churchmen disparaged on aesthetic and doctrinal grounds. The Salvation Army attempted to speak to the unchurched in their own idiom, whether in sermons or hymns. The use of the common idiom in church work was evidently very popular with many among the working classes and the very poor. One Victorian observer in Finsbury Park reported hearing several working men gleefully shouting a Salvation Army chorus after the army had marched through:
“There may be some on me and you/But there ain't no flies on Jesus.”
Ridge, William Pett, A Story Teller: Forty Years in London (London, 1923), p. 234Google Scholar. In answer to criticism about the religious value of this kind of “gospel hymn,” Catherine Booth wrote, “To whom does all the music of earth and heaven belong if not to Him? I contend that the devil has no right to a single note and we will have it all away from him yet.” The Salvation Army in relation to the Church and State (1883), p. 53Google Scholar. Quoted by Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (London, 1963), p. 186Google Scholar. In the Preface to his Salvation Army Music (London, 1890)Google Scholar, Booth defended his use of secular tunes in roundabout fashion: “Objections may be felt by some friends to the occasional consecration of tunes hitherto called secular; but I have only to reply that I have sought to print just that music which has been sung amidst the most over powering scenes of salvation in this country and America during the last thirty years, and those who appreciate such music can be expected to favour my design.”
11 W. Hay M. H. Aiken, O leave we all for Jesus, stanza 1. Church Mission Hymn Book, Hymn no. 87.
The promise of heaven was prominently displayed in the evangelical hymnbooks; it was to be the reward of the ascetic. It is depicted as a “bright world,” “my happy home,” “Beautiful land! so bright so fair,” as “mansions,/Far above the skies.” With the use of “gospel” hymns in the revival services at the end of the century, the images of heaven became more commercial—“golden streets,” and “golden gates.” The hymns left no doubt that heaven was the reward for good behavior.
On the other hand, for those who did not behave, there was the threat of hell. In many churches, particularly those with Calvinist learnings, fear was an acceptable means of attaining conformity.
Fear is a grace which ever dwells
With its fair partner, love;
Blending their beauties, both proclaim
Their source is from above.
Let terrors fright th' unwilling slave.
The child with joy appears;
Cheerful he does his Father's will,
And loves as much as fears.
Let fear and love, most holy God,
Possess this soul of mine;
Then shall I worship Thee aright,
And taste Thy joys divine.
From [Bradbury, Thomas], Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Elect of God (3rd ed., Brighton, 1891)Google Scholar, Hymn no. 121. Fear of hell and the punishment associated with damnation was used frequently and effectively, particularly by evangelical preachers. The depiction of hellfire and brimstone was a stock-in-trade of both sermons and hymns in the revival services.
12 Mrs.Alexander, Cecil Frances, All things bright and beautiful (1849), stanza 3Google Scholar. Committee of the Presbyterian Church of England (eds.), Church Praise (London, 1885), Hymn no. 433.Google ScholarPubMed
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Day wanes: the sun hath almost set;
With dews of night My locks are wet;
Ah! wilt thou hearken never?
Thy day of grace is almost o'er!
Except thou hear, and ope the door,
I leave thee—and for ever!
23 Palmer, H. R., Yield not to temptation (1868), stanzas 1 and 2Google ScholarPubMed. Sankey, Ira D., McGranahan, James, and Stebbins, Geo. C., Gospel Hymns Nos. 2 and 6 Combined (Cincinnati, 1892)Google Scholar, Hymn no. 166. The Sankey hymnbooks were enormously popular in Great Britain; the British publishers claimed to have sold more than ninety million copies in the eighty years following the evangelist's first visit. Orr, J. Edwin, The Second Evangelical Awakening (London, 1949), p. 261.Google Scholar
24 The author, listed as A.L.O.E. [A Lady of England], was Charlotte Marie Tucker, (London, 1868).
25 Ibid., Hymn no. 23.
26 See Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815-1872 (London, 1971).Google Scholar
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36 Mrs.Ward, Humphry, Robert Elsmere (London, 1914), p. 410.Google Scholar