Christian Relaunch

Versions used in the Christian Relaunch Hymnal

My efforts to identify the original text have in most cases been earnest but not exhaustive, so "original" below means "as near original as I have found".

I have found Hymntime.com especially useful.

I vary from the originals for the following reasons.

Archaic. The original now conveys either a different sense, or no sense at all.

False. The original conduces to heresy.

The Notes usually name the heresy, with the metaheresy of which it is a version. These can usually be found in the Heresies area of this site. (But in a few cases, where I omit a stanza that most other editors also omit, I have not deemed it necessary to identify the heresy.)

The author was usually not positively affirming heresy, merely taking it for granted, and I give deceased authors the benefit of the doubt that they would have accepted correction if the way of God had been explained to them accurately enough.

Where an author does positively affirm a heresy, it is usually so pervasive as to be incorrigible, so that omitting the entire stanza, or indeed the entire hymn, is the only recourse.

That leaves cases where I deliberately express a doctrine contrary to the author's. I would hate anyone to be misled about the beliefs of anyone, living or expired, but I think that a happy formulation of words, whoever first stumbled on it, belongs to us all, and I feel entitled to adapt it for my own purposes. I have never tampered with an author's main point, or changed more than about 10% of the lines of any one hymn, so I think it truer to call my versions "adaptations" of the originals, rather than new hymns "based on" them.

I admit that some of my alterations hamper the decoration, but heresy must be challenged. Suggestions for better solutions are welcome.

Lost. The original included material I have not been able to find.

Mosaic. The original expresses sentiments proper under the Old Covenant but not under the New.

This occurs mainly in hymns based on Hebrew Psalms.

But to avoid breaking up the flow too much, some such expressions are retained.

Narrow. The original affirms a belief that can be both affirmed and denied without heresy, and is denied by some Christians.

The present author denies (or at least doubts) some of these beliefs, but that is irrelevant here, though I opine on some of them either here or elsewhere in the site.

My intention is to enable every reborn to sing (and mean) every word.

Poor. The original is defective in some way (usually clarity or beauty) and can be improved or omitted without disturbing the message.

Some of the improvements are my own.

Of the others, some are better known than the originals, and readers may be surprised to find that they were not in those originals.

Not all the defects glare. Some omitted stanzas merely made the whole too long for use as a hymn and were not quite as good as the retained ones.

Specific. The original expresses an experience, usually autobiographical, not shared by every Christian.

It is of course proper to recite such literature, and the audience understands that the speaker relates another's experience rather than their own, but in singing hymns such indirection places a layer of interpretation between reverer and revered, so I prefer only to sing what every Christian shares or can properly aspire to.

For instance, where sex is irrelevant "man" is replaced by "soul". (But originally, in Old English, "man" was used for both sexes, so the word is retained if changing it would require breaking into a song that is otherwise being retained in its original form.)

Unmetrical. The original has too many syllables for the tune.

Veterans take all these cases in their stride, and some may see no problem, but I seek to smooth the way for struggling novices, and for those like me who prefer strict metre.

To that end I have made two kinds of abbreviation.

1. Sometimes I substitute a different word, or even rewrite an entire line.

2. Sometimes I just indicate by apostrophe to drop a syllable, as in "Heav'n" and "belov'd". (In a few cases the apostrophe is not even needed. I know not what poetic modernism led so many authors to treat "Abraham" and "Bethlehem" as bisyllabic, but happily "Bethlem" is familiar enough, and it was "Abram" who "went, as Yahweh had told him".)

The first type are noted individually below, the second not.

In other cases I keep the original because it is easy enough to drop a syllable though I see no convenient way to indicate this in the text. (For instance, in refined spoken English, "familiar" has four syllables, but in Abide with me it is squeezed into three. This is easily done by pronouncing "i" consonantally, as if it were a "y". Incidentally, the 1964 Concise OED gave this latter as the pronunciation but by 1990 had reverted to four syllables, if I rightly read their phoenetic symbols; make of that what you will.)

(No change). Most editions have something else but I prefer the original.

These are cases not of varying from the original but of reverting to the original.

Sometimes no known source has what on text-critical grounds I regard as original.