Religion: Sanguine Hymnology (Cont'd)

To the blest fountain of thy blood, Incarnate God, I fly:

Here let me wash my spotted soul From crimes of deepest dye.

—Isaac Watts.

Hymn-Writer Watts, a gentle, humorless metaphor-mixer, wrote many & many a hymn. Probably he never pictured to himself a Christian, with spotted soul under his arm, flying to the fountain as to a gory laundry. But modern Methodists, sincere as any one in accepting the allegory of the Blood Atonement, raise their eyebrows at the language in which it was couched. Currently a number of hymns by Watts and the Wesleys are slated for omission from a revised hymnal prepared by a joint commission of three Methodist Episcopal Churches (TIME, March 14). To young people they are "revolting," says the commission's Secretary, Dr. John William Langdale.

Cried The Presbyterian last week: "One is made very sad. ... It is too bad about the blood atonement being 'revolting' to young people. It is pretty small for mature people to put blame on the young people. It is the mature and aged hard-shelled worldlings who make the protest. . . . The noblest young people brought up in a Christian way do not revolt from the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The fact is they hear too little of it and when they know it, they glory in it as Paul did. If this Methodist movement is the fruitage of the liberalism which is assuming more and more to manage Church affairs, the sooner we call a halt, the better. . . ."