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"Praise him upon
loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals." |
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Foreword |
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It is the hope and prayer of both author and composer that this collection of hymns will be used of God to kindle in all who encounter them a desire to know him more fully, for to know him is life eternal. Many have asked about the story of these hymns. A brief and personal account of the circumstances surrounding their writing follows. Then, on each page facing the printed hymns, the reader will find textual and musical comments intended to enrich the understanding and enjoyment of all who sing them. The textual comments to the first three hymns and part of the fourth were completed by their author; the musical comments to those and the full introductions to the others were finished by the composer, though largely based on or extracted from the author's own printed commentaries and sermons. |
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Dr. Boice went on to say the he thought hymn writing was particularly difficult and he was not sure he could do it, but he would give it some thought. He loved hymns and hymn poetry, that was certain. (As anyone who heard him preach or has read his books can attest, Dr. Boice was given to quoting hymns regularly. He rarely needed a hymnal to sing in worship services as he had many hymns memorized.) I encouraged him to start working on some texts right away so that I could begin writing music over what remained of the summer. The first e-mail message about the project came later that week on July 9, two days after his sixty-first birthday. He ended it with a typically succinct sentence that characterized our work on the hymns from that point on: "This is exciting." Through an ongoing e-mail correspondence we began to delve deeper into this endeavor. I decided to set the entire Romans passage as an anthem and to incorporate part of his hymn text as well. He sent the first draft of the hymn on July 21. The anthem became "Come, Lift Your Voice" and the hymn turned out to be "Give Praise to God" {Soli Deo}. Both were first utilized in the morning worship service at Tenth on September 12. Having caught the wind of creativity in his sails, Dr. Boice penned another hymn on August 4 ("Heaven's Gift") and sent it with introductory comments which articulated our mission: "Well, I promised another hymn. Her it is. You will probably be sorry you started this before very long, Paul, but I am thinking that if we are going to have a modern reformation, we are going to need new reformation music. Bible doctrines have always gotten a hold on people this way." On August 28 he sent me "How Marvelous, How Wise, How Great" and two more appeared on August 29 ("Hallelujah!" and "All Praise to Christ"). I was beginning to realize that the man was prolific. That day he wrote to his personal assistant Mary Beth McGreevy and to me, "You're not going to believe this. And Paul, you are going to be sorry you started it. However, I got going on another in church this morning – a profitable day. Mary Beth, give me any corrections or improvements before these get set in concrete. Paul is moving quickly!" However, he always managed to stay a couple of texts ahead of me. Dr. Boice wrote a number of the hymns while jogging early in the morning. The rhythm of his feet striking the pathway as he ran along the Schuylkill River gave meter to his thoughts, which he would formulate and then record as soon as he got to his laptop computer. On September 22, he quipped, "This is what happens to me when I go out running!" He worked on other hymn texts at his retreat in Cape May on the New Jersey shore. But he did not think of it as work. This was a form of recreation for him. In August he had written me, "And guess what? Another hymn! It will probably be my last for the summer. When September comes I have to get serious again." Another time he e-mailed, "Let's keep this up. It's a good diversion and fun." Working on the hymns was one of the great joys of his last year as his wife, Linda, and others have attested. Several of the Tenth Presbyterian Church staff agreed that they had never seen him happier. Whenever a hymn was in a semi-complete format, he would e-mail it to us for reaction and suggestions. This demonstrated the man's humility and wisdom, although I felt quite unworthy of attempting a critique. As soon as I wrote a tune, even if the harmony was not fully intact, we would sing it together, and he would respond with his own insights. Input and criticism were solicited from other colleagues, too. About "Hallelujah!" he wrote, "I see this one as a lively, fun son-triumphant, don't you?" Upon hearing the music for the first time, he jubilantly declared, "You've done it! That really captures it, doesn't it?" He never sang this particular hymn without raising a fist in the air and emphasizing "Nothing, Hallelujah!" with a smile on his face. He could not keep still. The great truths of Christ's work of redemption and the Spirit's sealing invigorated him. The final two verses of this hymn were of great meaning and encouragement to him as his earthly life drew to a close. It was one of the two hymns he regularly requested. The other was "Come to the Waters." These were special times; now, of course, they are priceless. We introduced the concept of a Boice-Jones hymnbook at a special dinner for the elders of Tenth Church on January 21, 2000. The title, Hymns for a Modern Reformation, was chosen because it identifies our desire that the hymns contribute in some way to a reformation in our time – and truly captures Dr. Boice's passion and life's work. As the author of over 60 books, president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, chair of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, senior minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church for 32 years, and featured radio teacher on The Bible Study Hour, Dr. Boice stood out as a statesman of the Reformed faith and as a world-renowned biblical expositor. He constantly prayed about, worked toward, and preached the need for a modern reformation with a return to biblical thinking and the solas of the Reformation. Each of the five solas is represented by a hymn in this collection. The clarity of statement manifest in his preaching and teaching is also in the poetic language of his hymns. The hymn texts are based directly on Scripture, and, in the spirit of Martin Luther's own hymns, they teach doctrine and theology. (Dr. Boice was particularly pleased that his first hymnbook would have 12 hymns, whereas Luther's first – the Achtiederbuch – had but eight. He loved to excel!) In a culture thirsting for truth, and in a time when evangelical worship has been watered down and misled by seeker-sensitive, felt-need ideology and poor theology, the strength and meaning of these sermons-in-verse find especially receptive ears. As the postscript to an e-mail sent on August 8, 1999, Dr. Boice wrote, "How about us doing a new hymn each month? Or something like that?" And so, it became our goal to write one new hymn each month and to introduce it to the congregation of Tenth Presbyterian the month following. It seemed that this was the beginning of a wonderful collaboration that might last for years; instead, it was the start of a wonderful on-year partnership. There are twelve hymns, one for each month, the last completed in June 2000. Our Lord's ways are truly marvelous and mysterious, for only He knew how perfect was the timing of this endeavor. In addition to the hymns, James Boice wrote two children's hymns – a Christmas carol ("In Bethlehem Long Years Ago") and another at the request of the Tenth Children's Choir director, Paul F. Reese, III ("Little Children"). On May 14, 2000, the Children's Choir was scheduled to sing this new hymn. Dr. Boice was too weak to attend the service that day, but astonishingly, as I finished the introduction on the organ, movement in the right corner of the choir loft caught my attention. Dr. Boice sat down on the landing having just pulled himself up the multiple flights of steps by sheer force of will. He had come to hear the children. Our eyes locked for a profound moment; he was grinning from ear to ear. All who saw him were deeply moved as he greeted the children when they left the balcony. That was the last time Dr. Boice stepped into the sanctuary where he had preached for 32 year, and these hymns were his final project. In his sermon on Revelation 4:9-11, Boice spoke about the importance of music in worship and the significance of singing: Isn't it interesting that heaven's worship is expressed in words set to music, in words that are sung? This is more than interesting, of course. It is important, for music is a gift from God that allows us to express our deepest heart responses to God and his truth in meaningful and memorable ways. It is a case of our hearts joining with our minds to say, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!' to the truths we are embracing...It is what the four living creatures, elders, angels and the entire creation are doing today in heaven. We join that great heavenly choir rightly, wisely, and joyously when we sing. Almost unbelievably, in his last two months while fighting ever-increasing fatigue from the cancer that invaded him, Dr. Boice composed another hymn text ("Christ Alone"), wrote three textual introductions to the hymns and part of a fourth, and reviewed three new tunes and sang them with others on multiple occasions. By nature a man of order (some might even say a "perfectionist"), he formatted the hymns into book form, discussed the cover and photographs, and created a table of contents, so that what you hold in your hands is virtually identical to what he planned. His final gift and legacy to the Church, these hymns are to be used in the service and praise of him for whose glory they were written-our Lord Jesus Christ. "For from him and through him and to him are all things; to him be the glory, forever. Amen." Paul Steven Jones |
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