Psalter review: Trinity Hymnal (1961)

Why review a collection that is more than sixty years old and has now been replaced by a later edition? There's a deep personal reason: I grew up with the first edition of the Trinity Hymnal, published in 1961 by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It is not exactly a psalter, yet it manages to contain metrical versifications for the vast majority, if not all, of the biblical Psalms. These, however, are scattered amongst the hymns, such that, as a child, I had no idea that we were singing the Psalms. I still have in my personal library our family's copy of the Trinity Hymnal, with my mother's distinctive handwriting inside the front cover.

The volume contains 730 hymns altogether, an unusually large number. It is a complete liturgical resource, beginning with the Ten Commandments (ix), which we heard every week, continuing with opening sentences (x-xi), followed by "Musical Responses, Gloria Patri, [and] Doxology" (xiv-xvi). Then come the hymns organized topically, beginning with "The Divine Perfections." The very first hymn is All People that on Earth Do Dwell, set to the Genevan tune for Psalm 134, famously renumbered by the Scots as THE OLD HUNDREDTH. For some odd reason, the first 662 hymns go untitled. One has to look at the first line to see what is being sung. Even as a child, I found this absence of titles puzzling.

Number 663 begins another section titled, "Hymns for Informal Occasions." Curiously, these hymns do have titles and consist largely of revival-style songs, such as those of Fanny Crosby, Philip Bliss, Charles Gabriel, and Ira Sankey. The one I remember best is Thy Word Have I Hid in My Heart, based on Psalm 119. Then follows a series of prose Psalter selections (KJV) intended to be recited responsively, followed by liturgical forms for public profession of faith, baptism, and ordination, but remarkably not the Lord's Supper. Finally, we find the complete Westminster Confession of Faith, followed by various indices to the hymns.

Eighty-five metrical Psalms come from the United Presbyterian Psalter of 1912, with an additional three originating in the 1871 United Presbyterian Book of Psalms. The reference, of course, is to the former United Presbyterian Church of North America, which existed as a distinct denomination with Covenanter and Seceder roots between 1858 and 1958. Forty-one psalms are Isaac Watts's versifications. Psalm 110 (229) is from the Irish Psalter of 1898. There are four tunes to the Scottish Psalter's beloved version of Psalm 23, The Lord's My Shepherd, I'll Not Want (77), with four more originating in the 1650 collection. Sternhold & Hopkins and Tate & Brady provide a very few metrical psalms. There is surprisingly little from the Genevan Psalter.

Absent from the versifications are Psalms 88, with its dark overtones, and 109, with its lengthy litany of imprecations. I have not seen a copy of the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, a joint project of the OPC and the United Reformed Churches in North America, but the relevant website tells us that it "reflects our churches’ commitment to sing the Psalms. This psalter hymnal contains at least one rendition of each of the 150 psalms, with multiple versions for many of the psalms." This represents a definite move in the right direction.