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Dipping into the treasury

Unless they are the sort who throw away every scrap of unwanted paper, people who work with hymns acquire in time a small mountain of other people's products. We keep them because they were written by friends, or struck us as interesting; because we might value a chance to sing them, or because they are there.

On this column's 48th and final appearance, lean over my shoulder as I whiz through some which by various routes have reached me over many years. Let's start with A.

By definition, dictionaries are always playing catch-up. Sometimes they take it slowly, sometimes fast, but they are always a yard or two off the pace. They are for ever recording what people have already meant by the words they speak and write. They can never say, 'From now on, this is what you must mean by using this word'.

So we cannot always expect them to know what Christians are talking about. Especially when we hardly know ourselves. These deep thoughts are stirred by the way we use the language of songs.

From time to time one of those seemingly eternal chestnuts surfaces in or around this third of the page. Why suffering? Where will it all end? Why are hymnwriters so greedy?

Leaving the first two for a moment, I approach the third with no particular complaint in mind. I write this months ahead, so if the letters column is bulging with outraged pastors, the coincidence is not of my making. Have we any defence?