This is the third in a short series of advertisements that caught my eye as I looked through some back issues of Christian Standard. Scroll down to see the earlier two, especially the one for The New Make Christ King evangelistic hymnal.
I backed into an interest in hymnody only a few years ago, but it has been a very interesting and enjoyable interest to nurture. So ads for hymnals and articles that describe or prescribe singing or worship practices are always a delight to discover.
How can this be useful for research?
–Bibliographically speaking, ads like this are helpful because they alert us to books that we might not have otherwise known existed. Catalogs for publishing houses like Standard Publishing Company, Christian Publishing Company (which by 1915 became Christian Board of Publication), and Gospel Advocate Publishing Company (later McQuiddy Printing Company, then Gospel Advocate Company), were steadily produced at this time, and some even survive. But, one cannot rely only on the catalogs since hymnals and song books come into and go out of print sometimes quickly. Unless we have full runs of the catalogs then we will miss things. And one cannot rely only on observing library holdings since they too have gaps. It can be laborious to search Worldcat because catalogers sometimes abbreviate publisher names (using the item at hand which often abbreviate ‘Publishing’ as ‘Pub.’ as in Standard Pub. Co.). This is understandable, however it renders the search process a little trickier than may first be apparent. In my experience, the ads are a good way to begin filling the gaps. In this case, we have a nice array of hymnals, and looking over this list I see a couple books that are new to me: The Communion Choir and M. M. Davis’ Responsive Bible Readings for the Church chief among them.
–The publishers’ comments, sales pitches really, are instructive. They reveal how the books are intended to be used. Therefore we may infer that the hymns and songs selected and included in these books serve (in the minds of the compilers and publishers) to further the aims of activities like Sunday School instruction, ‘C. E. services’, evangelistic meetings, communion services, or the instruction of children. Right off the bat, I see a book waiting to be written about the use of hymns and songs in the spiritual formation of children. Or a book about the use of song in revivals and evangelistic meetings (Charles Reign Scoville’s work is a major example). The literature is easily at hand that will support such a study. Ads like this will help researchers.
Here is the full back-page ad from Christian Standard, vol. 50, no. 44 (July 31, 1915):