Reading the Hymns: Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior

This week's selection is from one of evangelicalism's most prolific hymn writers, Fanny Crosby.

Crosby, who was a Methodist, is best known for "Blessed Assurance," which encapsulates the evangelical conviction in the reality of the atonement.  But the other side of the evangelical confidence in the work of Christ is a strong sense of our own lack of worthiness--a sense that in its worst forms slips into anxieties about our union with Christ and the accomplishment of our redemption.

But Crosby avoids that sort of anxiety, crafting lyrics that manage to highlight our status as adopted by Christ even in and through the expression of repentence.  (It's worth noting that Red Mountain Church's contemporary rendition of the song is the best I know, and worth spending 89 cents on.)

Musically, "Pass Me Not" is a classic representative of what seems to be a distinctly American hymn style.  It has a striking simplicity and stays within the much decried four chord structure of contemporary praise choruses.  But the alternating meter of the tune--from syncopation to straight and back again--give it a subtle complexity that today's rock-inspired music lacks. Consider the first stanza:

Pass me not, Oh Gentle Savior.  Hear my humble cry.
While on others Thou art smiling, do not pass me by.