There’s old bad religious music, too

Sentimental songs with lyrics of doubtful orthodoxy: that’s a common complaint about contemporary kitsch, but there’s old kitsch too, even 100-year-old stuff, that fits the same description.
Yesterday before Mass at my suburban parish, a male soloist was belting the ballad “The Holy City”, with choral backup. A parent in the loft pews said to her child: “Do you hear the singing? The man’s singing very pretty.” She must have been desperate to distract her little one from something else, as it was the sort of obvious lie that makes children think their parents are idiots.
Anyway, a Protestant page points out that the 1892 song is probably more an expression of its authors’ Masonic thought than Christian doctrine, exalting the Temple of Solomon while mentioning the Cross as only a shadow on a hill. No wonder I never liked it!
Here’s the text of the hymn and the critique:

The Holy City
Text: Frederick E. Weatherly, 1892
Music: Stephen Adams (pseud.), 1892
Last night I lay asleeping,
There came a dream so fair;
I stood in old Jerusalem
Beside the temple there.
I heard the children singing,
And ever as they sang,
Me thought the voice of angels
From heav’n in answer rang;
Me thought the voice of angels
From heav’n in answer rang.
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Lift up your gates and sing,
Hosanna in the highest!
Hosanna to your King!
And then methought my dream was chang’d,
The streets no longer rang,
Hush’d were the glad hosannas
The little children sang.
The sun grew dark with mystery,
The morn was cold and chill,
As the shadow of a cross arose
Upon a lonely hill,
As the shadow of a cross arose
Upon a lonely hill.
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Hark! how the angels sing,
Hosanna in the highest!
Hosanna to your King!
And once again the scene was chang’d,
New earth there seemed to be;
I saw the Holy City
Beside the tideless sea;
The light of God was on its streets,
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter,
And no one was denied.
No need of moon or stars by night,
Or sun to shine by day;
It was the new Jerusalem
That would not pass away,
It was the new Jerusalem
That would not pass away.
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Sing for the night is o’er,
Hosanna in the highest!
Hosanna forevermore!

The Cross in the Margin
A first reaction to The Holy City is to feel it is more sentimental-Christian than Masonic. There is mention of the Cross and Hosannas to the King, even if Christ is not named. The children’s choir is a mainstay of the ballad at this period. Here they are given the famous cry of the Crusader’s on seeing the city: Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
On the other hand, the Cross is evoked in a manner which suggests that its mystery and shadow are dispelled by the shining and regenerated City. The Cross in the old pilgrim maps, is seen as outside the Temple Walls and here also it could be said to be marginalized. The light of God which denies no one is not any normal Christian Apocalypse which would involve a Last Judgment. The identification of God with light also fits with a tradition that, for the highest degree Masons, the Temple of Solomon is no more than a pun on three names for the Sun-God, Sol-Om-On.
Semi-religious ballads were not of course hymns and were not submitted for approval to the Church authorities. As expressions of popular feeling, it is unlikely they were scrutinized for heresy, though stern critics like Shaw viewed them as tasteless twaddle. In so far as they are religious, the religion normally tends towards the Catholic in its visions of the heavens opening to admit orphans who are too good to live.
This Jerusalem as Centre of the World is a potent image and a mysterious place in the mind. It appears at the end of Verdi’s I Lombardi, where the distant city is viewed through the flap of the tent, as if a veil is torn. In that score, miraculous fountains spring up to accompany the vision. That opera was actually renamed Jerusalem when it was extended for the Paris Opera.

There’s more at the above link, mostly gossipy stuff about the song’s dissolute author.