A farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was. “Well,” said the farmer, “it was good. They did something different, though. They sang praise choruses instead of hymns.”
“Praise choruses?” asked the wife. “What are those?”
“Oh, they’re okay… they’re sort of like hymns, only different,” said the farmer.
“Well, what’s the difference?” asked the wife.
The farmer explained, “Well, it’s like this. If I were to say to you, ‘Martha, the cows are in the corn,’ that would be a hymn.
If, on the other hand, I were to say to you, “Martha, Martha, Oh Martha, Martha, Martha, the cows, the big cows, the brown cows, the black cows, the white cows, the cows, the COWS, the COWS, COWS, COWS, are in the corn, corn, corn, they’re in the coooooorrrrrrnnnnnn.” Then, I repeated it three times, that would be a praise chorus. ‘'
Wouldn’t you know it, that farmer’s little church had a visitor from the big city church that same Sunday. He went home to his wife and she asked him how it went.
He said, “Oh, it was okay, except they don’t sing choruses—they sing hymns.”
She asked, “What’s a hymn?”
He said, “Well, it’s like a chorus, only different.”
She said, “What do you mean, different?”
He explained, “Well, if I said to you, Martha, the cows are in corn—but say it like this:
“Oh Martha, dear, Martha, hear the words of my mouth, Turn thou thy whole wondrous ear to this glorious truth;
For the way of the animals who can explain; There in their heads is no shadow of sense, Hearkenest they in God’s sun or his rain, Unless from the mild corn they are fenced; Yea those cows in glad, rebellious delight, Have loosed their shackles, their warm pens eschew, Yea goaded by minions of darkness and night, They all my sweet corn are now destined to chew.
Martha, look to that bright day when earth is reborn, and I shall not see those cows in my corn.”
That would be a hymn!