In the case of the Church of Scotland, the first edition of the Book of Common Order, published in 1564, gave only the Psalms; but the Bassandyne edition of the same book, published eleven years afterwards, contained five “Spiritual Songs;” that of 1587 gave ten, while some subsequent reprints have no fewer than fourteen. Among these, “commonly used in the Kirke and private houses,” will be found “The Song of Simeon, called _Nunc Dimittis_,” “The Song of Blessed Marie, called _Magnificat_,” and _Veni, Creator_. The English of the last named is taken from the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., published in 1549, and is the version of this old hymn which occurs in “The Fourme of Ordering Priestes,” the longer and older of the two renderings already referred to. How it has fared with Latin hymns in Protestant service-books from Reformation times to the present day is too wide a field of inquiry to enter upon at the close of this brief introduction. This it is safe to affirm, that no hymnal with any claim to completeness will be found to omit such sacred and classic pieces as, “Brief life is here our portion,” “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,” “Jerusalem the golden,” “Jesus! the very thought of Thee,” “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts,” “O come, all ye faithful,” “O Jesus, King most wonderful;” and all these are translations or paraphrases of early Latin hymns. With the increase of interest in all that concerns the praise of God’s children, which is so marked a feature of recent times, there has come an ever-growing appreciation of the grandeur and beauty, the spiritual depth and longing wistfulness that characterise the great body of Latin hymnology; and, as the result of this appreciation, the finest and sweetest products are finding a larger place in quarters from which, at no very far back point of time, they were altogether excluded. Of this we have a striking illustration in the contents of the most recent attempt to construct a hymnal for use in Presbyterian Churches. In the “Draft Hymnal,” prepared by a joint-committee of the three leading denominations in Scotland, there are 557 hymns. Of these, five are confessedly translations from the Greek, and twenty-six from the Latin. With the Latin renderings the names of Bishop Cosin, Dryden, Sir Walter Scott, Caswall, Chandler, Neale, and Ray Palmer stand honourably associated. Ayr, _October_ 12, 1895. [1]Mone’s _Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters_; Daniel’s _Thesaurus Hymnologicus_; Tischer’s _Kirchenlieder-Lexicon_; Trench’s “Sacred Latin Poetry;” Neale’s “Latin Hymns and Sequences,” and “Essays on Liturgiology and Church History;” Duffield’s “Latin Hymn-Writers and their Hymns;” Roundell Palmer’s “Hymns: their History and Development in the Greek and Latin Churches, Germany, and Great Britain;” Julian’s “Dictionary of Hymnology.” [2]Matt. xxvi. 30, ὑµνήσαντες; Acts xvi. 25, ὕµνουν, A. V.—“Sang praises unto God;” R. V.—“Were ... singing hymns unto God.”