In order to enable the congregations themselves to take an active part in the service, he now longed for genuine Church hymns, that is to say, songs composed in the noble popular language, verse, and melody. He invited friends to paraphrase the Psalms for this purpose; he had not sufficient confidence in himself for the work. And yet he was the first to attempt it. With fresh impulse and with the exuberance of true poetical genius, his verses on the Brussels martyrs had flowed forth spontaneously from his inmost soul. They were the first, so far as we know, that Luther had ever written, though he was now forty years of age. With the same poetic impulse he composed, probably shortly after, a hymn in praise of the 'highest blessing' that God had shown towards us in the sacrifice of His beloved Son. Rejoice ye now, dear Christians all, And let us leap for joy, And dare with trustful, loving hearts, Our praises to employ, And sing what God hath shown to man, His sweet and wondrous deed, And tell how dearly He hath won. etc. The full tone of a powerful, fresh, often uncouth, but very tender popular ballad no other writer of the time displayed like Luther. And whilst seeking to compose or re-arrange hymns for congregational use in church, he now busied himself with the Psalter, paraphrasing its contents in an evangelical spirit and in German metre. Thus now, early in 1524, there appeared at Wittenberg the first German hymn-book, consisting at first, of only eight hymns, about half of them, such as that beginning _Nun freut euch_, being original compositions of Luther, and three others adapted from the Psalms. In the course of the same year he brought out a further collection of twenty hymns, written by himself for the evangelical congregation there: among these is the one on the Brussels martyrs. It was, in fact, the year in which German hymnody was born. Luther soon found the coadjutors he had wished for.