The Congregational Hymn is a poem expressing worship, praise, thanksgiving, and prayer on the Godward side; personal spiritual experience, emotion, and inspiration on the human side; and instruction on the religious side. It must be adapted to mass thinking and expression, in a form fitted to be sung by a Christian congregation, and calculated to express and stimulate or create religious feeling and purpose. II. THE HYMN MUST BE POETRY _To Be Poetry, It Must Be Emotional._ The initiating force of all poetry must be emotion of some kind. That emotion may be mere earnestness, it may be satire, it may be satisfaction in contemplation of beautiful scenes, or satisfaction in ideas and memories, or displeasure at impressions painful or abhorrent. Few of us realize how unfailing is the flow of emotion in our minds responding to the world about us and in us. To view life and the world through the eye of reason is valuable, of course; but if that vision lacks the support of the eye of emotion, it brings only a silhouette, without perspective, wanting a sense of reality. That is the weakness of abstract thinking, whether in theology or political economy. If the hymn, therefore, is to perform its functions, it must be definitely emotional to a greater or less extent. This is particularly true of hymns of Christian experience or in the hymn’s functioning in inspiration and exhortation. To confuse animal excitement with emotion is bad psychology. The genuine emotionality of a hymn is the best criterion of its practical value, for only through emotion can the will be reached. _It Must Have Poetical Form._ The first requirement in this definition is that the hymn must be poetry. It should have meter and rhyme, else there can be no musical setting practicable for congregational use. The first task Calvin and his associates faced, after reaching the conclusion that only the inspired Psalms could be sung in the public religious assembly, was the preparation of a metrical version. True, the Psalms had been sung by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, but only as chants by priestly choirs. In the English church service, these chants were frequently only led by the choir, the congregation joining in their singing. But this was practicable only in larger and long-established congregations, and even then there was more or less confusion. In general, this chanting was a failure, and the English church adopted the metrical versions. The use of the Psalms for responsive readings in our modern church services is a definitely practicable way of utilizing their liturgical and spiritual values. The ostensible hymns of the Greek Church, of which Dr. Neale and Dr. Brownlie have furnished translations, or rather transformations, are not verse but prose. They were not sung by the congregations, or put into their hands, but were reserved for the reading of the clergy.