Watts’ hymns must be analyzed in the light of the prevailing psalmody, of the religious aridity of his time, and of the formalism, not of the Established Church only, but of that of the Nonconformist societies as well. Wesley’s hymns cannot be understood except as expressing the struggle between extreme worldly-mindedness, sensuality, and social decay outside of the Church, allied with the mere formalism and the cold and sheerly pharisaic morality within, on the one side, and the emphasis of conversion, profound religious experience, and aggressive evangelistic propaganda on the other. The objectivity and essentially liturgic spirit of Watts’ hymns and the subjective warmth and the poetic glow of those of Charles Wesley immediately become full of meaning and historic vitality. 3. The greater hymns gather about themselves the noble associations of the many generations which have lived and died with their lines upon their lips. Would “Rock of Ages, cleft for me” or “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” if written now, speedily win the place they now hold in our Christian hymnody? Would “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing” be widely sung, if it were not that in England and America it had been an impressive voice of worship in chapel and home, in stately church, and in mountain schoolhouse on the American frontier? Lips now trembling with age lisped them in childhood; memories of father and mother, of thrilling religious experiences, when the very heavens seemed to open to the soul, cluster about them. 4. Only in this way can he secure a clear idea of what parts of a hymn will serve his immediate purpose, which lines and phrases will enrich his discourses or bring his points to an incandescent glow, or which verses when sung will assure the definite effect he has in mind. There may well be occasions when he will want his people to sing, not the first verse of Whittier’s tender hymn, “We may not climb the heavenly steeps,” but the second, “But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee,” or the even more comforting third verse, “The healing of the seamless dress Is by our beds of pain; We touch him in life’s throng and press, And we are whole again.” Such a study in interpretation will greatly enhance the spiritual values of the hymns to the minister himself, enriching mind and heart. It will make it possible for him to interpret them to his people. To any person the hymn is what he understands it to mean, no more; its effect on him is in due proportion to the completeness of his interpretation of it. The minister, therefore, is in duty bound to supply each singer in his congregation with an accurate and complete understanding of the hymns that are sung. _Making a Hymnal of His Own._