The inexorable limitations of time must always be borne in mind. When a hymn is announced the people expect to sing, not to listen to a hymnological dissertation or to a long-winded anecdote. The simile or metaphor, or other oratorical comment, must explode with a very short fuse of preliminary remark. The anecdote must be compact, shorn of unessential preface or background, and reach its peak of interest, or of appeal to feeling, with the succinctness of an epigram. Better limit the illustrations and comments to those that can gracefully and lucidly be uttered in one or rarely two minutes. Discussions and illustrations of hymns are often confined to the hymns as hymns, which is rarely necessary. It is not the hymn that needs emphasis, much less its writer: it is the message, the burden, the feeling of the hymn that is to be enforced. An instance of the saving of a “down and outer” from the Jerry McAuley mission in New York, or the Pacific Garden mission in Chicago, will create more responsiveness to “Rescue the Perishing” than biographical facts about Fanny Crosby or about the composer, W. Howard Doane. The anecdote of missionary success from the last missionary bulletin or magazine will lead a Congregation to sing “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” more enthusiastically than an explanation of Watts’ having metricized the seventy-second Psalm with a free hand, making the Jew, David, sing like a Christian. Illustrating the sense rather than the form of the hymn will be found very much more thrilling to the people. In evening services of song, or in midweek lectures, historical backgrounds will be very helpful and interesting. A series of lectures on the great hymns of the Church, or even a general survey of the development of our Christian hymnody, will lay the foundations of a more intelligent song. In such services, anecdotal illustrations may have a large place. They need not be emotional under such circumstances, just so they add interest and understanding. As an occasional variation in the introduction of the hymn, why not have the congregation read it? “It is not done?” All the more reason for doing it! They will get more actual values out of the reading of the hymn and its subsequent singing than in any other way; the very unusualness of the method will give additional effectiveness. Single stanzas can be most impressively treated in this manner. In singing Isaac Watts’ great hymn, “When I survey the wondrous cross,” ask the people to read the third verse softly, “See, from his head, his hands, his feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown?” and then sing it very softly and note the effect. The same method may be used with Mrs. Alexander’s children’s hymn, “There is a green hill far away,” which adults have adopted for their own; have them read the last verse,