“Oh, dearly, dearly has He loved, And we must love Him too, And trust in His redeeming blood, And try His works to do,” and then sing it quite emotionally. A great many people deprecate the minister’s reading of the hymns. But that is because so few ministers are able to read hymns with any degree of impressiveness or reality. Perhaps half the ministers who read them leave no desirable impression whatever as the result, for the reading has been without even a thoughtful sense of the meaning of the hymn, much less of its emotional force. To allow one’s voice to fall at the end of every line, or to make a habit of having a rising inflection at the end of each first line and a falling at the end of each second, without variation, is so vile, from an elocutionary standpoint, that one cannot wonder that the general congregation prefers its omission. On the other hand, if the minister’s mind and heart are profoundly awake to the thought and feeling of the hymn that is to be used, if the minister has a definite purpose which he wishes to realize through the singing of that hymn, if the whole song service is thoroughly vital and earnest, he cannot help reading the hymn in such a way as to impress and interest his people. One need not be a well-trained elocutionist to do this. The genuine feeling will develop a natural elocution and will even neutralize faulty habits and mannerisms of reading that would otherwise make it unendurable. The fact that the hymn is a familiar one may be only an additional reason for reading it, instead of being an imperative reason for omitting its reading. As coins long in circulation often lose their superscription, these familiar words often lose their meaning and reality by constant use, and these may be restored by intelligent and emotional reading. A mere habit of reading a hymn through is sheer mechanism, the fatal enemy of interest. The situation, the purpose in view, the character of the service and the time allotted to it, even the preacher’s own passing mood—all are factors that need to be considered.