[9]Over three-quarters of a century ago, this lament was made by a prominent New England minister: “Many a man, who carefully interrogates his own experience, will confess that, while the voice of public prayer readily engages his attention and carries with it his devout desires, it is not so with the act of praise; that he very seldom finds his affections rising upon its notes to heaven—very seldom can he say at its close that he has worshiped God. The song has been wafted near him as a vehicle for conveying upward the sweet odor of a spiritual service, but the offering has been withheld, and the song ascends as empty of divine honors as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” (Rev. Daniel L. Furber, in _Hymns and Choirs_.) CHAPTER III [1]“To get behind the hymnbook to the men and women who wrote its contents, and to the events, whether personal or public, out of which it sprang and which it so graciously mirrors, is to enter a world palpitating with human interest. For a hymnbook is a transcript of real life, a poetical accompaniment to real events and real experiences. Like all literature that counts, it rises directly out of life.” (Frederick J. Gillman, in _The Evolution of the English Hymn_. [New York: The Macmillan Co., 1927.] Used by permission.) [2]J. Balcom Reeves, _The Hymn in History and Literature_. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1924). Used by permission. [3]“There is an inclination to fence in what are called ‘literary lyrics,’ as if to fence out singing lyrics! Now there is, of course, a distinction between poems meant to be sung and poems written in the pattern of lyrical poetry, but never meant to be sung; but the terminology which classes one kind as literary, thereby implying that the other kind is not of the realm of literature, is inaccurate and unhappy.” _Ibid._ [4]“In his volume, _The English Lyric_, Professor Felix E. Schelling virtually disposes of the hymn with the remark that ‘we may or may not “accept” certain hymns, but we do not have to read them.’ That is readily granted—unless, of course, one wishes to know them or to write just criticism about them.” _Ibid._ [5]“Frequently a hymn is a prayer; and it is a rule for the structure of prayers that they exclude all those recondite figures, dazzling comparisons, flashing metaphors, which, while grateful to certain minds of poetic excitability, are offensive to more sober and staid natures, and are not congenial with the lowly spirit of a suppliant at the throne of grace. A simile may be shining, but it may not be exactly chaste; and a hymn prefers pure beauty to bedizening ornament.” (Dr. Edwards A. Park, in _Hymns and Choirs_.) [6]These numbers, of course, refer to the number of syllables in a line. CHAPTER IV