* * * * * * * His voice sublime is heard afar, In distant peals it dies; He yokes the whirlwind to His car And sweeps the howling skies.” With a chorus of a thousand trained singers, an organ of extraordinary power, and an orchestra of five hundred instruments, all concentrated on “St. Anne,” one might make the music adequate to the words, but in an ordinary congregation the incongruity is painful. This must remain a reading hymn. _Outworn Hymns._ The efficient hymn must not distinctly belong to previous generations in its style and vocabulary or in its peculiar formulation of doctrine. Only as many of the older hymns have been purged of their obsolete and archaic words and turns of thought have they survived. For instance, we no longer sing, “Eye-strings break in death,” as Toplady originally wrote it. _Mistaken Objections to Some Hymns._ Some minds, although strong and keen, seem to have a very small visual angle. Some such persons condemn all hymns that are not direct praise. The line in Lyte’s “Abide with Me”—“Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes”—has been objected to as Romish by some, blind to the fact that it is a prayer to Christ. Others exclude hymns in which the pronoun of the first person singular occurs. Bishop Wordsworth, himself a hymn-writer of no mean merit (_vide_ “O Day of rest and gladness” and “See, the Conqueror rides in triumph”), says, in his introduction to his _Holy Year_, that while the ancient hymns are distinguished by self-forgetfulness, the modern hymns are characterized by self-consciousness. As illustrative examples, he cites the following: “When I can read my title clear,” “When I survey the wondrous cross,” “My God, the spring of all my joys,” and “Jesus, Lover of my soul.” It is strange that so keen a mind should not have seen that his objection would apply to all liturgies! The minister with his eye fixed upon his spiritual purpose can afford to ignore all these supersensitive critics who have refined refinement until sensibility becomes hyperesthesia, a veritable disease. The use of hymns of a somewhat indifferent literary value is often thoughtlessly condemned because the importance of the recognition of its topic is overlooked. Such a topic as “Church Erection,” or “Education,” may not occasion the deep feeling necessary to the writing of a great hymn, and yet it must find a place in the practical work of the church. Here again Dr. Phelps gives a useful warning: “The severity of aesthetic taste must not be permitted to contract the range of devotional expression in song.... Our desire to restrict the number of hymns upon occasions, and other hymns of infrequent use, ought not to banish such hymns entirely.... A hymn intrinsically inferior, therefore, may be so valuable relatively, as justly to displace a hymn which is intrinsically its superior.”