The meter 6s and 4s in its various forms might be supposed to be even slower than the 6s because of the additional short lines of four syllables each. The opposite is true. In some cases the first four lines are rhythmically equivalent to two lines of ten syllables each, so slight is the pause of actual thought at the end of the six-syllable line, with the result that the slowness is quickened into simple dignity and elevation. But even where the pauses at the end of the first and third lines are long, the shorter second and fourth lines, as in common meter, give added movement. In the other form of 6s and 4s, the first two six-syllable lines are so knit together by their common rhyme and, if properly written, have so markedly a common goal of completeness of thought in the third line toward which they hurry that again the movement is hastened and the severity of the 6s is mitigated. The same principle applies to the following three or four lines, depending on the form examined. Hence we have in the various forms of this meter some of our noblest hymns of prayer, praise, and victory, such as “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” “More love to Thee, O Christ,” “We are but strangers here,” “Fade, fade, each earthly joy,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Rise, glorious Conqueror, rise,” “Come, Thou Almighty King,” and “My country, ’tis of thee.” IV. THE LITERARY QUALITY NOT TO BE OVERESTIMATED _Literary Quality Not the Supreme Consideration._ Although poetical feeling and imagination and nice literary craftsmanship are not to be undervalued, but rather to be earnestly sought for in our hymns, after all, they are not the supreme considerations. Practical use has proved many hymns that conspicuously lacked them to have been supremely useful because of their spiritual content, sincerely and lucidly expressed. When hymn writers like Watts and Newton have deliberately ignored and even avoided literary values, and yet have written among the most useful hymns in our collections, the critic who insists on poetical quality has by no means a _prima facie_ case. Charles Wesley was a poet, but in his valuable hymn “A charge to keep I have” he is a pedagogue without poetic afflatus. Standards of literary value, when not artificial, as in Samuel Johnson’s case, have their place, but a place that is modest and not supreme. _Literary Quality Should Be Subconscious._ The danger in unduly emphasizing the literary aspect of hymns is well expressed by Dr. Louis F. Benson: “The hazard is implicit in the very motive of hymn singing; the heightening of religious emotion. The danger is of mistaking sugary sentiment for true feeling and its rhetorical expression in ‘soft, luxurious flow’ for true poetry.” In other words, the conscious seeking of the hymn writer after literary atmosphere and skill of treatment is fatal to genuineness of feeling, and to his success in producing a true hymn.