“Praise the Lord! ye heavens adore him, Praise him, angels in the height; Sun and moon rejoice before him, Praise him, all ye stars of light.” When the soul on some mountaintop of inner experience and vision glimpses something of the sublimity of the divine character, its justice, its truth, its purity, its invincible power and will guided by infinite knowledge and wisdom, its boundless mercy and forgiving grace flowing from the eternal Source of its all-embracing love, again it can adopt as its very own the solemn notes of Tersteegen, echoed in English by John Wesley: “Lo! God is here; let us adore And own how dreadful is this place; Let all within us feel his power, And humbly bow before his face.” This is the highest office of the hymn and should be made its largest use; in no other way can the minds and hearts of Christian worshipers be filled and thrilled with a consciousness of an indwelling God as by hymns of praise, fully comprehended and sung with unflawed sincerity. _The Hymn of Communion._ Beyond the hymn of exultant praise is the hymn of communion with God, where the soul expresses its joy, not simply in the objective glories of the divine nature, but in actual communion, companionship, and conscious unity with God in desire, ideals, and purposes. The soul thinks the thoughts of God, delights in what God approves, walks in his ways with spontaneous gladness, and lives in absolute harmony with his will, not mechanically under a stress of duty, but by urge of the deepest depths of the soul. Objective praise may pull out all the stops of the soul’s enthusiasm and the high imaginings of the spirit, but the hymn of communion may express itself in tenderness and sweetness, in upwelling love and quiet affection. It often is a personal rather than a collective hymn. II. RELATION TO THE SINGER _The Hymn of Emotion._ Given a definite emotion based on realization of some religious truth, man will urgently call for some expression of it, directly by speaking or writing, or by means of some provided method.[1] Christians are stimulated by being impressed by the experiences of others. There is a blessed contagion in these expressions of the profound experiences of the saints of God as found in the hymnbooks of all our churches. One feels the accelerated spiritual heartbeat as one reads (or, better yet, sings) Watts’ emotional cry as he stands before the cross of Christ: “When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss And pour contempt on all my pride.” Who can fail to follow him in his final consecration, “Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all”?