There is an impulse to distinguish between Gospel hymns and Gospel songs, accepting the former and rejecting the latter; but that is playing with words. Good Gospel songs are to be baptized Gospel hymns and allowed to enter the golden gates of approved hymnody. Others draw the line at the end of the Moody and Sankey campaigns, closing the canon at that time and regarding all later Gospel songs as apocryphal! But the worst specimens that have appeared were issued before that date and many excellent ones have been written since. No such mechanical criteria can be applied. The acid test of actual usefulness must be employed with Gospel songs as it was to formal hymns. That many of the former have won a permanent place without the emendation needed by the latter shows how unjustified is the indiscriminate condemnation of this whole class of sacred lyrics. _Wrong Assumptions of the Opposition._ In much of the discussion there seems to be an underlying assumption that there is an inherent antagonism between the standard and the Gospel hymn, that the latter is intended to displace the former. Nothing can be farther from the truth. It is true there is an occasional church where the standard hymns are neglected, but they are a negligible minority. The current Gospel song collections practically all supply a large department of standard hymns and their tunes, in many cases all that are in actual general use. The value of the standard hymn is recognized everywhere as having a most important place in the work of the church. But its very dignity and strength occasion the limitations to its use, and beyond those limitations the Gospel hymn comes as a complementary help. The wise preacher does not use Gospel hymns in his formal, worshipful services, but finds them indispensable in popular evening services, where not awe and solemnity but spirit and aggressiveness, and appeal to the person of average or less culture, are needed. His prayer meeting and other subordinate meetings of groups need the individual feeling and intimacy with religious things supplied by the Gospel hymns. In evangelistic meetings a few of the standards can express the high peaks of interest, but the Gospel songs lead up to those heights. The great revivals of the nineteenth and of the early decades of this century were distinctly characterized by the use of Gospel songs, many of them not even of the higher type. _Unfairness in Comparisons Made._ While the worst specimens of Gospel hymns have usually been selected as the basis of attack, the very best of the standard hymns have been held up as the criterion of value; the utter unfairness of such comparison is evident enough. Gospel hymns should be judged by their best specimens when compared with standard hymns.