These Gospel hymns have several distinct advantages that should not be overlooked. They are simple, easily understood by everybody, quickly appropriated as his own expression by the most limited in education or culture. They are quite emotional, expressing feeling and creating it. They are spontaneous and free, with no labored subtlety or recondite allusion. They are usually more or less rhythmical and stimulating, physically as well as mentally. They are adaptable to various situations and states of feeling. Even more than standard hymns they express personal religious experiences, and are more direct in their hortative method. The chorus, if intelligently written, emphasizes the fundamental idea of the hymn in an unescapable way. As a tool for aggressive effort it has no substitute, and but one rival—earnest and spirit-filled preaching. _Discrimination in the Use of Gospel Songs._ It should be said, however, that the inventory of its values mentioned above applies to only a comparatively small part of the Gospel songs offered to the public, just as the accepted standard hymns are a very small part of the formal hymns from which they have been gleaned. Usually its faults are aridity, vapidity, and shallowness. Yet in all these shortcomings, specimens of equal weakness and futility can be found in verses by accepted hymn writers. The better Gospel songs are after all the sincere expression of a certain stage of culture of mind and soul. That stage may not be high nor admirable, but it must be allowed its spontaneous expression. Every generation has had its own ephemeral hymnody and will continue to have it in spite of all the scolding critics. When our religious people stop writing and singing new songs and are satisfied to sing over and over again the songs of preceding ages, it will prove that the process of ossification has set in and that vital force is passing away. Better that literary unskillfulness and mediocre musical talent shall continue to write, better to have ephemeral, shallow, and unsatisfying songs written by the thousands, than that the impulse to express spontaneously the vital godliness within should be entirely lost. THE SINGING CHURCH PART II HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF HYMNS _Chapter VII_ APOSTOLIC ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT In considering the origin of the Christian hymn, one must remember that it is an outgrowth of man’s innate impulse to express his feelings in hymns and songs. That impulse is constitutional; man sings because he was so made that he cannot help singing.