Hymns And Hymn Makers 1898 PDF Download

Excerpt from Hymns and Hymn Makers But let us go further and ask What constitutes a good hymn for public worship? It must give voice to the general need. It must move to adoration. It must lift. Even a penitential hymn should lift - although, like the Dies [rae, it may first lay low in the dust, for, as Browning teaches us, there is a stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too, an Obeisance in spirit by which we climb to God's feet. Further, a good hymn should have certain striking ideas vividly, memorably expressed, those ideas forming a connected whole. The diamonds Should be so strung together that each may give lustre to all the rest. A good hymn is not necessarily informing. It is not the function of a hymn to instruct or awaken thought, that should be the function of a sermon. A hymn has to do with the emotions rather than with the intellect, though fresh thought, if it be Of the order that commends itself at once to the mind, is welcome. Anything, however, in praise as in prayer that arrests the flow Of devotional feeling, that excites the critical faculty, or prompts us to ask What does the writer mean here? Is to be con demned. Poems may be packed with thought and SO quaintly, daintily phrased that you linger over every line, but a hymn must march straight forward and carry the singer by a natural sequence to the end without a break. In language, too, a good hymn Should be simple and direct, SO as to be easily understood, and it should also be melodious, its cadences falling gratefully on the ear. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.