PREFACE. THE Hymnal revised is herewith offered to the General Convention by the Committee appointed for this work. The leading principles which have guided the Committee in the compilation of the Book are these: 1. To conform the contents and the arrangement of the Hymnal to the Book of Common Prayer. 2. To provide for the present needs and demands of the Church in her public worship and her increased activities, as the conditions have changed within the last twenty years. 3. To provide so fully for hymns in the various departments of Church life and work as to make unnecessary the purchase of additional books for special occasions. 4. To meet the necessities not merely of the larger City Parishes, but to include hymns which would satisfy the wants of smaller and remote missions and the needs of individual souls for the deepening, cultivation and expression of their personal devotion. 5. To include, as far as possible, the expression of the varying schools of theological thought and phases of religious feeling in the Church. 6. To place as many as possible of the hymns for the various seasons under the heading of 'General," where they can readily be found by means of the first-line references, and where yet they will naturally come into use throughout the year. The Committee has had constantly in mind three canons by which to test the value of a hymn: (a) That while undoubtedly one object of a hymn is to rouse devotional feeling, as indicated by the Apostolic injunction, "Speaking to one another in Psalms and spiritual songs," and as abundantly illustrated by the texture of the Psalter; yet expression rather than impression should be the chief characteristic of a good hymn as a direct utterance of prayer or praise to God. (b) That it was the duty of a Committee to criticize every hymn, and to present only such as come up to the recognized standards of the best authorities in hymnology, without too much regard to the prejudices or the associations of the past, or to the passing popularity of the present, based, both of them, upon the insecure and insufficient ground of sentiment; and also to dissever the actual merits of each hymn from the accident of an attractive tune, which often sings into favor words quite unmeaning and unworthy of use. (c) That while other things being equal, a return to the original form of a hymn is desirable, it is perfectly legitimate, when the authors are not named in connection with the hymns, to change the language of a hymn, which the Church chooses to adopt as part of its public worship. Dr. Martineau, in the preface to his "Hymns of Praise and Prayer," argues for this liberty in the following language, on which the Committee is content to rest this claim: “In common with earlier Christians who turned the Psalter to their use, Watts altered David, and Wesley altered Watts; Jeremy Taylor, as well as Tate and Brady, was corrected by Bishop Heber; George Herbert by Bishop Horne; and the Moravian Hymns appear in their successive editions with various transformations. In the absence of this liberty there could be no literature of devotion common to Christendom. The whole hope of any gathering together of Christians in a comprehensive City of God' depends on a gradual falling away of transitory from permanent elements in the sacra transmitted from the past; and they can never be sifted out and lay bare the imperishable residuum, unless each Communion is free to take what it can from the life of the rest, and so test the real range of possible sympathy." The increased number of hymns is due to the actual need of meeting the exigencies, emergencies and diversities already alluded to, and is justified by the size of those Hymnals which have secured the largest use. The writing of this Preface brings to an end the work of the Committee, whose only further duty is to present the Report to the body which appointed it. And it brings to an end an association of much labor, of mutual counsel and concession, of earnest interest and high aims, clouded by only two events: the removal from very valuable service to our American Church of the Bishop of Nova Scotia, who brought most cultivated taste and thought to our labors; and, to us, the far sadder removal, to the rest of Paradise, of our beloved brother, Albert Zabriskie Gray, in whom a character of most intense devoutness lent consecration to his ripe scholarship, his rich poetic feeling, and his rare and exquisite taste. W. C. DOANE, D.D., Bp. of Albany, Chairman. B. H. PADDOCK, D.D., Bp. of Massachusetts. S. BENEDICT, D.D. H. W. NELSON, JR., Secretary. HENRY COPPÉE, LL.D. JAMES S BIDDLE. W. K. ACKERMAN. 4 |