PREFACE.
down- right Christians,-makes it increasingly desirable to have a large number of experimental hymns in every Collection. After all, if we once begin to strike out of a hymn- book every hymn which adopts the singular number, or speaks of the feeling of individuals, I do not know where we can stop! We shall certainly deprive our hymn- books of some of the best hymns in the English language.!
It will be objected, I am afraid, by many, that not a few hymns in this volume are too plain, familiar, and colloquial. I shall be told that they are likely to give offence to persons of refined and cultivated minds. Let me entreat such objectors to make charitable allowance for the wide difference of taste which will always be found among Englishmen of different styles of education, and of different ranks and classes. I am quite certain that an English hymn- book compiled in such a way as to suit none but the highly educated and literary classes, would never be popular with the great majority of our people. It would seem to them cold, stiff, chilling, and ungenial. They want warmth, plainness, and fire. I do not for a moment defend vulgarity, irreverence, or nonsensical jingles and repetition in our hymns:-all this I abhor. But I do maintain that we ought to consider the taste of the vast majority of our worshippers, and not be extravagantly squeamish or fastidious, from
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