Page:Olney Hymns - 1840.djvu/40

 tified except on this— namely, that these are subjects to be impressed upon the minds and memories of the people, for individual application by themselves (when they can be persuaded to make it;) but generally, for instruction, warning, reproof, correction, and example,— in reality as means of grace. The part which a congregation of professing Christians can personally take in the routine of Divine service— in reading, praying, responding, or singing— is a subject (considering what is the real usage,) almost too awful to think upon in any other view than the foregoing. Confining himself to this point of justification alone, the writer of these remarks ventures to add, that, whereas singing is only one of the forms of utterance which God has given to man— not which man has in vented any otherwise than as he may be said to have invented speech, by the faculty which God gave him to do so— whatever a man may, without sin, recite with his lips, in the house of God, he may also sing, when the same subjects or sentiments are modeled verse, or set forth in numerous prose, like the translated Psalms, and other poetical parts of Holy Writ, suitable for chaunting. After all, let every man be persuaded in his own mind, and do that in the house of God which he can do to edification.

The Second Book contains pieces on occasional subjects, and these, for the most part, were on actual, not imagined or hypothetical occasions, though capable also of extensive application under similar circumstances —local, temporal, and providential. Thus there are hymns not only for any New Years or Old Years, but which were expressly written, and used as devotional exercises on the commencement and departure of particular years, long ago numbered with those beyond the flood,— years that came and went