EDITORS' NOTE

Each generation of Christians emphasizes a particular aspect of the everlasting Gospel. Our own lays the stress upon the Kingdom of God. We have been led to believe that, as the Kingdom was the burden of our Lord's message, it should be the burden of His Church's prayer and praise. This book is an attempt to furnish the Church with a hymnal in which Christian communion with God is viewed as fellowship with the Father and the Son in the establishment of the Kingdom.

The editors have sought to make a small collection of large hymns. We have carefully examined several thousand hymns which have found a place in the worship of English-speaking churches during the last two hundred years. We have respected the sacred canon of Christian experience. We have felt that the older and the more widely used a hymn is, the more suited is it to common worship, and the better adapted to manifest and to promote the unity of the Church of Christ. We have striven, however, to include only hymns which are poetically beautiful, which express a normal and healthy spiritual experience, contain no divisive theology, and are specifically Christian in religon.

The text of each hymn has been traced back, as far as we were able, to its first edition. All changes have been carefully noted. If the author has sanctioned a change, the fact is indicated by the presence of two dates following his name. We have introduced no changes into familiar hymns save in a few instances where we have restored the author's original text and substituted it for the altered form which editors have published. We have also attempted to give the correct authorship or source, and the date of the tunes.

A small selection of children's hymns has been included because, while the editors believe that children should be taught the great hymns in the Sunday School, and so trained to join in the public worship of the Church, they also believe that in the Church service a hymn should occasionally be sung, which is especially adapted to their religious experience, in order that they may feel at home in the house of God. Such hymns often help older people to turn and become as little children.

This hymnal is sent forth in the hope that it will assist the Church of to-day to praise God heartily, intelligently and sincerely, to sing with the Spirit and with the understanding hymns which utter living convictions and which consecrate those who sing them to the purpose of Jesus Christ.

HENRY S. COFFIN.
AMBROSE W. VERNON.

Easter, 1910.