PREFACE.

Ar the request of one, whose name, were it given, would be sufficient guarantee for the soundness of the following selection of sacred poems, I have examined the manuscript as it has been prepared for the press. The fulfilment of this pleasurable task enables me to express my cordial approval of the selection, and my belief that few persons will peruse it without profit and satisfaction.

If the present be a period in which no living poet of the highest order receives universal applause, it is one in which the treasures of the past are carefully examined, and many a mine long ago regarded as exhausted, if indeed its very existence had not well nigh passed from memory, has been

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anew opened and re-worked, and many a gem surpassing brightness and worth has been thence brought into light.

This work was undertaken for the purpose of placing before the Christian public a series of sacred pieces which are not usually found in books designed for use in Public Worship, but which for sentiment and poetry alike claim to be esteemed as ' apples of gold in pictures of silver.'

The arrangement adopted is chronological. The pieces are culled from the writings of various authors, whose names adorn the literary history of our country, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to the present day. There is an identity of faith, of hope, and of joy by which all may be recognized as fitting media for the expression of the experience of the members of the one Church militant here on earth—the one family of God's first-born.

A work of this kind effectively illustrates the communion of saints. For many successive generations the same inner spiritual life has been

affected by the same divine truths; the saintly soul has been stirred by the same antagonisms of flesh and spirit, conscious of the same keen conflict between sin and grace, drawn onward by the same hopes, prompted to action by the same aspirations, and borne aloft by the same impulsive motives. The depths of sin and misery, revealed by the lens of God's word and the light of God's Spirit, enforce from the terrified spirit the groanings of unutterable despair. The mighty love displayed on Calvary, the atoning efficacy of the blood of our Saviour-God there shed, when He made His soul an offering for sin, and died the just for the unjust to bring us to God, raises from the dust of death, dispels fear, inspires with joy and peace, the blessed progeny of faith, and summons from the joyous beholder a new song, even a thanksgiving to our God. The poet's appeal to his own heart finds a ready response in ours; and, despite the mental activity and intellectual development of the 19th century, we here find ourselves

on the same platform of faith and hope and love with those whose spiritual condition and progress were described centuries ago. The continuous stream of hallowed poesy flows on; age after age lifts up its voice; voice after voice takes up the subject with varied rhythm and in perhaps a slightly varied key. We listen entranced by the music of the successive bards as one by one they pass before us. And when the last cadence of the reremost has died away, with bated breath we listen as if to catch from the spirit-world the echoes of their now united strains, as in that land of unsullied purity and joy they sing their song of grateful praise, to Him who loved them, and washed them from their sins in His own blood, and made them kings and priests unto God, with whom they shall live in heavenly light and holiness and love for ever and ever.

C. K.

Bath, November 11, 1863.