There has been no attempt, evidently,
to conform to the requirements of any creed; the devout Catholic, as
well as the Episcopalian Churchman, will find here the favorite
aspirations, penitential strains, and ascriptions of praise, which have
been consecrated by generations of worshippers. To American readers the
collection will be substantially new, since hardly a dozen of the hymns
are to be found in the volumes in use in our churches. If it had been
the purpose of the editors to gather all the classic religious poetry,
to form a sacred anthology, it would have been necessary to print a
great number of the hymns in modern collections; and the volume would
in that case have lost in novelty what it gained in completeness.
Those who like to go back to the ancient forms of worship for
inspiration, who feel the force of association in the lyrics which have
come down from almost apostolic times, will find in this book an aid to
devotion and religious contemplation. With a little more care in
excluding strongly-marked doctrinal stanzas, the "Hymns of the Ages,"
if less characteristic, would have been more truly _catholic_, and
therefore acceptable to a larger portion of the Church Universal.
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