HYMNS FOR THE LIFTING UP OF THE HEARTS OF GOD'S PEOPLE, IN PUBLIC, SOCIAL, FAMILY AND SECRET "Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and LONDON: LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMAN, AND SOLD BY R. LINDOP, SANDBACH. 1834. PREFACE. "THE singing of Psalms and Hymns has ever constituted a delightful part of Divine Worship. In the lowest state of the Church of Christ, when the sufferings of our blessed Saviour were at hand, Himself and the company of His disciples followed the custom of adding praise to their devotions; and from the practice of Paul and Silas, as well as from the very explicit instructions recorded in the New Testament, and from the testimony of the younger Pliny, we find, that the first Christians were wont to edify themselves in Psalms and Hymns, and Spiritual Songs.'" At the era of the Reformation, when the Gospel, long hid, was to be restored to us,-when, rescued from the motley and meretricious disguisements of the Romish ceremonial, it was to shine forth afresh in all the pure and primitive beauty of holiness, the Reformers found in Psalmody the most elevating of virtuous excitements, and the strongest bond of congregational union. But highly valuable as the compositions of the sweet Psalmist of Israel confessedly are, yet it has been long and generally acknowledged that to a Christian Congregation, something was still wanting in this department of Public worship, which," in addition to the holy effusions of the Old Testament, may convey that |