sermons to give point
and pungency to the thought of the preacher. Alike in popular discourse
and public testimony or in private meditation these gems of sentiment
and thought will come into play with great advantage. The benefit which
may be derived from them can scarcely be overestimated. President Eliot,
of Harvard University, has said: "There are bits of poetry in my mind
learned in infancy that have stood by me in keeping me true to my ideas
of duty and life. Rather than lose these I would have missed all the
sermons I have ever heard." Many another can say substantially the same,
can trace his best deeds very largely to the influence of some little
stanza or couplet early stored away in his memory and coming ever
freshly to mind in after years as the embodiment of truest wisdom.

We cannot guarantee in all cases the absolute correctness of the forms
of the poems given, though much pains have been taken to ensure
accuracy; but authors themselves make changes in their productions at
different times in different editions. Nor have we always been able to
trace the poem to its source. Slips and errors of various kinds can
hardly be avoided in such matters. Even so competent an editor as John
G. Whittier, in his "Songs of Three Centuries," ascribes "Love divine,
all love excelling" to that bitter Calvinist, Augustus M. Toplady,
giving it as the sole specimen of his verse; when it was really written
by the ardent Arminian, Charles Wesley, with whom Toplady was on
anything but friendly terms. If Whittier could make a blunder of this
magnitude we may be pardoned if possibly a keen-eyed critic spies
something in our book almost as grossly incorrect. In some cases we have
been obliged to change the titles of poems so as to avoid reduplication
in our index, or to adapt them the better to the small extract taken
from the much longer form in the original. In a few cases we have made
(indicated) alterations in poems to fit them more fully to the purpose
of the book.

The volume will be found not only a readable one, we think, but also an
uncommonly useful one for presentation by those who would do good and
give gratification to their serious-minded friends with a taste for
religious poetry and a love for wandering in the "holy land of song." He
who would put before another the essential elements of religion would do
better to give him such a book as this than a treatise on theology. He
who would himself get a clear idea of wha