he
privilege, but it may easily entice a translator to be satisfied with a
lifeless stringing of inept fragments. All this and much more has been
brought home to the writer times without number.

If one would have his work to be permanently useful; if he would aim at
any particular employment of his hymns, he must observe the conditions
which such an aim implies. A translator who aims at the use of his work
in public worship, must aim at pellucid simplicity both of phraseology
and of structure; and if they are to be widely, permanently, or
deservedly popular, they must be gifted with becoming grace. This cannot
be done in translations pure and simple. The present collection gives the
result of an experiment. The Greek has been used as a basis, a theme, a
motive; oriental colour, and it is to be hoped some of the oriental
warmth has been preserved. Now and again an oriental figure is retained,
and to those who have any knowledge of the worship of the Eastern Church,
it must be obvious that the peculiar themes of her praise are in abundant
evidence.

What, then, is the net result? To an unpractised eye, if no indication of
the source of these hymns had been given, could anything about them have
suggested their source? To the unpractised eye, nothing. But no one who
knows the Greek Offices will travel far before he overtakes well-known
landmarks. This is just as it should be. It is sufficient that a fertile
source of suggestion has been found--of theme, thought, form, colour--and
that from this ancient source it is possible to procure much that is
beautiful for the adornment of the worship of God's house to-day. And
this gratifying fact is made plain, that the themes of Greek Church
praise are the grand themes of the praise of the Church in our land and
in all Christian lands;--The Christ in all the Might and Glory of His
Person and Work: the need of our humanity, and the way in which Christ
met it: His miraculous birth, which is not shorn of any of its mystery,
and the embellishments of the event, which are never toned down, but, in
true oriental fashion, made, if possible, more dazzling: His Passion and
His Death, and the fulness of their atoning efficacy. But, as is to be
expected, the grand theme of the Greek singers, as became those who, more
than we have done, caught the first inspiration of their praise from the
apostles, is the glorious Resurrection of our Lord from the dead. Here,
the praise of the Greek Church t