FOR CHRISTIAN USE AND WORSHIP; PREPARED AND SET FORTH BY THE GENERAL ASSOCIATION OF CONNECTICUT. NEW-HAVEN: BOSTON: TAPPAN & WHITTEMORE; NEW-YORK: CLARK, AUSTIN & FALO DANFORTH, HAWLEY & CO.; DETROIT: A. 1853. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, BY JEREMIAH DAY, BENNET TYLER, ELEAZRR T. FITCH, JOEL HAWES, AND LEONARD BACON, in trust for THE GENERAL ASSOCIATION OF CONNECTICUT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Connecticut. 395 G48 1853 PREFACE. THE General Association of Connecticut have noticed, for sev eral years, an increasing diversity in the collections of Psalms and Hymns for public worship, used in the churches under their pas toral care. Not only is the use of different collections, in churches so intimately connected with each other, attended with many inconveniences; but it is obvious that the unity and fraternal communion of the constituent portions of our ecclesiastical common wealth, will be greatly promoted, if the churches, without any abridgment of their liberty, can unite in the use of one book of Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs, in all their public as semblies. In the hope of effecting such a union, this book has been pre pared by the appointment, and under the direction of the General Association of Connecticut. Correspondence and consultations have been had with committees of ecclesiastical bodies in other States, as well as with individuals, honored as pastors, or skillful in sacred song and in various ways, much diligence has been used to form a collection suited to the use of evangelical Christians, on all the occasions of public and private worship. The labor of compiling and editing, has been performed chiefly by the Rev. Horace Hooker, and the Rev. Oliver Ellsworth Daggett, whom we thought it expedient to employ, because the Head of the Church seemed to us to have qualified them for such a service, and because they were able for the time, to devote themselves wholly to the work. Yet all has been done under our close and constant superintendence; for it was only in this way that we could perform the duty to which our brethren, in behalf of the churches, had called us. Hardly anything has been admitted or rejected, hardly any change of expression, however trivial, has been made, without our express direction or consent. The wish on our part, to include not only all such pieces as commend them |