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HYMN BOOK:
BOOK:

COMPRISING

A GREAT VARIETY OF SACRED EFFUSIONS,

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED;

SUITABLE TO THE LIVELIER AS WELL AS GRAVER
PURPOSES OF DEVOTION.

BY GEORGE ROGERS.

CINCINNATI:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. P. BROOKS,

Walnut Street, between Third and Fourth.

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Second Edition.

BV

455

·RC

1843

Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1842, by GEORGE ROGERS, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the District of Ohio.

PREFACE.

Ir was an aim with the undersigned, in compiling this book, to make it embrace all the really good effusions of this kind, obtainable from every source; he may, in the judgment of some, not only have failed of that end, but have admitted many pieces of very indifferent merit. Great allowance must always be made for a diversity of tastes in these matters; and, perhaps, after all his care, several hymns may have found admission, which, on a close examination, he himself would not quite approve, while others may have been excluded which he would now be willing to have admitted. All this is very possible; he only did the best he could, and his best, in any department of mental labor, is quite wide of perfection.

In another aim, and one of higher importance than the above-mentioned, he hopes to have succeeded more to the satisfaction of all concerned, viz., in that of making his book, throughout, consistent with the good sense, and religious sentiments, of the denomination for whose use it is more especially designed. That this is an aim of no very easy accomplishment he has fully experienced, and he is therefore the more disposed to excuse the failures in this respect, which are exhibited in the several previous compilations of hymns for the use of Universalists, and to thank their compilers, (the Streeters, Hosea Ballou, 2nd, and A. C. Thomas, in particular,) for the much they did toward the fulfilment of this object, by their judicious alterations of many of their selected hymns, whereby the labor of the present compilation was materially lessened.

Much, nevertheless, very much, remained to be done in the way afore-mentioned, and there was no labor connected with his undertaking, which the undersigned found to be at once so difficult and so delicate-delicate, because he experienced a sincere repugnance at altering hymns that in other respects were really excellent, especially those of them that had become so familiar by frequent use, that their very errors were respected by the feelings, however clearly condemned by the judgment. Many supplicatory hymns addressed to

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