el truths, which are so
attractive to all true hearts, no matter by what creed dominated.

(4) The remarkable simplicity characterising those hymns constitutes,
strangely it may seem, no small difficulty for the translator. The mere
rendering of them into English prose is a comparatively easy task, and
can be of no value to any one but the specialist, but to take the
unmeasured lines and cut them to form stanzas, and in the process
sacrifice nothing of their spirit to the exigencies of rhyme and rhythm,
is a task by no means easy. But such drawbacks and difficulties are not
insurmountable; and with the growing interest in hymnology which
characterises our time, it will be strange if, in the years to come, the
Greek service-books are not made to yield their tribute to the praise of
the Christian Church in the West.

V. One prime characteristic of Greek hymnody should be referred to.
Unlike the English hymn, which is intensely subjective--in some cases
unhealthily so--the Greek hymn is in most cases objective. God in the
glory of His majesty, and clothed with His attributes, is held up to the
worship and adoration of His people. Christ, in His Person and Work, is
set before the mind in a most realistic manner. His birth and its
accompaniments; His life; the words He spoke, and the work He did; His
Passion, in all the agony of its detail; the denial of Peter; the remorse
of Judas; the Crucifixion; the darkness, the terror, the opened graves;
the penitent thief; the loud cry, the death--all are depicted in plain,
unmistakable language. So we have in the hymns of the Greek service-books
a pictorial representation of the history of Redemption, which by
engaging the mind appeals ultimately to the heart and its emotions. Our
self-regarding praise is perhaps inevitable, as being the product of the
meditative spirit which has its birth, and lives in the land of the
twilight; but the advantages of the objectiveness of Greek hymnody are so
patent, that its cultivation might be fostered by our hymn-writers, with
advantage to the devotional feeling of our people and to the worship of
the Church.

VI. The hymns as they appear in the original are distinguished by a
variety of terms, the meaning in certain cases being extremely vague, and
in others to be derived from the subject of the hymn, or from its form,
or the time, place, or manner in which it is sung. As we have no
corresponding terms in our language, it is necessary to retain