Excerpt from A First Series of Church Songs Of late years Messrs. Sankey and Moody, and, later still, the Salvation Army, have introduced religious songs which have at once become favourites, because the airs have been secular, and, in some cases, the words rollicking. The result has been a distinct lowering of the reverence of the people for holy things and holy words. Sacred aspirations and names, at which angels and devils bow, are trolled out or roared to music-hall tunes, sometimes by tipsy men, and often without thought. The tendency of these songs is not only to irreverence and profanity, but also to encourage heretical views of the scheme of Salvation. Justification is upheld as a sentimental outgush of excited hysteria, not as the gradual growth of a spiritual life; and this mischievous teaching poisons the sources of the moral conscience. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Sing! has grown from Keith and Kristyn Getty’s passion for congregational singing; it’s been formed by their traveling and playing and listening and discussing and learning and teaching all over the world. And in writing it, they have five key aims: • to discover why we sing and the overwhelming joy and holy privilege that comes with singing • to consider how singing impacts our hearts and minds and all of our lives • to cultivate a culture of family singing in our daily home life • to equip our churches for wholeheartedly singing to the Lord and one another as an expression of unity • to inspire us to see congregational singing as a radical witness to the world They have also added a few “bonus tracks” at the end with some more practical suggestions for different groups who are more deeply involved with church singing. God intends for this compelling vision of His people singing—a people joyfully joining together in song with brothers and sisters around the world and around his heavenly throne—to include you. He wants you,he wants us, to sing.

This collection offers the first English translation of the oldest known Christian hymnal, a book of hymns which was compiled in Jerusalem during the later 4th or early 5th century. The First Christian Hymnal offers an unmatched resource for understanding the development of early Christian worship and piety, as well as the transmission of Christian doctrine to the unlettered. For too long, this invaluable collection has been almost completely ignored by scholars of early Christianity, having survived only in an Old Georgian translation.