BREAK OF DAY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. A HISTORY AND A SPECIMEN OF ITS First Book of English Sacred Song. 300 HYMNS OF DR. WATTS, Carefully Selected and Arranged, with a Sketch of their History. BY CYPRIAN T. RUST, RECTOR OF WESTERFIELD, Suffolk. BIBLIOTHECA MAR 8 BODI FIANA LONDON: WILLIAM HUNT AND COMPANY, 12, PATERNOSTER ROW. IPSWICH WILLIAM HUNT, TAVERN STREET. 1880. 147.9. 661. ADVERTISEMENT. HE purpose I have in view in this publication will seem to most persons a very strange one,-it is, to call the attention of the public to Dr. Watts' Psalms and Hymns, a book which has been circulated by thousands and tens of thousands over all the British possessions, a copy of which may be found to this day in almost every devout family, a large portion of which is printed every year in the various collections extant. Strange as the proposal may sound, there is not only good reason for it, but in the interests of true religion there is a necessity for it. 1st. The form in which the Psalms and Hymns appear is a great obstacle to their present and future circulation and use. 2nd. The multitude of new hymns is so great, that there is danger, in the Church Hymnals at least, that the nineteenth century hymns will exclude those of the eighteenth altogether. The first of these causes has stopped the sale of Dr. Watts' Hymns; the second threatens their complete banishment from Divine Service. I propose, then, as a feeble but earnest protest against the wrong, and an equally earnest attempt at a remedy, to publish about three hundred of Dr. Watts' best hymns, carefully selected, re-arranged, and amended, and to give a history of their introduction into Divine Service in England. The following |