Franklin Square Song Collection - online songbook

200 favorite songs and Hymns for Schools, Homes Lyrics & Sheet Music

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174	FRANKLIN-SQUARE SONG COLLECTION.
Some of the older and more familiar hymns which we have sung from our infancy, and the words of which we can repeat from beginning to end, yet without remembering ever to have committed them to memory, associate themselves so naturally with the inspired writings that it is almost with difficulty we can at all realize that these lines of living truth and of helpful love were actually written by mortals like ourselves,— poor erring mortals! many of them—in comparatively recent years. The hymn-writers of the last two centuries, those who have had the true gift from above, and		who have used it with the right motive,have done more to aid and to elevate their fellow beings than they ever dreamed of doing, and are really only second to those who wrote under direct inspiration. In fact, however, who will venture to say that our hymnists have not been as directly and as truly inspired as were the evangelists themselves? Although, at first thought, it does require an effort of the mind, to realize that these hymns are the work of modern writers, it is very pleasant, and always a matter of interest, to know the incidents and circumstances of their composition..
THE RED, RED ROSE.			Robert Burns.