DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, to wit:

District Clerk's Office.

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the thirtieth day of June, A. D. 1826, and in the fiftieth year of the independence of the United States of America, J. P. DABNEY, of the said District, has deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in the words following, to wit:

A Selection of Hymns and Psalms, for social and private worship. Fourth Edition.

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, "An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned:" and also to an Act, entitled, "An Act, supplementary to an Act, entitled, An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned; and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints."

JNO. W. DAVIS,

Massachusetts. Clerk of the District

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1830 PREFACE

TO THE THIRD EDITION.

THE following selection has been arranged according to the natural succession of topics; which was thought to be the most simple, perspicuous, and popular principle of classification. If this has been followed out with the precision aimed at, the reader, as he becomes familiar with it, will seldom feel the necessity of an Index; although it was thought best to furnish that assistance. It has been the design of this work to embrace all those pieces which had the claim either from long popularity or decided me rit, to be esteemed as standard devotional poetry; and also, as far as possible, all that variety of subject which public instructions or domestic and personal circumstances require. Hence may have arisen a redundancy on certain topics; or, on the other hand, the insertion of hymns, in some instances, rather from the sentiment than the poetry. It would be a needless enlargement of the work to extend it further than these rules required; and there are few probably, who will not now regard it as abundantly copious.

The compiler has no anxiety after that praise, which with some, it may be, attaches to a work of this kind from the number of originals with which it is graced. Let the reader be apprized that the hymns which appear as anonymous, are such as, from the changes and combinations they have undergone, or from otner causes, it was not easy to appropriate. As to many of the rest, alterations have often been made in this work, or adopted from those which preceded it. In the last instance, the authors of these changes are, of course, so numerous, and frequently so uncertain, that to specify them is impossible, and only this general acknowledgment can be made.

If the wish to satisfy the demands of the severest taste as led in any case to the sacrifice of what is far more im