Here is the first in the book: A GENERAL SONG OF PRAISE TO ALMIGHTY GOD.
How shall I sing that Majesty Which angels do admire?
Let dust in dust and silence lie; Sing, sing, ye heavenly choir.
Thousands of thousands stand around Thy throne, O God most high; Ten thousand times ten thousand sound Thy praise; but who am I?
Thy brightness unto them appears, Whilst I thy footsteps trace; A sound of God comes to my ears; But they behold thy face.
They sing because thou art their sun: Lord, send a beam on me; For where heaven is but once begun, There hallelujahs be.
Enlighten with faith's light my heart; Enflame it with love's fire; Then shall I sing and bear a part With that celestial choir.
I shall, I fear, be dark and cold, With all my fire and light; Yet when thou dost accept their gold, Lord, treasure up my mite.
How great a being, Lord, is thine.
Which doth all beings keep! Thy knowledge is the only line To sound so vast a deep.
Thou art a sea without a shore, A sun without a sphere; Thy time is now and evermore, Thy place is everywhere.
How good art thou, whose goodness is Our parent, nurse, and guide! Whose streams do water Paradise, And all the earth beside! Thine upper and thy nether springs Make both thy worlds to thrive; Under thy warm and sheltering wings Thou keep'st two broods alive.
Thy arm of might, most mighty king Both rocks and hearts doth break: My God, thou canst do everything But what should show thee weak.
Thou canst not cross thyself, or be Less than thyself, or poor; But whatsoever pleaseth thee, That canst thou do, and more.
Who would not fear thy searching eye, Witness to all that's true! Dark Hell, and deep Hypocrisy Lie plain before its view.
Motions and thoughts before they grow, Thy knowledge doth espy; What unborn ages are to do, Is done before thine eye.
Thy wisdom which both makes and mends, We ever much admire: Creation all our wit transcends; Redemption rises higher.
Thy wisdom guides strayed sinners home, 'Twill make the dead world rise, And bring those prisoners to their doom: Its paths are mysteries.
Great is thy truth, and shall prevail To unbelievers' shame: Thy truth and years do never fail; Thou ever art the same.
Unbelief is a raging wave Dashing against a rock: If God doth not his Israel save, Then let Egyptians mock.
Most pure and holy are thine eyes, Most holy is thy name; Thy saints, and laws, and penalties, Thy holiness proclaim.
This is the devil's scourge and sting, This is the angels' song, Who _holy, holy, holy_ sing, In heavenly Canaan's tongue.
Mercy, that shining attribute, The sinner's hope and plea! Huge hosts of sins in their pursuit, Are drowned in thy Red Sea.
Mercy is God's memorial, And in all ages praised: My God, thine only Son did fall, That Mercy might be raised.
Thy bright back-parts, O God of grace, I humbly here adore: Show me thy glory and thy face, That I may praise thee more.
Since none can see thy face and live, For me to die is best: Through Jordan's streams who would not dive, To land at Canaan's rest?
To these _Songs of Praise_ is appended another series called _Penitential Cries_, by the Rev.Thomas Shepherd, who, for a short time a clergyman in Buckinghamshire, became the minister of the Congregational church at Northampton, afterwards under the care of Doddridge.

Although he was an imitator of Mason, some of his hymns are admirable.

The following I think one of the best:-- FOR COMMUNION WITH GOD.
Alas, my God, that we should be Such strangers to each other! O that as friends we might agree, And walk and talk together! Thou know'st my soul does dearly love The place of thine abode; No music drops so sweet a sound As these two words, _My God_.
* * * * * May I taste that communion, Lord, Thy people have with thee?
Thy spirit daily talks with them, O let it talk with me! Like Enoch, let me walk with God, And thus walk out my day, Attended with the heavenly guards, Upon the king's highway.
When wilt thou come unto me, Lord?
O come, my Lord most dear! Come near, come nearer, nearer still: I'm well when thou art near.
* * * * * When wilt thou come unto me, Lord?
For, till thou dost appear, I count each moment for a day, Each minute for a year.
* * * * * There's no such thing as pleasure here; My Jesus is my all: As thou dost shine or disappear, My pleasures rise and fall.
Come, spread thy savour on my frame-- No sweetness is so sweet; Till I get up to sing thy name Where all thy singers meet.
In the writings of both we recognize a straight-forwardness of expression equal to that of Wither, and a quaint simplicity of thought and form like that of Herrick; while the very charm of some of the best lines is their spontaneity.

The men have just enough mysticism to afford them homeliest figures for deepest feelings.
I turn to the accomplished Joseph Addison.
He was born in 1672.

His religious poems are so well known, and are for the greater part so ordinary in everything but their simplicity of composition, that I should hardly have cared to choose one, had it not been that we owe him much gratitude for what he did, in the reigns of Anne and George I., to purify the moral taste of the English people at a time when the influence of the clergy was not for elevation, and to teach the love of a higher literature when Milton was little known and less esteemed.