A HYMN BOOK FOR OUR CHURCHES.
It is the “Manual of Praise,” published by E. J. Goodrich, Oberlin, Ohio, compiled by the lamented Rev. Dr. Hiram Mead and J. B. Rice. It has the cream of our hymnology, the worshipful, endeared hymns to the number of six hundred. It has the wearing pieces of Moody & Sankey. Compiled not by an ambitious amateur in musical composition, it does not seek to force upon the churches a great batch of new and unproven tunes. It was evidently put together for practical purposes, and is small enough to go into a side or hip pocket, a “multum in parvo.” It is cheap, coming by the dozen, for introduction, so as not to cost over sixty cents a copy. It is suited to all occasions. It has a logical arrangement, which will be of constant advantage in the use of it, though those who have it may not know just how the logic comes in, even as the perfection of the art of elocution is to conceal the art. Where it has been used in our institutions and schools, it has been much approved. It is certainly a desideratum for our new churches in the South and in the West.