SEVERAL years ago it was suggested to the author, by one of our most energetic and useful ministers, an honored pastor in the Presbyterian church, to undertake "the preparation of a small popular work on Psalmody." This request was enforced by the kindest considerations of a personal nature, and the brother was pleased to add: "we need a popular treatise * *to meet the public demand on this subject." Many circumstances conspired to forbid compliance with this suggestion until a recent period. The result is now with great diffidence submitted to the Christian public.
The providential circumstances which have seemed to demand some further defense of the cherished usages of the Presbyterian church in relation to the public and private singing of the praises of God, are fully stated in the progress of this discussion, and especially in the Introductory Letter. If our system of Psalmody be such as is described in the quotations made from the writings of the brethren whom we oppose, then the sooner it is abandoned the better; since it must be, as they are pleased to allege, "a corruption of Divine worship" of a very offensive and dangerous sort. But if, on the other hand, it is clearly demonstrable that these brethren have misapprehended, and therefore, greatly misrepresented the views and usages of our church; if, moreover, their confident and peculiar claims to the exclusive use of an "inspired Psalmody" can be shown to be altogether without foundation; a superstructure without a basis either in the Holy Scriptures, Church History or fact; then it becomes an obvious duty to present the evidence which clearly establishes these positions. This has been attempted in the following Letters.
We disclaim at the outset, the slightest intentional disrespect toward the Psalmody in use among these brethren, by the employment in this work of the phraseology, "Rouse's versifica