Excerpt from The Psalter: Or, Selections From the Book of Psalms With Other Poetical Sriptures, for Responsive Reading in Public Worship Minister and the Congregation, at each Service on the Lord's Day, as a pre scribed and permanent part of its public worship. As it was the wish of all there concerned with the matter to have the ancient hymns read antiphonally, dividing the successive verses into their par allel and responding clauses, and as no book was then at hand in which they were suitably printed for this purpose, or were arranged in 'lessons' of a convenient length, a small volume was hastily prepared, which it was thought might for a time supply the need of the waiting congregation. It has served its purpose well, and has silently made its way, to the grateful surprise of the compiler, into more than four hundred churches, of different communions, in our own country, and into American chapels in Europe. The custom of such responsive reading has also secured earnest friends, and enlisted for itself their intelligent interest, wherever it has been tried; and while, at the outset, a not unreasonable fear was entertained, by those to whom the thought of it was new, that it might tend to protract unduly the services of worship, or possibly to introduce into such services an element of 'formalism, ' of questionable value, so far as is known the congregations which have adopted it would now be entirely unwilling to displace it. Their attachment to it grows, as the custom continues. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.