But even to make this study complete it would be necessary to go back to the earliest editions compiled or authorized by the Wesleys during their lifetime and compare them with the suc- cessive collections that have been issued up to our day.

As this would also have taken up a great deal of space I have taken note only of the latest edition, comparing it now and then with the next preceding, that of 1878, in order to exhibit the changes that have come over the spirit of this denomination in somewhat less than a generation.

We have here the evidence that Protestantism represents progress along certain lines in contradistinction to Roman Catholicism which clings tena- ciously to the paSt It is true, the creed remains literally unchanged, although its interpretation has undergone modifications in the minds of those who have given it careful thought.

By such a study we are able to apprehend what we may designate as a mental stratum that is of varying thickness and which extends through that large section of mankind, drawn together by a sort of consanguinity of temperament and to observe the poetic forms by which this temperamental consan- guinity finds perennial expression and nourishment.

Lyric poetry is, in general, defined as that form of verse through which the sub- ject gives utterance to what he thinks and feels as distinguished from epic in which the poet narrates what he has learned or professes to have learned from others.