Introduction.
died in 397. It ſeems to me improbable that ſo well known a hymn would not have been always claſſed with his other hymns, and that it would have ſlept, if written before 397, for at leaſt three hundred years.
VI.
The Vexilla Regis is the ſixth of theſe expoſitional hymns. The firſt five, as it were, ſelected themſelves, i. e., there was no queſtion as to their being taken and others left. But at this point the work of rejection began. This hymn is not one of the great ſpiritual hymns of the world; but the object of this compilation was to give an expoſition of the ſubject: by hymns which were both repreſentative and celebrated. The Vexilla has indeed been a famous hymn—a hymn of eccleſiaſtical warfare and victory which has rung around the world. "In the churches of our own country and time," as the late Preſident Welling has ſaid, "may be heard ſnatches and echoes of that antique poeſy which was firſt intoned in the New World by the Jeſuit miſſionaries and Romiſh eccleſiaſtics who planted the cedar and
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