Choosing songs for worship

I read a couple of posts recently on how not to write worship songs -- funny if not so often true. 

Big Point Not To Be Missed: In every age when there is an explosion of new hymns & songs -- think late 18th cent England, late 19th cent America/"gospel song" -- you can find many songs that surely failed at building up the body. Many songs were published that never lived past their generation. Many songs would have failed a "10 point test" back then. To my dear Reformed friends who find contemporary songs ill-suited for worship, I remind you that poor song-writing is not some new affliction, or some argument against our trying.to sing God's praise afresh for our generation. May God give us more the like of Getty, Kauflin, Altrogge, Tomlin, etc. May God give us anew the "songs of Zion" in ways that speak to the hearts of our generation.

It occured to me that choosing our songs for this Sunday's worship is no less daunting a task -- and one requiring as much care and prayer. I remembered something I read in one of my (many) old hymnals -- a plymouth brethren (1881) edited by Darby. And -- wonderfully -- I found it tonight online. So here it is -- good reflections for choosing songs. I don't think the theological difference we (Reformed) have with his dispensationalism muddy his points. They are well worth considering:

Three things are needed for a hymn book;

1. a basis of truth and sound doctrine;

2. something, at least, of the spirit of poetry, though not poetry itself, which is objectionable, as merely the spirit and imagination of man;

3. and thirdly, the most difficult to find of all, that experimental acquaintance with truth in the affections which enables a person to make his hymn – if led of God to compose one – the vehicle, in sustained thought and language, of practical grace and truth which sets the soul in communion with Christ, and rises even to the Father, and yet this in such sort that it is not mere individual experience, which, for assembly worship, is out of place.

In a word, the Father's love, and Christ developed in the soul's affections, rising in praise back again to its source. God alone can give this so as to meet the wants of an assembly.