There is nothing in them on which the creative imagination can be exercised.

Hymns can be little more than incense of the worshipping soul.

Those of the Latin church are the best; not because they are better poetry than the rest (for they are not), but because their language is the most sonorous.
Cowper's hymns were accepted by the religious body for which they were written, as expressions of its spiritual feeling and desires; so far they were successful.

They are the work of a religious man of culture, and free from anything wild, erotic, or unctuous.

But on the other hand there is nothing in them suited to be the vehicle of lofty devotion, nothing, that we can conceive a multitude or even a prayer-meeting uplifting to heaven with voice and heart.