"On occasion, individuals who are prone to sentimentality will read a biblical injunction about joy, for instance, and then assume that worship is inadequate unless a certain emotional experience occurs, as though the emotional stirring were itself valuable. I suggest, however, that unmerited feelings have no merit, almost tautologically. If the (external and objective) substance or a hymn, prayer, or sermon provokes appropriate emotional response, all well and good; but to manufacture such a response without a corresponding reason is just sentimentality: emotion for emotion's sake."
T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2010), 135.
Soli Deo Gloria
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