I stumbled upon this quote today:
“For some years it has been apparent that the rage for novelties in singing, especially in our Sunday Schools, has been driving out of use the old, precious, standard hymns. They are not memorized as of old. They are scarcely sung at all. They are not even contained in the non-denominational songbooks which in many churches have usurped the place of our hymn books.
We cannot afford to lose these old hymns. They are full of the Gospel; they breathe the deepest emotions of pious hearts in the noblest strains of poetry; they have been tested and approved by successive generations of those that loved the Lord; they are the surviving fittest ones from thousands of inferior productions; they are hallowed by abundant usefulness and tenderest memories. But the young people of today are unfamiliar with them, if the present tendency goes unchecked.”
-Basil Manly, Jr., 1892
Interestingly, three albums that are in my music rotation right now are hymn-based:
PAGE CXVI’s, Hymns and Hymns II and
Sandra McCracken’s, In Feast or Fallow.
By the way, you can get PAGECXVI’s Hymns free at this link until midnight, Tuesday (May 4th).
All three are highly recommended mixes of old and new hymns – check ’em out kids!
For some, it’s not a definition, but a specific song. A song that in one instance gives AND facilitates praise to and honor of an amazing, gracious, and indescribable God. Sadly, for others, the words dirge, tired, old, or irrelevant come to mind – not a reflection of God, but of the older format of songs falsely labeled such because they were written in a difference century (even though hymnody is just as active today as it was in centuries gone by.) The later view is generally unfamiliar with these types of songs and usually avoids them; while the former feel this genre is sorrowfully neglected.
Maybe it’s me, but every time I read Isaiah 40:21 & 28 (“Do you not know? Have you not heard?”), I always have this image of Biff knocking on George McFly’s head in that scene from Back to the Future! You remember, the one where Biff is wondering why George hasn’t done HIS homework. (Need a 
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