Come, Thou Holy Spirit, come, And from Thine eternal home Shed the ray of light divine; Come, Thou Father of the poor, Come, Thou Source of all our store, Come, within our bosoms shine.

Thou of Comforters the best, Thou the soul's most welcome Guest, Sweet Refreshment here below! In our labor Rest most sweet, Grateful Shadow from the heat, Solace in the midst of woe!

Oh, most blessed Light Divine, Shine within these hearts of Thine, And our inmost being fill; If Thou take Thy grace away, Nothing pure in man will stay, All our good is turned to ill.

Heal our wounds; our strength renew On our dryness pour Thy dew; Wash the stains of guilt away! Bend the stubborn heart and will, Melt the frozen, warm the chill, Guide the steps that go astray.

Neale's Translation.

THE TUNE.

The metre and six-line stanza, being uniform with those of "Rock of Ages," have tempted some to borrow "Toplady" for this ancient hymn, but Hastings' tune would refuse to sing other words; and, besides, the alternate rhymes would mar the euphony. Not unsuitable in spirit are several existing tunes of the right measure—like "Nassau" or "St. Athanasius"—but in truth the "Veni, Sancte Spiritus" in English waits for its perfect setting. Dr. Ray Palmer's paraphrase of it in sixes-and-fours, to fit "Olivet,"—

Come, Holy Ghost in love, etc.

—is objectionable both because the word Ghost is an archaism in Christian worship and more especially because Dr. Palmer's altered version usurps the place of his own hymn. "Olivet" with "My faith looks up to Thee" makes as inviolable a case of psalmodic monogamy as "Toplady" with "Rock of Ages."

ST. FULBERT.

"Chori Cantores Hierusalem Novae."

St. Fulbert's hymn is a worthy companion of Perronet's "Coronation"—if, indeed, it was not its original prompter—as King Robert's great litany was the mother song of Watts' "Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove;" and the countless other sacred lyrics beginning with similar words. As the translation stands in the Church of England, there are six stanzas now sung, though in America but four appear, and not in the same sequence. The first four of the six in their regular succession are as follows:

Ye choirs of New Jerusalem, Your sweetest notes employ, The Paschal victory to hymn In strains of holy joy.

For Judah's Lion bursts His chains, Crushing the serpent's head; And cries aloud, through death's domains To wake the imprisoned dead.

Devouring depths of hell their prey At His command restore; His ransomed hosts pursue their way Where Jesus goes before.

Triumphant in His glory now, To Him all power is given; To Him in one communion bow All saints in earth and heaven.

Bishop Fulbert, known in the Roman and in the Protestant ritualistic churches as St. Fulbert of Chartres, was a man of brilliant and versatile mind, and one of the most eminent prelates of his time. He was a contemporary of Robert II, and his intimate friend, continuing so after the Pope (Gregory V.) excommunicated the king for marrying a cousin, which was forbidden by the canons of the church.

Fulbert was for some time head of the Theological College at Chartres, a cathedral town of France, anciently the capital of Celtic Gaul, and afterwards he was consecrated as Bishop of that diocese. He died about 1029.

THE TUNE.

The modern tone-interpreter of Fulbert's hymn bears the name "La Spezia" in some collections, and was composed by James Taylor about the time the hymn was translated into English by Robert Campbell. Research might discover the ancient tune—for the hymn is said to have been sung in the English church during Fulbert's lifetime—but the older was little likely to be the better music. "La Spezia" is a choral of enlivening but easy chords, and a tread of triumph in its musical motion that suits the march of "Judah's Lion":

His ransomed hosts pursue their way Where Jesus goes before.

James Taylor, born 1833, is a Doctor of Music, organist of the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Philharmonic Society.

Robert Campbell, the translator, was a Scotch lawyer, born in Edinburgh, who besides his work as an advocate wrote original hymns, and in other ways exercised a natural literary gift. He compiled the excellent Hymnal of the diocese of St. Andrews, and this was his best work. The date of his death is given as Dec. 29, 1868.

THOMAS OF CELANO.

Dies irae! dies illa, Solvet saeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sybilla.

Day of wrath! that day of burning, All the world to ashes turning, Sung by prophets far discerning.

Latin ecclesiastical poetry reached its high water mark in that awful hymn. The solitaire of its sphere and time in the novelty of its rhythmic triplets, it stood a wonder to the church and hierarchy accustomed to the slow spondees of the ancient chant. There could be such a thing as a trochaic hymn!—and majestic, too!

It was a discovery that did not stale. The compelling grandeur of the poem placed it distinct and alone, and the very difficulty of staffing it for vocal and instrumental use gave it a zest, and helped to keep it unique through the ages.

Latin hymnody and hymnography, appealing to the popular ear and heart, had gradually substituted accent for quantity in verse; for the common people could never be moved by a Christian song in the prosody of the classics. The religion of the cross, with the song-preaching of its propagandists, created medieval Latin and made it a secondary classic—mother of four anthem languages of Western and Southern Europe. Its golden age was the 12th and 13th centuries. The new and more flexible school of speech and music in hymn and tune had perfected rhythmic beauty and brought in the winsome assonance of rhyme.



The "Dies Irae" was born, it is believed, about the year 1255. Its authorship has been debated, but competent testimony assures us that the original draft of the great poem was found in a box among the effects of Thomas di Celano after his death. Thomas—surnamed Thomas of Celano from his birthplace, the town of Celano in the province of Aquila, Southern Italy—was the pupil, friend and co-laborer of St. Francis of Assisi, and wrote his memoirs. He is supposed to have died near the end of the 13th century. That he wrote the sublime judgment song there is now practically no question.

The label on the discovered manuscript would suggest that the writer did not consider it either a hymn or a poem. Like the inspired prophets he had meditated—and while he was musing the fire burned. The only title he wrote over it was "Prosa de mortuis," Prosa (or prosa oratio)—from prorsus, "straight forward"—appears here in the truly conventional sense it was beginning to bear, but not yet as the antipode of "poetry." The modest author, unconscious of the magnitude of his work, called it simply "Plain speech concerning the dead."[7]

[Footnote 7: "Proses" were original passages introduced into ecclesiastical chants in the 10th century. During and after the 11th century they were called "Sequences" (i.e. following the "Gospel" in the liturgy), and were in metrical form, having a prayerful tone. "Sequentia pro defunctis" was the later title of the "Dies Irae."]

The hymn is much too long to quote entire, but can be found in Daniel's Thesaurus in any large public library. As to the translations of it, they number hundreds—in English and German alone, and Italy, Spain and Portugal have their vernacular versions—not to mention the Greek and Russian and even the Hebrew. A few stanzas follow, with their renderings into English (always imperfect) selected almost at random:

Quantus tremor est futurus Quando Judex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussurus!

Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulcra regionum, Coget omnes ante thronum!

O the dread, the contrite kneeling When the Lord, in Judgment dealing, Comes each hidden thing revealing!

When the trumpet's awful tone Through the realms sepulchral blown, Summons all before the Throne!

The solemn strength and vibration of these tremendous trilineals suffers no general injury by the variant readings—and there are a good many. As a sample, the first stanza was changed by some canonical redactor to get rid of the heathen word Sybilla, and the second line was made the third:

Dies Irae, dies illa Crucis expandens vexilla, Solvet saeclum in favilla.

Day of wrath! that day foretold, With the cross-flag wide unrolled, Shall the world in fire enfold!

In some readings the original "in favilla" is changed to "cum favilla," "with ashes" instead of "in ashes"; and "Teste Petro" is substituted for "Teste David."

THE TUNE.

The varieties of music set to the "Hymn of Judgment" in the different sections and languages of Christendom during seven hundred years are probably as numerous as the pictures of the Holy Family in Christian art. It is enough to say that one of the best at hand, or, at least, accessible, is the solemn minor melody of Dr. Dykes in William Henry Monk's Hymns Ancient and Modern. It was composed about the middle of the last century. Both the Evangelical and Methodist Hymnals have Dean Stanley's translation of the hymn, the former with thirteen stanzas (six-line) to a D minor of John Stainer, and the latter to a C major of Timothy Matthews. The Plymouth Hymnal has seventeen of the trilineal stanzas, by an unknown translator, to Ferdinand Hiller's tune in F minor, besides one verse to another F minor—hymn and tune both nameless.

All the composers above named are musicians of fame. John Stainer, organist of St. Paul's Cathedral, was a Doctor of Music and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and celebrated for his works in sacred music, to which he mainly devoted his time. He was born June 6, 1840. He died March 31, 1901.

Rev. Timothy Richard Matthews, born at Colmworth, Eng., Nov. 20, 1826, is a clergyman of the Church of England, incumbent of a Lancaster charge to which he was appointed by Queen Alexandra.

Ferdinand Hiller, born 1811 at Frankfort-on-the-Main, of Hebrew parentage, was one of Germany's most eminent musicians. For many years he was Chapel Master at Cologne, and organized the Cologne Conservatory. His compositions are mostly for instrumental performance, but he wrote cantatas, motets, male choruses, and two oratorios, one on the "Destruction of Jerusalem." Died May 10, 1855.

The Very Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster, was an author and scholar whom all sects of Christians delighted to honor. His writings on the New Testament and his published researches in Palestine, made him an authority in Biblical study, and his contributions to sacred literature were looked for and welcomed as eagerly as a new hymn by Bonar or a new poem by Tennyson. Dean Stanley was born in 1815, and died July 18th, 1881.

THOMAS A KEMPIS.

Thomas a Kempis, sub-prior of the Convent of St. Agnes, was born at Hamerkin, Holland, about the year 1380, and died at Zwoll, 1471. This pious monk belonged to an order called the "Brethren of the Common Life" founded by Gerard de Groote, and his fame rests entirely upon his one book, the Imitation of Christ, which continues to be printed as a religious classic, and is unsurpassed as a manual of private devotion. His monastic life—as was true generally of the monastic life of the middle ages—was not one of useless idleness. The Brethren taught school and did mechanical work. Besides, before the invention of printing had been perfected and brought into common service, the multiplication of books was principally the work of monkish pens. Kempis spent his days copying the Bible and good books—as well as in exercises of devotion that promoted religious calm.

His idea of heaven, and the idea of his order, was expressed in that clause of John's description of the City of God, Rev. 22:3, "and His servants shall serve Him." Above all other heavenly joys that was his favorite thought. We can well understand that the pious quietude wrought in his mind and manners by his habit of life made him a saint in the eyes of the people. The frontispiece of one edition of his Imitatio Christi pictures him as being addressed before the door of a convent by a troubled pilgrim,—

"O where is peace?—for thou its paths hast trod,"

—and his answer completes the couplet,—

"In poverty, retirement, and with God."

Of all that is best in inward spiritual life, much can be learned from this inspired Dutchman. He wrote no hymns, but in his old age he composed a poem on "Heaven's Joys," which is sometimes called "Thomas a Kempis' Hymn":

High the angel choirs are raising Heart and voice in harmony; The Creator King still praising Whom in beauty there they see.

Sweetest strains from soft harps stealing, Trumpets' notes of triumph pealing, Radiant wings and white stoles gleaming Up the steps of glory streaming; Where the heavenly bells are ringing; "Holy! holy! holy!" singing To the mighty Trinity! "Holy! holy! holy!" crying, For all earthly care and sighing In that city cease to be!

These lines are not in the hymnals of today—and whether they ever found their way into choral use in ancient times we are not told. Worse poetry has been sung—and more un-hymnlike. Some future composer will make a tune to the words of a Christian who stood almost in sight of his hundredth year—and of the eternal home he writes about.

MARTIN LUTHER.

"Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott."

Of Martin Luther Coleridge said, "He did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as he did by his translation of the Bible." The remark is so true that it has become a commonplace.

The above line—which may be seen inscribed on Luther's tomb at Wittenberg—is the opening sentence and key-note of the Reformer's grandest hymn. The forty-sixth Psalm inspired it, and it is in harmony with sublime historical periods from its very nature, boldness, and sublimity. It was written, according to Welles, in the memorable year when the evangelical princes delivered their protest at the Diet of Spires, from which the word and the meaning of the word "Protestant" is derived. "Luther used often to sing it in 1530, while the Diet of Augsburg was sitting. It soon became the favorite psalm with the people. It was one of the watchwords of the Reformation, cheering armies to conflict, and sustaining believers in the hours of fiery trial."

"After Luther's death, Melancthon, his affectionate coadjutor, being one day at Weimar with his banished friends, Jonas and Creuziger, heard a little maid singing this psalm in the street, and said, 'Sing on, my little girl, you little know whom you comfort:'"

A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing; Our helper He, amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing. For still our ancient foe Doth seek to work us woe; His craft and power are great, And, armed with cruel hate, On earth is not his equal.

* * * * *

The Prince of Darkness grim— We tremble not for him: His rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure, One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers— No thanks to them—abideth; The Spirit and the gifts are ours, Through Him who with us sideth. Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also; The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still, His kingdom is for ever.

Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, in Saxony, Nov. 10, 1483. He was educated at the University of Erfurth, and became an Augustinian monk and Professor of Philosophy and Divinity in the University of Wittenberg. In 1517 he composed and placarded his ninety-five Theses condemning certain practices of the Romish Church and three years later the Pope published a bull excommunicating him, which he burnt openly before a sympathetic multitude in Wittenberg. His life was a stormy one, and he was more than once in mortal danger by reason of his antagonism to the papal authority, but he found powerful patrons, and lived to see the Reformation an organized fact. He died in his birthplace, Eisleben, Feb. 18th, 1546.

The translation of the "Ein feste burg," given above, in part, is by Rev. Frederick Henry Hedge, D.D., born in Cambridge, March 1805, a graduate of Harvard, and formerly minister of the Unitarian Church in Bangor, Me. Died, 1890.

Luther wrote thirty-six hymns, to some of which he fitted his own music, for he was a musician and singer as well as an eloquent preacher. The tune in which "Ein feste Burg" is sung in the hymnals, was composed by himself. The hymn has also a noble rendering in the music of Sebastian Bach, 8-4 time, found in Hymns Ancient and Modern.

BARTHOLOMEW RINGWALDT.

"Great God, What Do I See and Hear?"

The history of this hymn is somewhat indefinite, though common consent now attributes to Ringwaldt the stanza beginning with the above line. The imitation of the "Dies Irae" in German which was first in use was printed in Jacob Klug's "Gesangbuch" in 1535. Ringwaldt's hymn of the Last Day, also inspired from the ancient Latin original, appears in his Handbuchlin of 1586, but does not contain this stanza. The first line is, "The awful Day will surely come," (Es ist gewisslich an der Zeit). Nevertheless through the more than two hundred years that the hymn has been translated and re-translated, and gone through inevitable revisions, some vital identity in the spirit and tone of the one seven-line stanza has steadily connected it with Ringwaldt's name. Apparently it is the single survivor of a great lost hymn—edited and altered out of recognition. But its power evidently inspired the added verses, as we have them. Dr. Collyer found it, and, regretting that it was too short to sing in public service, composed stanzas 2d, 3d and 4th. It is likely that Collyer first met with it in Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Devotion, Sheffield 1802, where it appeared anonymously. So far as known this was its first publication in English. Ringwaldt's stanza and two of Collyer's are here given:

Great God, what do I see and hear! The end of things created! The Judge of mankind doth appear On clouds of glory seated. The trumpet sounds, the graves restore The dead which they contained before; Prepare, my soul, to meet Him.

The dead in Christ shall first arise At the last trumpet sounding, Caught up to meet Him in the skies, With joy their Lord surrounding. No gloomy fears their souls dismay His presence sheds eternal day On those prepared to meet Him.

Far over space to distant spheres The lightnings are prevailing Th' ungodly rise, and all their tears And sighs are unavailing. The day of grace is past and gone; They shake before the Judge's Throne All unprepared to meet Him.

Bartholomew Ringwaldt, pastor of the Lutheran Church of Longfeld, Prussia, was born in 1531, and died in 1599. His hymns appear in a collection entitled Hymns for the Sundays and Festivals of the Whole Year.

Rev. William Bengo Collyer D.D., was born at Blackheath near London, April 14, 1782, educated at Homerton College and settled over a Congregational Church in Peckham. In 1812 he published a book of hymns, and in 1837 a Service Book to which he contributed eighty-nine hymns. He died Jan, 9, 1854.

THE TUNE.

Probably it was the customary singing of Ringwaldt's hymn (in Germany) to Luther's tune that gave it for some time the designation of "Luther's Hymn," the title by which the music is still known—an air either composed or adapted by Luther, and rendered perhaps unisonously or with extempore chords. It was not until early in the last century that Vincent Novello wrote to it the noble arrangement now in use. It is a strong, even-time harmony with lofty tenor range, and very impressive with full choir and organ or the vocal volume of a congregation. In Cheetham's Psalmody is it written with a trumpet obligato.

Vincent Novello, born in London, Sept. 6, 1781, the intimate friend of Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Hunt and Hazlitt, was a professor of music who attained great eminence as an organist and composer of hymn-tunes and sacred pieces. He was the founder of the publishing house of Novello and Ewer, and father of a famous musical family. Died at Nice, Aug. 9, 1861.

ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.

"O Deus, Ego Amo Te."

Francis Xavier, the celebrated Jesuit missionary, called "The Apostle of the Indies," was a Spaniard, born in 1506. While a student in Paris he met Ignatius Loyola, and joined him in the formation of the new "Society for the Propagation of the Faith." He was sent out on a mission to the East Indies and Japan, and gave himself to the work with a martyr's devotion. The stations he established in Japan were maintained more than a hundred years. He died in China, Dec. 1552.

His hymn, some time out of use, is being revived in later singing-books as expressive of the purest and highest Christian sentiment:

O Deus, ego amo Te. Nec amo Te, ut salves me, Aut quia non amantes Te AEterno punis igne.

My God, I love Thee—not because I hope for heaven thereby; Nor yet because who love Thee not Must burn eternally.

After recounting Christ's vicarious sufferings as the chief claim to His disciples' unselfish love, the hymn continues,—

Cur igitur non amem Te, O Jesu amantissime! Non, ut in coelo salves me, Aut in aeternum damnes me.

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, Should I not love Thee well? Not for the sake of winning heaven, Nor of escaping hell;

Not with the hope of gaining aught, Nor seeking a reward, But as Thyself hast loved me, Oh, ever-loving Lord!

E'en so I love Thee, and will love, And in Thy praise will sing; Solely because Thou art my God And my eternal King.

The translation is by Rev. Edward Caswall, 1814-1878, a priest in the Church of Rome. Besides his translations, he published the Lyra Catholica, the Masque of Mary, and several other poetical works. (Page 101.)

THE TUNE.

"St. Bernard"—apparently so named because originally composed to Caswall's translation of one of Bernard of Clairvaux's hymns—is by John Richardson, born in Preston, Eng., Dec. 4, 1817, and died there April 13, 1879. He was an organist in Liverpool, and noted as a composer of glees, but was the author of several sacred tunes.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

"Give Me My Scallop-Shell of Quiet."

Few of the hymns of the Elizabethan era survive, though the Ambrosian Midnight Hymn, "Hark, 'tis the Midnight Cry," and the hymns of St. Bernard and Bernard of Cluny, are still tones in the church, and the religious poetry of Sir Walter Raleigh comes down to us associated with the history of his brilliant, though tragic career. The following poem has some fine lines in the quaint English style of the period, and was composed by Sir Walter during his first imprisonment:

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy—immortal diet— My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage— And thus I take my pilgrimage.

Blood must be my body's balmer, While my soul, like faithful palmer, Travelleth toward the land of heaven; Other balm will not be given.

Over the silver mountains Where spring the nectar fountains, There will I kiss the bowl of bliss, And drink my everlasting fill, Upon every milken hill; My soul will be a-dry before, But after that will thirst no more.

The musings of the unfortunate but high-souled nobleman in expectation of ignominious death are interesting and pathetic, but they have no claim to a tune, even if they were less rugged and unmetrical. But the poem stands notable among the pious witnesses.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

"O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te."

This last passionate prayer of the unhappy Mary Stuart just before her execution—in a language which perhaps flowed from her pen more easily than even her English or French—is another witness of supplicating faith that struggles out of darkness with a song. In her extremity the devoted Catholic forgets her petitions to the Virgin, and comes to Christ:

O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te; O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me! In dura catena, in misera poena Desidero Te! Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo Adoro, imploro ut liberes me!

My Lord and my God! I have trusted in Thee; O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free: In rigorous chains, in piteous pains, I am longing for Thee! In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling, I pray, I beseech Thee, O Lord, set me free!

One would, at first thought, judge this simple but eloquent cry worthy of an appropriate tone-expression—to be sung by prison evangelists like the Volunteers of America, to convicts in the jails and penitentiaries. But its special errand and burden are voiced so literally that hardened hearers would probably misapply it—however sincerely the petitioner herself meant to invoke spiritual rather than temporal deliverance. The hymn, if we may call it so, is too literal. Possibly at some time or other it may have been set to music but not for ordinary choir service.

SAMUEL RUTHERFORD.

The sands of time are sinking,

* * * * *

But, glory, glory dwelleth In Immanuel's Land.

This hymn is biographical, but not autobiographical. Like the discourses in Herodotus and Plutarch, it is the voice of the dead speaking through the sympathetic genius of the living after long generations. The strong, stern Calvinist of 1636 in Aberdeen was not a poet, but he bequeathed his spirit and life to the verse of a poet of 1845 in Melrose. Anne Ross Cousin read his two hundred and twenty letters written during a two years' captivity for his fidelity to the purer faith, and studied his whole history and experience till her soul took his soul's place and felt what he felt. Her poem of nineteen stanzas (152 lines) is the voice of Rutherford the Covenanter, with the prolixity of his manner and age sweetened by his triumphant piety, and that is why it belongs with the Hymns of Great Witnesses. The three or four stanzas still occasionally printed and sung are only recalled to memory by the above three lines.

Samuel Rutherford was born in Nisbet Parish, Scotland, in 1600. His settled ministry was at Anworth, in Galloway—1630-1651—with a break between 1636 and 1638, when Charles I. angered by his anti-prelatical writings, silenced and banished him. Shut up in Aberdeen, but allowed, like Paul in Rome, to live "in his own hired house" and write letters, he poured out his heart's love in Epistles to his Anworth flock and to the Non-conformists of Scotland. When his countrymen rose against the attempted imposition of a new holy Romish service-book on their churches, he escaped to his people, and soon after appeared in Edinburgh and signed the covenant with the assembled ministers. Thirteen years later, after Cromwell's death and the accession of Charles II. the wrath of the prelates fell on him at St. Andrews, where the Presbytery had made him rector of the college. The King's decree indicted him for treason, stripped him of all his offices, and would have forced him to the block had he not been stricken with his last sickness. When the officers came to take him he said, "I am summoned before a higher Judge and Judicatory, and I am behooved to attend them." He died soon after, in the year 1661.

The first, and a few other of the choicest stanzas of the hymn inspired by his life and death are here given:

The sands of time are sinking, The dawn of heaven breaks, The summer morn I've sighed for— The fair, sweet morn—awakes. Dark, dark hath been the midnight, But dayspring is at hand; And glory, glory dwelleth In Immanuel's land.

* * * * *

Oh! well it is for ever— Oh! well for evermore: My nest hung in no forest Of all this death-doomed shore; Yea, let this vain world vanish, As from the ship the strand, While glory, glory dwelleth In Immanuel's land.

* * * * *

The little birds of Anworth— I used to count them blest; Now beside happier altars I go to build my nest; O'er these there broods no silence No graves around them stand; For glory deathless dwelleth In Immanuel's land.

I have borne scorn and hatred, I have borne wrong and shame, Earth's proud ones have reproached me For Christ's thrice blessed name. Where God's seals set the fairest, They've stamped their foulest brand; But judgment shines like noonday In Immanuel's land.

They've summoned me before them, But there I may not come; My Lord says, "Come up hither;" My Lord says, "Welcome home;" My King at His white throne My presence doth command, Where glory, glory dwelleth, In Immanuel's land.

A reminiscence of St. Paul in his second Epistle to Timothy (chap. 4) comes with the last two stanzas.

THE TUNE.

The tender and appropriate choral in B flat, named "Rutherford" was composed by D'Urhan, a French musician, probably a hundred years ago. It was doubtless named by those who long afterwards fitted it to the words, and knew whose spiritual proxy the lady stood who indited the hymn. It is reprinted in Peloubet's Select Songs, and in the Coronation Hymnal. Naturally in the days of the hymn's more frequent use people became accustomed to calling "The sands of time are sinking," "Rutherford's Hymn." Rutherford's own words certainly furnished the memorable refrain with its immortal glow and gladness. One of his joyful exclamations as he lay dying of his lingering disease was, "Glory shineth in Immanuel's Land!"

Chretien (Christian) Urhan, or D'Urhan, was born at Montjoie, France, about 1788, and died, in Paris, 1845. He was a noted violin-player, and composer, also, of vocal and instrumental music.

Mrs. Anne Ross (Cundell) Cousin, daughter of David Ross Cundell, M.D., and widow of Rev. William Cousin of the Free church of Scotland, was born in Melrose (?), 1824. She wrote many poems, most of which are beautiful meditations rather than lyrics suitable for public song. Her "Rutherford Hymn" was first published in the Christian Treasury, 1857.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.

"Verzage Nicht Du Hauflein Klein."

The historian tells us that before the battle of Lutzen, during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), King Gustavus of Sweden, in the thick fog of an autumn morning, with the Bohemian and Austrian armies of Emperor Ferdinand in front of him, knelt before his troops, and his whole army knelt with him in prayer. Then ten thousand voices and the whole concert of regimental bands burst forth in this brave song:

Fear not, O little flock, the foe Who madly seeks your overthrow, Dread not his rage and power: What though your courage sometimes faints, His seeming triumph o'er God's saints Lasts but a little hour.

Be of good cheer, your cause belongs To Him who can avenge your wrongs; Leave it to Him, our Lord: Though hidden yet from all our eyes, He sees the Gideon who shall rise To save us and His word.

As true as God's own word is true, Nor earth nor hell with all their crew, Against us shall prevail: A jest and by-word they are grown; God is with us, we are His own, Our victory cannot fail.

Amen, Lord Jesus, grant our prayer! Great Captain, now Thine arm make bare, Fight for us once again: So shall Thy saints and martyrs raise A mighty chorus to Thy praise, World without end. Amen.

The army of Gustavus moved forward to victory as the fog lifted; but at the moment of triumph a riderless horse came galloping back to the camp. It was the horse of the martyred King.

The battle song just quoted—next to Luther's "Ein feste Burg" the most famous German hymn—has always since that day been called "Gustavus Adolphus' Hymn"; and the mingled sorrow and joy of the event at Lutzen named it also "King Gustavus' Swan Song." Gustavus Adolphus did not write hymns. He could sing them, and he could make them historic—and it was this connection that identified him with the famous battle song. Its author was the Rev. Johan Michael Altenburg, a Lutheran clergyman, who composed apparently both hymn and tune on receiving news of the king's victory at Leipsic a year before.

Gustavus Adolphus was born in 1594. His death on the battlefield occurred Nov. 5, 1632—when he was in the prime of his manhood. He was one of the greatest military commanders in history, besides being a great ruler and administrator, and a devout Christian. He was, during the Thirty Years' War (until his untimely death), the leading champion of Protestantism in Europe.

The English translator of the battle song was Miss Catherine Winkworth, born in London, Sept. 13, 1827. She was an industrious and successful translator of German hymns, contributing many results of her work to two English editions of the Lyra Germania, to the Church Book of England, and to Christian Singers of Germany. She died in 1878.

The tune of "Ravendale" by Walter Stokes (born 1847) is the best modern rendering of the celebrated hymn.

PAUL GERHARDT.

"Befiehl Du Deine Wege."

Paul Gerhardt was one of those minstrels of experience who are—

"Cradled into poetry by wrong, And learn in suffering what they teach in song."

He was a graduate of that school when he wrote his "Hymn of Trust:"

Commit thou all thy griefs And ways into His hands; To His sure trust and tender care Who earth and heaven commands.

Thou on the Lord rely, So, safe, shalt thou go on; Fix on His work thy steadfast eye, So shall thy work be done.

* * * * *

Give to the winds thy fears; Hope, and be undismayed; God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears, He shall lift up thy head.

Through waves and clouds and storms He gently clears thy way; Wait thou His time, so shall this night Soon end in joyous day.

Gerhardt was born at Grafenheinchen, Saxony, 1606. Through the first and best years of manhood's strength (during the Thirty Years' War), a wandering preacher tossed from place to place, he was without a parish and without a home.

After the peace of Westphalia he settled in the little village of Mittenwalde. He was then forty-four years old. Four years later he married and removed to a Berlin church. During his residence there he buried his wife, and four of his children, was deposed from the ministry because his Lutheran doctrines offended the Elector Frederick, and finally retired as a simple arch-deacon to a small parish in Lubben, where he preached, toiled, and suffered amid a rough and uncongenial people till he died, Jan. 16, 1676.

Few men have ever lived whose case more needed a "Hymn of Trust"—and fewer still could have written it themselves. Through all those trial years he was pouring forth his soul in devout verses, making in all no less than a hundred and twenty-five hymns—every one of them a comfort to others as well as to himself.

He became a favorite, and for a time the favorite, hymn-writer of all the German-speaking people. Among these tones of calm faith and joy we recognize today (in the English tongue),—

Since Jesus is my Friend,

Thee, O Immanuel, we praise,

All my heart this night rejoices,

How shall I meet Thee,

—and the English translation of his "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden," turned into German by himself from St. Bernard Clairvaux's "Salve caput cruentatum," and made dear to us in Rev. James Alexander's beautiful lines—

O sacred head now wounded, With grief and shame weighed down, Now scornfully surrounded With thorns, Thine only crown.

THE TUNE.

A plain-song by Alexander Reinagle is used by some congregations, but is not remarkably expressive. Reinagle, Alexander Robert, (1799-1877) of Kidlington, Eng., was organist to the church of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxford.

The great "Hymn of Trust" could have found no more sympathetic interpreter than the musician of Gerhardt's own land and language, Schumann, the gentle genius of Zwickau. It bears the name "Schumann," appropriately enough, and its elocution makes a volume of each quatrain, notably the one—

Who points the clouds their course, Whom wind and seas obey; He shall direct thy wandering feet, He shall prepare thy way.

Robert Schumann, Ph.D., was born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810. He was a music director and conservatory teacher, and the master-mind of the pre-Wagnerian period. His compositions became popular, having a character of their own, combining the intellectual and beautiful in art. He published in Leipsic a journal promotive of his school of music, and founded a choral society in Dresden. Happy in the cooeperation of his wife, herself a skilled musician, he extended his work to Vienna and the Netherlands; but his zeal wore him out, and he died at the age of forty-six, universally lamented as "the eminent man who had done so much for the happiness of others."

Gerhardt's Hymn (ten quatrains) is rarely printed entire, and where six are printed only four are usually sung. Different collections choose portions according to the compiler's taste, the stanza beginning—

Give to the winds thy fears,

—being with some a favorite first verse.

The translation of the hymn from the German is John Wesley's.

Purely legendary is the beautiful story of the composition of the hymn, "Commit thou all thy griefs"; how, after his exile from Berlin, traveling on foot with his weeping wife, Gerhardt stopped at a wayside inn and wrote the lines while he rested; and how a messenger from Duke Christian found him there, and offered him a home in Meresburg. But the most ordinary imagination can fill in the possible incidents in a life of vicissitudes such as Gerhardt's was.

LADY HUNTINGDON.

"When Thou My Righteous Judge Shalt Come."

Selina Shirley, Countess of Huntingdon, born 1707, died 1791, is familiarly known as the titled friend and patroness of Whitefield and his fellow-preachers. She early consecrated herself to God, and in the great spiritual awakening under Whitefield and the Wesleys she was a punctual and sympathetic helper. Uniting with the Calvinistic Methodists, she nevertheless stood aloof from none who preached a personal Christ, and whose watchwords were the salvation of souls and the purification of the Church. For more than fifty years she devoted her wealth to benevolence and spiritual ministries, and died at the age of eighty-four. "I have done my work," was her last testimony. "I have nothing to do but to go to my Father."

At various times Lady Huntingdon expressed her religious experience in verse, and the manful vigor of her school of faith recalls the unbending confidence of Job, for she was not a stranger to affliction.

God's furnace doth in Zion stand, But Zion's God sits by, As the refiner views his gold, With an observant eye.

His thoughts are high, His love is wise, His wounds a cure intend; And, though He does not always smile, He loves unto the end.

Her great hymn, that keeps her memory green, has the old-fashioned flavor. "Massa made God BIG!" was the comment on Dr. Bellany made by his old negro servant after that noted minister's death. In Puritan piety the sternest self-depreciation qualified every thought of the creature, while every allusion to the Creator was a magnificat. Lady Huntingdon's hymn has no flattering phrases for the human subject. "Worthless worm," and "vilest of them all" indicate the true Pauline or Oriental prostration of self before a superior being; but there is grandeur in the metre, the awful reverence, and the scene of judgment in the stanzas—always remembering the mighty choral that has so long given the lyric its voice in the church, and is ancillary to its fame:

When Thou, my righteous Judge, shalt come To take Thy ransomed people home, Shall I among them stand? Shall such a worthless worm as I, Who sometimes am afraid to die, Be found at Thy right hand?

I love to meet Thy people now, Before Thy feet with them to bow, Though vilest of them all; But can I bear the piercing thought, What if my name should be left out, When Thou for them shalt call?

O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace: Be Thou my only hiding place, In this th' accepted day; Thy pardoning voice, oh let me hear, To still my unbelieving fear, Nor let me fall, I pray.

Among Thy saints let me be found, Whene'er the archangel's trump shall sound, To see Thy smiling face; Then loudest of the throng I'll sing, While heaven's resounding arches ring With shouts of sovereign grace.

THE TUNE.

The tune of "Meribah," in which this hymn has been sung for the last sixty or more years, is one of Dr. Lowell Mason's masterpieces. An earlier German harmony attributed to Heinrich Isaac and named "Innsbruck" has in some few cases claimed association with the words, though composed two hundred years before Lady Huntingdon was born. It is strong and solemn, but its cold psalm-tune movement does not utter the deep emotion of the author's lines. "Meribah" was inspired by the hymn itself, and there is nothing invidious in saying it illustrates the fact, memorable in all hymnology, of the natural obligation of a hymn to its tune.

Apropos of both, it is related that Mason was once presiding at choir service in a certain church where the minister gave out "When thou my righteous Judge shalt come" and by mistake directed the singers to "omit the second stanza." Mason sat at the organ, and while playing the last strain, "Be found at thy right hand," glanced ahead in the hymnbook and turned with a start just in time to command, "Sing the next verse!" The choir did so, and "O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace!" was saved from being a horrible prayer to be kept out of heaven.

ZINZENDORF.

"Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness."

Nicolaus Ludwig, Count Von Zinzendorf, was born at Dresden, May 26, 1700, and educated at Halle and Wittenberg. From his youth he evinced marked seriousness of mind, and deep religious sensibilities, and this character appeared in his sympathy with the persecuted Moravians, to whom he gave domicile and domain on his large estate. For eleven years he was Councillor to the Elector of Saxony, but subsequently, uniting with the Brethren's Church, he founded the settlement of Herrnhut, the first home and refuge of the reorganized sect, and became a Moravian minister and bishop.

Zinzendorf was a man of high culture, as well as profound and sincere piety and in his hymns (of which he wrote more than two thousand) he preached Christ as eloquently as with his voice. The real birth-moment of his religious life is said to have been simultaneous with his study of the "Ecce Homo" in the Dusseldorf Gallery, a wonderful painting of Jesus crowned with thorns. Visiting the gallery one day when a young man, he gazed on the sacred face and read the legend superscribed, "All this I have done for thee; What doest thou for me?" Ever afterwards his motto was "I have but one passion, and that is He, and only He"—a version of Paul's "For me to live is Christ."

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress: 'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head.

Bold shall I stand in Thy great day, For who aught to my charge shall lay? Fully absolved through these I am— From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

Lord, I believe were sinners more Than sands upon the ocean shore, Thou hast for all a ransom paid, For all a full atonement made.

Nearly all the hymns of the great Moravian are now out of general use, having accomplished their mission, like the forgotten ones of Gerhardt, and been superseded by others. More sung in Europe, probably, now than any of the survivors is, "Jesus, geh voran," ("Jesus, lead on,") which has been translated into English by Jane Borthwick[8] (1854). Two others, both translated by John Wesley, are with us, the one above quoted, and "Glory to God, whose witness train." "Jesus, Thy blood," which is the best known, frequently appears with the alteration—

Jesus, Thy robe of righteousness My beauty is, my glorious dress.

[Footnote 8: Born in Edinburgh 1813.]

THE TUNE.

"Malvern," and "Uxbridge" a pure Gregorian, both by Lowell Mason, are common expressions of the hymn—the latter, perhaps, generally preferred, being less plaintive and speaking with a surer and more restful emphasis.

ROBERT SEAGRAVE.

"Rise, My Soul, and Stretch Thy Wings."

This hymn was written early in the 18th century, by the Rev. Robert Seagrave, born at Twyford, Leicestershire, Eng., Nov. 22, 1693. Educated at Cambridge, he took holy orders in the Established Church, but espoused the cause of the great evangelistic movement, and became a hearty co-worker with the Wesleys. Judging by the lyric fire he could evidently put into his verses, one involuntarily asks if he would not have written more, and been in fact the song-leader of the spiritual reformation if there had been no Charles Wesley. There is not a hymn of Wesley's in use on the same subject equal to the one immortal hymn of Seagrave, and the only other near its time that approaches it in vigor and appealing power is Doddridge's "Awake my soul, stretch every nerve."

But Providence gave Wesley the harp and appointed to the elder poet a branch of possibly equal usefulness, where he was kept too busy to enter the singers' ranks.

For eleven years he was the Sunday-evening lecturer at Lorimer's Hall, London, and often preached in Whitefield's Tabernacle. His hymn is one of the most soul-stirring in the English language:



Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings; Thy better portion trace; Rise from transitory things Toward Heaven, thy native place; Sun and moon and stars decay, Time shall soon this earth remove; Rise, my soul and haste away To seats prepared above.

Rivers to the ocean run, Nor stay in all their course; Fire ascending seeks the sun; Both speed them to their source: So a soul that's born of God Pants to view His glorious face, Upward tends to His abode To rest in His embrace.

* * * * *

Cease, ye pilgrims, cease to mourn, Press onward to the prize; Soon your Saviour will return Triumphant in the skies. Yet a season, and you know Happy entrance will be given; All our sorrows left below, And earth exchanged for heaven.

This hymn must have found its predestinated organ when it found—

THE TUNE.

"Amsterdam," the work of James Nares, had its birth and baptism soon after the work of Seagrave; and they have been breath and bugle to the church of God ever since they became one song. In The Great Musicians, edited by Francis Huffer, is found this account of James Nares:

"He was born at Hanwell, Middlesex, in 1715; was admitted chorister at the Chapel Royal, under Bernard Gates, and when he was able to play the organ was appointed deputy for Pigott, of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and became organist at York Minster in 1734. He succeeded Greene as organist and composer to the Chapel Royal in 1756, and in the same year was made Doctor of Music at Cambridge. He was appointed master of the children of the Chapel Royal in 1757, on the death of Gates. This post he resigned in 1780, and he died in 1783, (February 10,) and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster.

"He had the reputation of being an excellent trainer of boy's voices, many of his anthems having been written to exhibit the accomplishments of his young pupils. The degree of excellence the boys attained was not won in those days without the infliction of much corporal punishment."

Judging from the high pulse and action in the music of "Amsterdam," one would guess the energy of the man who made boy choirs—and made good ones. In the old time the rule was, "Birds that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing"; and the rule was sometimes enforced with the master's time-stick.

A tune entitled "Excelsius," written a hundred years later by John Henry Cornell, so nearly resembles "Amsterdam" as to suggest an intention to amend it. It changes the modal note from G to A, but while it marches at the same pace it lacks the jubilant modulations and the choral glory of the 18th-century piece.

SIR JOHN BOWRING.

"In the Cross of Christ I Glory."

In this hymn we see, sitting humbly at the feet of the great author of our religion, a man who impressed himself perhaps more than any other save Napoleon Bonaparte upon his own generation, and who was the wonder of Europe for his immense attainments and the versatility of his powers. Statesman, philanthropist, biographer, publicist, linguist, historian, financier, naturalist, poet, political economist—there is hardly a branch of knowledge or a field of research from which he did not enrich himself and others, or a human condition that he did not study and influence.

Sir John Bowring was born in 1792. When a youth he was Jeremy Bentham's political pupil, but gained his first fame by his vast knowledge of European literature, becoming acquainted with no less than thirteen[9] continental languages and dialects. He served in consular appointments at seven different capitals, carried important reform measures in Parliament, was Minister Plenipotentiary to China and Governor of Hong Kong, and concluded a commercial treaty with Siam, where every previous commissioner had failed. But in all his crowded years the pen of this tireless and successful man was busy. Besides his political, economic and religious essays, which made him a member of nearly every learned society in Europe, his translations were countless, and poems and hymns of his own composing found their way to the public, among them the tender spiritual song,—

How sweetly flowed the Gospel sound From lips of gentleness and grace When listening thousands gathered round, And joy and gladness filled the place,

—and the more famous hymn indicated at the head of this sketch. Knowledge of all religions only qualified him to worship the Crucified with both faith and reason. Though nominally a Unitarian, to him, as to Channing and Martineau and Edmund Sears, Christ was "all we know of God."

[Footnote 9: Exaggerated in some accounts to forty.]

Bowring died Nov. 23, 1872. But his hymn to the Cross will never die:

In the cross of Christ I glory, Towering o'er the wrecks of time; All the light of sacred story Gathers round its head sublime.

When the woes of life o'ertake me Hopes deceive, and fears annoy, Never shall the cross forsake me; Lo! it glows with peace and joy.

When the sun of bliss is beaming Light and love upon my way, From the cross the radiance streaming Adds new lustre to the day.

Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure By the cross are sanctified, Peace is there that knows no measure, Joys that through all time abide.

THE TUNE.

Ithamar Conkey's "Rathbun" fits the adoring words as if they had waited for it. Its air, swelling through diatonic fourth and third to the supreme syllable, bears on its waves the homage of the lines from bar to bar till the four voices come home to rest full and satisfied in the final chord—

Gathers round its head sublime.

Ithamar Conkey, was born of Scotch ancestry, in Shutesbury, Mass., May 5th, 1815. He was a noted bass singer, and was for a long time connected with the choir of the Calvary church, New York City, and sang the oratorio solos. His tune of "Rathbun" was composed in 1847, and published in Greatorex's collection in 1851. He died in Elizabeth, N.J., April 30, 1867.



CHAPTER III.

HYMNS OF CHRISTIAN DEVOTION AND EXPERIENCE.

"JESU DULCIS MEMORIA."

"Jesus the Very Thought of Thee."

The original of this delightful hymn is one of the devout meditations of Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk (1091-1153). He was born of a noble family in or near Dijon, Burgundy, and when only twenty-three years old established a monastery at Clairvaux, France, over which he presided as its first abbot. Educated in the University of Paris, and possessing great natural abilities, he soon made himself felt in both the religious and political affairs of Europe. For more than thirty years he was the personal power that directed belief, quieted turbulence, and arbitrated disputes, and kings and even popes sought his counsel. It was his eloquent preaching that inspired the second crusade.

His fine poem of feeling, in fifty Latin stanzas, has been a source of pious song in several languages:

Jesu, dulcis memoria Dans vera cordi gaudia, Sed super mel et omnium Ejus dulcis presentia.

Literally—

Jesus! a sweet memory Giving true joys to the heart, But sweet above honey and all things His presence [is].

The five stanzas (of Caswall's free translation) now in use are familiar and dear to all English-speaking believers:

Jesus, the very thought of Thee With sweetness fills my breast, But sweeter far Thy face to see, And in Thy presence rest.

Nor voice can sing nor heart can frame Nor can the memory find, A sweeter sound than Thy blest name, O Saviour of mankind.

The Rev. Edward Caswall was born in Hampshire, Eng., July 15, 1814, the son of a clergyman. He graduated with honors at Brazenose College, Oxford, and after ten years of service in the ministry of the Church of England joined Henry Newman's Oratory at Birmingham, was confirmed in the Church of Rome, and devoted the rest of his life to works of piety and charity. He died Jan. 2, 1878.

THE TUNE.

No single melody has attached itself to this hymn, the scope of selection being as large as the supply of appropriate common-metre tunes. Barnby's "Holy Trinity," Wade's "Holy Cross" and Griggs' tune (of his own name) are all good, but many, on the giving out of the hymn, would associate it at once with the more familiar "Heber" by George Kingsley and expect to hear it sung. It has the uplift and unction of John Newton's—

How sweet the name of Jesus sounds In the believer's ear.

"GOD CALLING YET! SHALL I NOT HEAR?"

Gerhard Tersteegen, the original author of the hymn, and one of the most eminent religious poets of the Reformed German church in its early days, was born in 1697, in the town of Mors, in Westphalia. He was left an orphan in boyhood by the death of his father, and as his mother's means were limited, he was put to work as an apprentice when very young, at Muhlheim on the Ruhr, and became a ribbon weaver. Here, when about fifteen years of age, he became deeply concerned for his soul, and experienced a deep and abiding spiritual work. As a Christian, his religion partook of the ascetic type, but his mysticism did not make him useless to his fellow-men.

At the age of twenty-seven, he dedicated all his resources and energies to the cause of Christ, writing the dedication in his own blood. "God graciously called me," he says, "out of the world, and granted me the desire to belong to Him, and to be willing to follow Him." He gave up secular employments altogether, and devoted his whole time to religious instruction and to the poor. His house became famous as the "Pilgrims' Cottage," and was visited by people high and humble from all parts of Germany. In his lifetime he is said to have written one hundred and eleven hymns. Died April 3, 1769.

God calling yet! shall I not hear? Earth's pleasures shall I still hold dear? Shall life's swift-passing years all fly, And still my soul in slumber lie?

* * * * *

God calling yet! I cannot stay; My heart I yield without delay. Vain world, farewell; from thee I part; The voice of God hath reached my heart.

The hymn was translated from the German by Miss Jane Borthwick, born in Edinburgh, 1813. She and her younger sister, Mrs. Findlater, jointly translated and published, in 1854, Hymns From the Land of Luther, and contributed many poetical pieces to the Family Treasury. She died in 1897.

Another translation, imitating the German metre, is more euphonious, though less literal and less easily fitted to music not specially composed for it, on account of its "feminine" rhymes:

God calling yet! and shall I never hearken? But still earth's witcheries my spirit darken; This passing life, these passing joys all flying, And still my soul in dreamy slumbers lying?

THE TUNE.

Dr. Dykes' "Rivaulx" is a sober choral that articulates the hymn-writer's sentiment with sincerity and with considerable earnestness, but breathes too faintly the interrogative and expostulary tone of the lines. To voice the devout solicitude and self-remonstrance of the hymn there is no tune superior to "Federal St."

The Hon. Henry Kemble Oliver, author of "Federal St.," was born in Salem, Mass., March, 1800, and was addicted to music from his childhood. His father compelled him to relinquish it as a profession, but it remained his favorite avocation, and after his graduation from Harvard the cares of none of the various public positions he held, from schoolmaster to treasurer of the state of Massachusetts, could ever wean him from the study of music and its practice. At the age of thirty-one, while sitting one day in his study, the last verse of Anne Steele's hymn—

So fades the lovely blooming flower,

—floated into his mind, and an unbidden melody came with it. As he hummed it to himself the words shaped the air, and the air shaped the words.

Then gentle patience smiles on pain, Then dying hope revives again,

—became—

See gentle patience smile on pain; See dying hope revive again;

—and with the change of a word and a tense the hymn created the melody, and soon afterward the complete tune was made. Two years later it was published by Lowell Mason, and Oliver gave it the name of the street in Salem on which his wife was born, wooed, won, and married. It adds a pathos to its history that "Federal St." was sung at her burial.

This first of Oliver's tunes was followed by "Harmony Grove," "Morning," "Walnut Grove," "Merton," "Hudson," "Bosworth," "Salisbury Plain," several anthems and motets, and a "Te Deum."

In his old age, at the great Peace Jubilee in Boston, 1872, the baton was put into his hands, and the gray-haired composer conducted the chorus of ten thousand voices as they sang the words and music of his noble harmony. The incident made "Federal St." more than ever a feature of New England history. Oliver died in 1885.

"MY GOD, HOW ENDLESS IS THY LOVE."

The spirited tune to this hymn of Watts, by Frederick Lampe, variously named "Kent" and "Devonshire," historically reaches back so near to the poet's time that it must have been one of the earliest expressions of his fervent words.

Johan Friedrich Lampe, born 1693, in Saxony, was educated in music at Helmstadt, and came to England in 1725 as a band musician and composer to Covent Garden Theater. His best-known secular piece is the music written to Henry Carey's burlesque, "The Dragon of Wantley."

Mrs. Rich, wife of the lessee of the theater, was converted under the preaching of the Methodists, and after her husband's death her house became the home of Lampe and his wife, where Charles Wesley often met him.

The influence of Wesley won him to more serious work, and he became one of the evangelist's helpers, supplying tunes to his singing campaigns. Wesley became attached to him, and after his death—in Edinburgh, 1752—commemorated the musician in a funeral hymn.

In popular favor Bradbury's tune of "Rolland" has now superseded the old music sung to Watts' lines—

My God, how endless is Thy love, Thy gifts are every evening new, And morning mercies from above Gently distil like early dew.

* * * * *

I yield my powers to Thy command; To Thee I consecrate my days; Perpetual blessings from Thy hand Demand perpetual songs of praise.

William Batchelder Bradbury, a pupil of Dr. Lowell Mason, and the pioneer in publishing Sunday-school music, was born 1816, in York, Me. His father, a veteran of the Revolution, was a choir leader, and William's love of music was inherited. He left his father's farm, and came to Boston, where he first heard a church-organ. Encouraged by Mason and others to follow music as a profession, he went abroad, studied at Leipsic, and soon after his return became known as a composer of sacred tunes. He died in Montclair, N.J., 1868.

"I'M NOT ASHAMED TO OWN MY LORD."

The favorite tune for this spiritual hymn, also by Watts, is old "Arlington," one of the most useful church melodies in the whole realm of English psalmody. Its name clings to a Boston street, and the beautiful chimes of Arlington St. church (Unitarian) annually ring its music on special occasions, as it has since the bells were tuned:

I'm not ashamed to own my Lord Or to defend His cause, Maintain the honor of His Word, The glory of His cross.

Jesus, my God!—I know His Name; His Name is all my trust, Nor will He put my soul to shame Nor let my hope be lost.

Dr. Thomas Augustine Arne, the creator of "Arlington," was born in London, 1710, the son of a King St. upholsterer. He studied at Eton, and though intended for the legal profession, gave his whole mind to music. At twenty-three he began writing operas for his sister, Susanna (a singer who afterwards became the famous tragic actress, Mrs. Cibber).

Arne's music to Milton's "Comus," and to "Rule Brittannia" established his reputation. He was engaged as composer to Drury Lane Theater, and in 1759 received from Oxford his degree of Music Doctor. Later in life he turned his attention to oratorios, and other forms of sacred music, and was the first to introduce female voices in choir singing. He died March 5, 1778, chanting hallelujahs, it is said, with his last breath.

"IS THIS THE KIND RETURN?"

Dr. Watts in this hymn gave experimental piety its hour and language of reflection and penitence:

Is this the kind return? Are these the thanks we owe, Thus to abuse Eternal Love Whence all our blessings flow?

* * * * *

Let past ingratitude Provoke our weeping eyes.

United in loving wedlock with these words in former years was "Golden Hill," a chime of sweet counterpoint too rare to bury its authorship under the vague phrase "A Western Melody." It was caught evidently from a forest bird[10] that flutes its clear solo in the sunsets of May and June. There can be no mistaking the imitation—the same compass, the same upward thrill, the same fall and warbled turn. Old-time folk used to call for it, "Sing, my Fairweather Bird." It lingers in a few of the twenty- or thirty-years-ago collections, but stronger voices have drowned it out of the new.

[Footnote 10: The wood thrush.]

"Thacher," (set to the same hymn,) faintly recalls its melody. Nevertheless "Thacher" is a good tune. Though commonly written in sharps, contrasting the B flat of its softer and more liquid rival of other days, it is one of Handel's strains, and lends the meaning and pathos of the lyric text to voice and instrument.

"WHEN I SURVEY THE WONDROUS CROSS."

This crown of all the sacred odes of Dr. Watts for the song-service of the church of God was called by Matthew Arnold the "greatest hymn in the English language." The day the eminent critic died he heard it sung in the Sefton Park Presbyterian Church, and repeated the opening lines softly to himself again and again after the services. The hymn is certainly one of the greatest in the language. It appeared as No. 7 in Watts' third edition (about 1710) containing five stanzas. The second line—

On which the Prince of Glory died,

—read originally—

Where the young Prince of Glory died.

Only four stanzas are now generally used. The omitted one—

His dying crimson like a robe Spreads o'er His body on the tree; Then am I dead to all the globe, And all the globe is dead to me.

—is a flash of tragic imagination, showing the sanguine intensity of Christian vision in earlier time, when contemplating the Saviour's passion; but it is too realistic for the spirit and genius of song-worship. That the great hymn was designed by the writer for communion seasons, and was inspired by Gal. 6:14, explains the two last lines if not the whole of the highly colored verse.

THE TUNE.

One has a wide field of choice in seeking the best musical interpretation of this royal song of faith and self-effacement:

When I survey the wondrous Cross On which the Prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast Save in the death of Christ my God; All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down; Did e'er such love and sorrow meet; Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of Nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.

To match the height and depth of these words with fitting glory of sound might well have been an ambition of devout composers. Rev. G.C. Wells' tune in the Revivalist, with its emotional chorus, I.B. Woodbury's "Eucharist" in the Methodist Hymnal, Henry Smart's effective choral in Barnby's Hymnary (No. 170), and a score of others, have woven the feeling lines into melody with varying success. Worshippers in spiritual sympathy with the words may question if, after all, old "Hamburg," the best of Mason's loved Gregorians, does not, alone, in tone and elocution, rise to the level of the hymn.

"LOVE DIVINE, ALL LOVES EXCELLING."

This evergreen song-wreath to the Crucified, was contributed by Charles Wesley, in 1746. It is found in his collection of 1756, Hymns for Those That Seek and Those That Have Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ.

Love Divine all loves excelling, Joy of Heaven to earth come down, Fix in us Thy humble dwelling, All Thy faithful mercies crown.

* * * * *

Come Almighty to deliver, Let us all Thy life receive, Suddenly return, and never, Nevermore Thy temples leave.

* * * * *

Finish then Thy new creation; Pure and spotless let us be; Let us see our whole salvation Perfectly secured by Thee.

Changed from glory into glory Till in Heaven we take our place, Till we cast our crowns before Thee Lost in wonder, love and praise!

The hymn has been set to H. Isaac's ancient tune (1490), to Wyeth's "Nettleton" (1810), to Thos. H. Bailey's (1777-1839) "Isle of Beauty, fare thee well" (named from Thomas Moore's song), to Edward Hopkins' "St. Joseph," and to a multitude of others more or less familiar.

Most familiar of all perhaps, (as in the instance of "Far from mortal cares retreating,") is its association with "Greenville," the production of that brilliant but erratic genius and freethinker, Jean Jacques Rousseau. It was originally a love serenade, ("Days of absence, sad and dreary") from the opera of Le Devin du Village, written about 1752. The song was commonly known years afterwards as "Rousseau's Dream." But the unbelieving philosopher, musician, and misguided moralist builded better than he knew, and probably better than he meant when he wrote his immortal choral. Whatever he heard in his "dream" (and one legend says it was a "song of angels") he created a harmony dear to the church he despised, and softened the hearts of the Christian world towards an evil teacher who was inspired, like Balaam, to utter one sacred strain.

Rousseau was born in Geneva, 1712, but he never knew his mother, and neither the affection or interest of his father or of his other relatives was of the quality to insure the best bringing up of a child.

He died July, 1778. But his song survives, while the world gladly forgets everything else he wrote. It is almost a pardonable exaggeration to say that every child in Christendom knows "Greenville."

"WHEN ALL THY MERCIES, O MY GOD."

This charming hymn was written by Addison, the celebrated English poet and essayist, about 1701, in grateful commemoration of his delivery from shipwreck in a storm off the coast of Genoa, Italy. It originally contained thirteen stanzas, but no more than four or six are commonly sung. It has put the language of devotional gratitude into the mouths of thousands of humble disciples who could but feebly frame their own:

When all Thy mercies, O my God My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I'm lost In wonder, love and praise.

Unnumbered comforts on my soul Thy tender care bestowed Before my infant heart conceived From whom those comforts flowed.

When in the slippery paths of youth With heedless steps I ran, Thine arm unseen conveyed me safe, And led me up to man.

Another hymn of Addison—

How are Thy servants bless'd, O Lord,

—was probably composed after the same return from a foreign voyage. It has been called his "Traveller's Hymn."

Joseph Addison, the best English writer of his time, was the son of Lancelot Addison, rector of Milston, Wiltshire, and afterwards Dean of Litchfield. The distinguished author was born in Milston Rectory, May 1, 1672, and was educated at Oxford. His excellence in poetry, both English and Latin, gave him early reputation, and a patriotic ode obtained for him the patronage of Lord Somers. A pension from King William III. assured him a comfortable income, which was increased by further honors, for in 1704 he was appointed Commissioner of Appeals, then secretary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and in 1717 Secretary of State. He died in Holland House, Kensington, near London, June 17, 1719.

His hymns are not numerous, (said to be only five), but they are remarkable for the simple beauty of their style, as well as for their Christian spirit. Of his fine metrical version of the 23rd Psalm,—

The Lord my pasture shall prepare, And feed me with a shepherd's care,

—one of his earliest productions, the tradition is that he gathered its imagery when a boy living at Netheravon, near Salisbury Plain, during his lonely two-mile walks to school at Amesbury and back again. All his hymns appeared first in the Spectator, to which he was a prolific contributor.

THE TUNE.

The hymn "When all Thy mercies" still has "Geneva" for its vocal mate in some congregational manuals. The tune is one of the rare survivals of the old "canon" musical method, the parts coming in one after another with identical notes. It is always delightful as a performance with its glory of harmony and its sweet duet, and for generations it had no other words than Addison's hymn.

John Cole, author of "Geneva," was born in Tewksbury, Eng., 1774, and came to the United States in his boyhood (1785). Baltimore, Md. became his American home, and he was educated there. Early in life he became a musician and music publisher. At least twelve of his principal song collections from 1800 to 1832 are mentioned by Mr. Hubert P. Main, most of them sacred and containing many of his own tunes.

He continued to compose music till his death, Aug. 17, 1855. Mr. Cole was leader of the regimental band known as "The Independent Blues," which played in the war of 1812, and was present at the "North Point" fight, and other battles.

Besides "Geneva," for real feeling and harmonic beauty "Manoah," adapted from Haydn's Creation, deserves mention as admirably suited to "Addison's" hymn, and also "Belmont," by Samuel Webbe, which resembles it in style and sentiment.

Samuel Webbe, composer of "Belmont," was of English parentage but was born in Minorca, Balearic Islands, in 1740, where his father at that time held a government appointment; but his father, dying suddenly, left his family poor, and Samuel was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker. He served his apprenticeship, and immediately repaired to a London teacher and began the study of music and languages. Surmounting great difficulties, he became a competent musician, and made himself popular as a composer of glees. He was also the author of several masses, anthems, and hymn-tunes, the best of which are still in occasional use. Died in London, 1816.

"JESUS, I LOVE THY CHARMING NAME."

When Dr. Doddridge, the author of this hymn, during his useful ministry, had finished the preparation of a pulpit discourse that strongly impressed him, he was accustomed, while his heart was yet glowing with the sentiment that had inspired him, to put the principal thoughts into metre, and use the hymn thus written at the conclusion of the preaching of the sermon. This hymn of Christian ardor was written to be sung after a sermon from Romans 8:35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

Jesus, I love Thy charming name, 'Tis music to mine ear: Fain would I sound it out so loud That earth and heaven should hear.

* * * * *

I'll speak the honors of Thy name With my last laboring breath, Then speechless, clasp Thee in my arms, The conqueror of death.

Earlier copies have—

The antidote of death.

Philip Doddridge, D.D., was born in London, June 26, 1702. Educated at Kingston Grammar School and Kibworth Academy, he became a scholar of respectable attainments, and was ordained to the Non-conformist ministry. He was pastor of the Congregational church at Northampton, from 1729 until his death, acting meanwhile as principal of the Theological School in that place. In 1749 he ceased to preach and went to Lisbon for his health, but died there about two years later, of consumption, Oct. 26, 1752.

THE TUNE.

The hymn has been sometimes sung to "Pisgah," an old revival piece by J.C. Lowry (1820) once much heard in camp-meetings, but it is a pedestrian tune with too many quavers, and a headlong tempo.

Bradbury's "Jazer," in three-four time, is a melody with modulations, though more sympathetic, but it is hard to divorce the hymn from its long-time consort, old "Arlington." It has the accent of its sincerity, and the breath of its devotion.

"LO, ON A NARROW NECK OF LAND."

This hymn of Charles Wesley is always designated now by the above line, the first of the second stanza as originally written. It is said to have been composed at Land's End, in Cornwall, with the British Channel and the broad Atlantic in view and surging on both sides around a "narrow neck of land."

Lo! on a narrow neck of land, Twixt two unbounded seas, I stand, Secure, insensible: A point of time, a moment's space, Removes me to that heavenly place, Or shuts me up in hell.

O God, mine inmost soul convert, And deeply on my thoughtful heart Eternal things impress: Give me to feel their solemn weight, And tremble on the brink of fate, And wake to righteousness.

The preachers and poets of the great spiritual movement of the eighteenth century in England abated nothing in the candor of their words. The terrible earnestness of conviction tipped their tongues and pens with fire.

THE TUNE.

Lady Huntingdon would have lent "Meribah" gladly to this hymn, but Mason was not yet born. Many times it has been borrowed for Wesley's words since it came to its own, and the spirit of the pious Countess has doubtless approved the loan. It is rich enough to furnish forth her own lyric and more than one other of like matter and metre.

The muscular music of "Ganges" has sometimes carried the hymn, and there are those who think its thunder is not a whit more Hebraic than the words require.

"COME YE SINNERS POOR AND NEEDY."

Few hymns have been more frequently sung in prayer-meetings and religious assemblies during the last hundred and fifty years. Its author, Joseph Hart, spoke what he knew and testified what he felt. Born in London, 1712, and liberally educated, he was in his young manhood very religious, but he went so far astray as to indulge in evil practices, and even published writings, both original and translated, against Christianity and religion of any kind. But he could not drink at the Dead Sea and live. The apples of Sodom sickened him. Conscience asserted itself, and the pangs of remorse nearly drove him to despair till he turned back to the source he had forsaken. He alludes to this experience in the lines—

Let not conscience make you linger, Nor of fitness fondly dream; All the fitness He requireth Is to feel your need of Him.

During Passion Week, 1767, he had an amazing view of the sufferings of Christ, under the stress of which his heart was changed. In the joy of this experience he wrote—

Come ye sinners poor and needy,

—and—

Come all ye chosen saints of God.

Probably no two hymn-lines have been oftener repeated than—

If you tarry till you're better You will never come at all.

The complete form of the original stanzas is:

Come ye sinners poor and needy, Weak and wounded, sick and sore; Jesus ready stands to save you, Full of pity, love and power. He is able, He is willing; doubt no more.

The whole hymn—ten stanzas—is not sung now as one, but two, the second division beginning with the line—

Come ye weary, heavy laden.

Rev. Joseph Hart became minister of Jewin St. Congregational Chapel, London, about 1760, where he labored till his death, May 24, 1768.

THE TUNE.

A revival song by Jeremiah Ingalls (1764-1828), written about 1804, with an easy, popular swing and a sforzando chorus—

Turn to the Lord and seek salvation,

—monopolized this hymn for a good many years. The tunes commonly assigned to it have since been "Greenville" and Von Weber's "Wilmot," in which last it is now more generally sung—dropping the echo lines at the end of each stanza.

Carl Maria Von Weber, son of a roving musician, was born in Eutin, Germany, 1786. He developed no remarkable genius till he was about twenty years old, though being a fine vocalist, his singing brought him popularity and gain; but in 1806 he nearly lost his voice by accidently drinking nitric acid. He was for several years private secretary to Duke Ludwig at Stuttgart, and in 1813 Chapel-Master at Prague, from which place he went to Dresden in 1817 as Musik-Director.

Von Weber's Korner songs won the hearts of all Germany; and his immortal "Der Freischutz" (the Free Archer), and numerous tender melodies like the airs to "John Anderson, my Jo" and "O Poortith Cauld" have gone to all civilized nations. No other composer had such feeling for beauty of sound.

This beloved musician was physically frail and delicate, and died of untimely decline, during a visit to London in 1826.

"O HAPPY SAINTS WHO DWELL IN LIGHT."

Sometimes printed "O happy souls." This poetical and flowing hymn seems to have been forgotten in the making up of most modern church hymnals. Hymns on heaven and heavenly joys abound in embarrassing numbers, but it is difficult to understand why this beautiful lyric should be universally neglected. It was written probably about 1760, by Rev. John Berridge, from the text, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,"

The first line of the second stanza—

Released from sorrow, toil and strife,

—has been tinkered in some of the older hymn-books, where it is found to read—,

Released from sorrows toil and grief,

—not only committing a tautology, but destroying the perfect rhyme with "life" in the next line. The whole hymn, too, has been much altered by substituted words and shifted lines, though not generally to the serious detriment of its meaning and music.

The Rev. John Berridge—friend of the Wesleys, Whitefield, and Lady Huntingdon—was an eccentric but very worthy and spiritual minister, born the son of a farmer, in Kingston, Nottinghamshire, Eng., Mar. 1, 1716. He studied at Cambridge, and was ordained curate of Stapleford and subsequently located as vicar of Everton, 1775. He died Jan. 22, 1793. He loved to preach, and he was determined that his tombstone should preach after his voice was still. His epitaph, composed by himself, is both a testimony and a memoir:

"Here lie the earthly remains of John Berridge, late vicar of Everton, and an itinerant servant of Jesus Christ, who loved his Master and His work, and after running His errands many years, was called up to wait on Him above.

"Reader, art thou born again?

"No salvation without the new birth.

"I was born in sin, February, 1716.

"Remained ignorant of my fallen state till 1730.

"Lived proudly on faith and works for salvation till 1751.

"Admitted to Everton vicarage, 1755.

"Fled to Jesus alone for refuge, 1756.

"Fell asleep in Jesus Christ,—" (1793.)

THE TUNE.

The once popular score that easily made the hymn a favorite, was "Salem," in the old Psalmodist. It still appears in some note-books, though the name of its composer is uncertain. Its notes (in 6-8 time) succeed each other in syllabic modulations that give a soft dactylic accent to the measure and a wavy current to the lines:

O happy saints that dwell in light, And walk with Jesus clothed in white, Safe landed on that peaceful shore, Where pilgrims meet to part no more:

Released from sorrow, toil and strife, Death was the gate to endless life, And now they range the heavenly plains And sing His love in melting strains.

Another version reads:

——and welcome to an endless life, Their souls have now begun to prove The height and depth of Jesus' love.

"THOU DEAR REDEEMER, DYING LAMB."

The author, John Cennick, like Joseph Hart, was led to Christ after a reckless boyhood and youth, by the work of the Divine Spirit in his soul, independent of any direct outward influence. Sickened of his cards, novels, and playhouse pleasures, he had begun a sort of mechanical reform, when one day, walking in the streets of London, he suddenly seemed to hear the text spoken "I am thy salvation!" His consecration began at that moment.

He studied for the ministry, and became a preacher, first under direction of the Wesleys, then under Whitefield, but afterwards joined the Moravians, or "Brethren." He was born at Reading, Derbyshire, Eng., Dec. 12, 1718, and died in London, July 4, 1755.

THE TUNE.

The word "Rhine" (in some collections—in others "Emmons") names a revival tune once so linked with this hymn and so well known that few religious people now past middle life could enjoy singing it to any other. With a compass one note beyond an octave and a third, it utters every line with a clear, bold gladness sure to infect a meeting with its own spiritual fervor.

Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb, I love to hear of Thee; No music like Thy charming name, Nor half so sweet can be.

The composer of the bright legato melody just described was Frederick Burgmueller, a young German musician, born in 1804. He was a remarkable genius, both in composition and execution, but his health was frail, and he did not live to fulfil the rich possibilities that lay within him. He died in 1824—only twenty years old. The tune "Rhine" ("Emmons") is from one of his marches.

"WHILE THEE I SEEK, PROTECTING POWER."

Helen Maria Williams wrote this sweet hymn, probably about the year 1800. She was a brilliant woman, better known in literary society for her political verses and essays than by her hymns; but the hymn here noted bears sufficient witness to her deep religious feeling:

While Thee I seek, Protecting Power, Be my vain wishes stilled, And may this consecrated hour With better hopes be filled. Thy love the power of thought bestowed; To Thee my thoughts would soar, Thy mercy o'er my life has flowed, That mercy I adore.

Miss Williams was born in the north of England, Nov. 30, 1762, but spent much of her life in London, and in Paris, where she died, Dec. 14, 1827.

THE TUNE.

Wedded so many years to the gentle, flowing music of Pleyel's "Brattle Street," few lovers of the hymn recall its words without the melody of that emotional choral.

The plain psalm-tune, "Simpson," by Louis Spohr, divides the stanzas into quatrains.

"JESUS MY ALL TO HEAVEN IS GONE."

This hymn, by Cennick, was familiarized to the public more than two generations ago by its revival tune, sometimes called "Duane Street," long-metre double. It is staffed in various keys, but its movement is full of life and emphasis, and its melody is contagious. The piece was composed by Rev. George Coles, in 1835.

The fact that this hymn of Cennick with Coles's tune appears in the New Methodist Hymnal indicates the survival of both in modern favor.



Jesus my all to heaven is gone, He whom I fixed my hopes upon; His track I see, and I'll pursue The narrow way till Him I view. The way the holy prophets went, The road that leads from banishment, The King's highway of holiness I'll go for all Thy paths are peace.

The memory has not passed away of the hearty unison with which prayer-meeting and camp-meeting assemblies used to "crescendo" the last stanza—

Then will I tell to sinners round What a dear Saviour I have found; I'll point to His redeeming blood, And say "Behold the way to God."

The Rev. George Coles was born in Stewkley, Eng., Jan. 2, 1792, and died in New York City, May 1, 1858. He was editor of the N.Y. Christian Advocate, and Sunday School Advocate, for several years, and was a musician of some ability, besides being a good singer.

"SWEET THE MOMENTS, RICH IN BLESSING."

The Hon. and Rev. Walter Shirley, Rector of Loughgree, county of Galway, Ireland, revised this hymn under the chastening discipline of a most trying experience. His brother, the Earl of Ferrars, a licentious man, murdered an old and faithful servant in a fit of rage, and was executed at Tyburn for the crime. Sir Walter, after the disgrace and long distress of the imprisonment, trial, and final tragedy, returned to his little parish in Ireland, humbled but driven nearer to the Cross.

Sweet the moments, rich in blessing Which before the Cross I spend; Life and health and peace possessing From the sinner's dying Friend.

All the emotion of one who buries a mortifying sorrow in the heart of Christ, and tries to forget, trembles in the lines of the above hymn as he changed and adapted it in his saddest but devoutest hours. Its original writer was the Rev. James Allen, nearly twenty years younger than himself, a man of culture and piety, but a Christian of shifting creeds. It is not impossible that he sent his hymn to Shirley to revise. At all events it owes its present form to Shirley's hand.

Truly blessed is the station Low before His cross to lie, While I see Divine Compassion Beaming in His gracious eye.[11]

[Footnote 11: "Floating in His languid eye" seems to have been the earlier version.]

The influence of Sir Walter's family misfortune is evident also in the mood out of which breathed his other trustful lines—

Peace, troubled soul, whose plaintive moan Hath taught these rocks the notes of woe,

(changed now to "hath taught these scenes" etc).

Sir Walter Shirley, cousin of the Countess of Huntingdon, was born 1725, and died in 1786. Even in his last sickness he continued to preach to his people in his house, seated in his chair.

Rev. James Oswald Allen was born at Gayle, Yorkshire, Eng., June 24, 1743. He left the University of Cambridge after a year's study, and became an itinerant preacher, but seems to have been a man of unstable religious views. After roving from one Christian denomination to another several times, he built a Chapel, and for forty years ministered there to a small Independent congregation. He died in Gayle, Oct. 31, 1804.

The tune long and happily associated with "Sweet the Moments" is "Sicily," or the "Sicilian Hymn"—from an old Latin hymn-tune, "O Sanctissima."

"O FOR A CLOSER WALK WITH GOD."

The author, William Cowper, son of a clergyman, was born at Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, Eng., Nov. 15, 1731, and died at Dereham, Norfolk, April 25, 1800. Through much of his adult life he was afflicted with a mental ailment inducing melancholia and at times partial insanity, during which he once attempted suicide. He sought literary occupation as an antidote to his disorder of mind, and besides a great number of lighter pieces which diverted him and his friends, composed "The Task," an able and delightful moral and domestic poetic treatise in blank verse, and in the same style of verse translated Homer's Odyssey and Iliad.

One of the most beloved of English poets, this suffering man was also a true Christian, and wrote some of our sweetest and most spiritual hymns. Most of these were composed at Olney, where he resided for a time with John Newton, his fellow hymnist, and jointly with him issued the volume known as the Olney Hymns.

THE TUNE.

Music more or less closely identified with this familiar hymn is Gardiner's "Dedham," and also "Mear," often attributed to Aaron Williams. Both, about equally with the hymn, are seasoned by time, but have not worn out their harmony—or their fitness to Cowper's prayer.

William Gardiner was born in Leicester, Eng., March 15, 1770, and died there Nov. 11, 1853. He was a vocal composer and a "musicographer" or writer on musical subjects.

One Aaron Williams, to whom "Mear" has by some been credited, was of Welsh descent, a composer of psalmody and clerk of the Scotch church in London. He was born in 1734, and died in 1776. Another account, and the more probable one, names a minister of Boston of still earlier date as the author of the noble old harmony. It is found in a small New England collection of 1726, but not in any English or Scotch collection. "Mear" is presumably an American tune.

"WHAT VARIOUS HINDRANCES WE MEET."

Another hymn of Cowper's; and no one ever suffered more deeply the plaintive regret in the opening lines, or better wrought into poetic expression an argument for prayer.

What various hindrances we meet In coming to a mercy-seat! Yet who that knows the worth of prayer But wishes to be often there?

Prayer makes the darkest clouds withdraw, Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw.

The whole hymn is (or once was) so thoroughly learned by heart as to be fixed in the church among its household words. Preachers to the diffident do not forget to quote—

Have you no words? ah, think again; Words flow apace when you complain.

* * * * *

Were half the breath thus vainly spent To Heaven in supplication sent, Our cheerful song would oftener be, "Hear what the Lord hath done for me!"

And there is all the lifetime of a proverb in the couplet—

Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.

Tune, Lowell Mason's "Rockingham."

"MY GRACIOUS REDEEMER I LOVE."

This is one of Benjamin Francis's lays of devotion. The Christian Welshman who bore that name was a Gospel minister full of Evangelical zeal, who preached in many places, though his pastoral home was with the Baptist church in Shortwood, Wales. Flattering calls to London could not tempt him away from his first and only parish, and he remained there till his triumphant death. He was born in 1734, and died in 1799.

My gracious Redeemer I love, His praises aloud I'll proclaim, And join with the armies above, To shout His adorable name. To gaze on His glories divine Shall be my eternal employ; To see them incessantly shine, My boundless, ineffable joy.

Tune, "Birmingham"—an English melody. Anonymous.

"BLEST BE THE TIE THAT BINDS."

Perhaps the best hymn-expression of sacred brotherhood, at least it has had, and still has the indorsement of constant use. The author, John Fawcett, D.D., is always quoted as the example of his own words, since he sacrificed ambition and personal interest to Christian affection.

Born near Bradford, Yorkshire, Jan. 6, 1739, and converted under the preaching of Whitefield, he joined the Methodists, but afterwards became a member of the new Baptist church in Bradford. Seven years later he was ordained over the Baptist Society at Wainsgate. In 1772 he received a call to succeed the celebrated Dr. Gill, in London, and accepted. But at the last moment, when his goods were packed for removal, the clinging love of his people, weeping their farewells around him, melted his heart. Their passionate regrets were more than either he or his good wife could withstand.

"I will stay," he said; "you may unpack my goods, and we will live for the Lord lovingly together."

It was out of this heart experience that the tender hymn was born.

Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, Our comforts and our cares.

Dr. Fawcett died July 25, 1817.

Tune, "Boylston," L. Mason; or "Dennis," H.G. Naegeli.

"I LOVE THY KINGDOM, LORD."

"Dr. Dwight's Hymn," as this is known par eminence among many others from his pen, is one of the imperishable lyrics of the Christian Church. The real spirit of the hundred and twenty-second Psalm is in it, and it is worthy of Watts in his best moments.

Timothy Dwight was born at Northampton, Mass, May 14, 1752, and graduated at Yale College at the age of thirteen. He wrote several religious poems of considerable length. In 1795 he was elected President of Yale College, and in 1800 he revised Watts' Psalms, at the request of the General Association of Connecticut, adding a number of translations of his own.

I love Thy kingdom, Lord, The house of Thine abode, The Church our blest Redeemer saved With His own precious blood.

I love Thy Church, O God; Her walls before Thee stand, Dear as the apple of Thine eye, And graven on Thy hand.

Dr. Dwight died Jan. 11, 1817.

Tune, "St. Thomas," Aaron Williams, (1734-1776.)

Mr. Hubert P. Main, however, believes the author to be Handel. It appeared as the second movement of a four-movement tune in Williams's 1762 collection, which contained pieces by the great masters, with his own; but while not credited to Handel, Williams did not claim it himself.

"MID SCENES OF CONFUSION."

This hymn, common in chapel hymnbooks half a century and more ago, is said to have been written by the Rev. David Denham, about 1826.

THE TUNE.

"Home, Sweet Home" was composed, according to the old account, by John Howard Payne as one of the airs in his opera of "Clari, the Maid of Milan," which was brought out in London at Drury Lane in 1823. But Charles Mackay, the English poet, in the London Telegraph, asserts that Sir Henry Bishop, an eminent musician, in his vain search for a Sicilian national air, invented one, and that it was the melody of "Home, sweet Home," which he afterwards set to Howard Payne's words. Mr. Mackay had this story from Sir Henry himself.

Mid scenes of confusion and creature complaints How sweet to my soul is communion with saints, To find at the banquet of mercy there's room And feel in the presence of Jesus at home. Home, home, sweet, sweet home! Prepare me, dear Savior for glory, my home.

John Howard Payne, author at least, of the original words of "Home, Sweet Home," was born in New York City June 9, 1791. He was a singer, and became an actor and theatrical writer. He composed the words of his immortal song in the year 1823, when he was himself homeless and hungry and sheltered temporarily in an attic in Paris.