FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 Division S ^- t 
 Section ^¥S 
 
TWENTY-FOU 
 
 MEMORY HYMNS 
 
 AND THEIR STORIES 
 
 By •O 
 AMOS R. WELLS 
 
 rsOT 
 
 mm 
 
 UNITED SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR 
 
 BOSTON and CHICAGO 
 
Copyright, 1906, 
 
 by the 
 
 United Society of Christian Endeavor 
 
INDEX 
 
 A Mighty Fortress Is Our God 
 Abide with Me .... 
 All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name 
 Am I a Soldier of the Cross . 
 Awake, My Soul .... 
 Calm on the Listening Ear of Night 
 From Greenland's Icy Mountains . 
 God Be with You till We Meet Again 
 God Bless Our Native Land . 
 How Firm a Foundation 
 In The Cross of Christ I Glory . 
 Jesus, Lover of My Soul 
 Just as I Am ..... 
 My Country, 'Tis of Thee . 
 My Faith Looks Up to Thee 
 Nearer, My God, to Thee . 
 O Day of Rest and Gladness . 
 O Little Town of Bethlehem 
 Onward, Christian Soldiers . 
 Rock of Ages .... 
 
 Sun of My Soul .... 
 Speed Away ..... 
 Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus 
 Take My Life .... 
 
 3 
 
 12 
 
 84 
 
 7 
 
 7 1 
 81 
 
 16 
 
 21 
 
 88 
 
 39 
 29 
 
 65 
 4 1 
 
 50 
 
 35 
 61 
 46 
 92 
 18 
 11 
 
 54 
 68 
 
 25 
 
 74 
 58 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 
 Calvin College 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/twentyfourmemoryOOwell 
 
PREFACE 
 
 On the way to the Denver Christian Endeavor Convention, 
 Mrs. F. E. Clark asked a large number of distinguished clergy- 
 men and eminent laymen that were upon the train, to prepare 
 a list of what they considered the most beautiful and helpful 
 Christian hymns. They did so, and a large and exceedingly 
 fine list was the result. 
 
 There were many agreements, as, for instance, all had 
 "Jesus, Lover of My Soul " and " Nearer, My God, to Thee." 
 The hymns that received the most votes may fairly be taken as 
 the leading hymns of the Christian church. It is these 
 twenty-four hymns, together with their stories, that are given 
 in this pamphlet. 
 
 It is hoped that they will be committed to memory by all 
 Juniors, and it is suggested that one of these hymns be repeated 
 in concert at every Junior meeting for a month. Let the pas- 
 tor or superintendent tell the story of the hymn, and give an 
 opportunity for those who can bring in additional stories to 
 do so. 
 
 If we [can add to our mind treasury the twenty-four leading 
 hymns of the Christian church, what a splendid employment it 
 will be ! 
 
 I make no claim for originality in this book. The facts 
 given, the anecdotes related, are brought together from the best 
 works on hymnology. Practically nothing is mine except the 
 selection and arrangement. 
 
 Amos R. Wells. 
 
 Boston. 
 
 5 
 
Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 " All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name " 
 Edward Perronet 
 
 This, one of the greatest of hymns, was written by Edward 
 Perronet, and is the one thing that has kept his name green in 
 the earth. 
 
 Nevertheless, Perronet was a man worth knowing about, 
 quite apart from his magnificent hymn. He was descended 
 from French Protestants, and his father was an English clergy- 
 man who joined the Wesley s in carrying on their great revival 
 of religion. 
 
 His son Edward also became a clergyman, and for a time 
 labored with the Wesleys. Charles Wesley writes of his bold- 
 ness in preaching. At one time he and Perronet were beset in 
 a house by a mob of rough revilers, whom Perronet opposed 
 courageously, while they abused him and threw dirt on him. 
 
 In his note-book, three years later, Charles Wesley speaks of 
 a journey he made to London, with his brother John and with 
 Perronet. "We were in perils of robbers, who were abroad, 
 and had robbed many the night before," writes Wesley. But, 
 he stoutly adds, "We commended ourselves to God, and rode 
 over the heath singing." What a scene that must have been 1 
 
 7 
 
8 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 John Wesley wanted to hear Perronet preach, and Perronet, 
 for some reason, would not preach before Wesley. One day 
 Wesley, seeing Perronet in the congregation, announced that 
 he would preach the next morning. Perronet did not want to 
 make a scene, so the next morning he mounted the pulpit, ex- 
 plained that he had not consented to preach and felt that he 
 could not, but nevertheless he would give them the best ser- 
 mon that had ever been delivered. Thereupon he opened the 
 Bible, and read the Sermon on the Mount from beginning 
 to end, and without a word of comment. A song and prayer 
 finished the service. 
 
 After eight years of co-operation with the Wesleys, Perronet 
 left them, disagreeing with some of their regulations. They 
 continued, however, to esteem and love each other. 
 
 The last years of Perronet were spent at Canterbury, where 
 he was pastor of an independent church, and where he died in 
 1792, at the age of sixty-six. 
 
 He published three volumes of religious poems, one being 
 made up of versified Scripture. Some of these poems deserve 
 to be widely used, as, for instance, the hymn containing the 
 stanza : — 
 
 " O grant me, Lord, that sweet content 
 That sweetens every state ; 
 Which no internal fears can rent, 
 Nor outward foes abate." 
 
 None of Perronet's poems, however, have attained fame ex- 
 cept the immortal ''All hail the power of Jesus' name." It 
 was written in 1779, and was first printed, in 1780, in The 
 Gospel Magazine. The poet gave it the title, " On the Res- 
 urrection," and as he wrote it, there were eight stanzas, as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name 
 
 All hail the power of Jesus' name, 
 
 Let angels prostrate fall ; 
 Bring forth the royal diadem, 
 
 To crown Him Lord of all ! 
 
 Let high born seraphs tune the lyre, 
 
 And, as they tune it, fall 
 Before His face who tunes their choir, 
 
 And crown Him Lord of all ! 
 
 Crown Him, ye morning stars of light, 
 
 Who fixed this floating ball, 
 Now hail the Strength of Israel's might, 
 
 And crown Him Lord of all ! 
 
 Crown Him, ye martyrs of your God, 
 
 Who from His altar call ; 
 Extol the stem of Jesse's rod, 
 
 And crown Him Lord of all ! 
 
 Ye seed of Israel's chosen race, 
 
 Ye ransomed of the fall, 
 Hail Him who saves you by His grace 
 
 And crown Him Lord of all ! 
 
 Hail Him, ye heirs of David's line, 
 
 Whom David Lord did call, 
 The God incarnate, Man divine, 
 
 And crown Him Lord of all ! 
 
 Sinners, whose love can ne'er forget 
 The wormwood and the gall, 
 
 Go spread your trophies at His feet, 
 And crown Him Lord of all ! 
 
 Let every tribe and every tongue 
 
 That bound creation's call 
 Now shout in universal song, 
 
 The crowned Lord of all ! 
 
io Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 In committing the hymn to memory you may prefer to use 
 it as it now stands in our hymn-books, where it is shortened 
 and changed, and one stanza has been added : — 
 
 " Oh, that with yonder sacred throng 
 We at His feet may fall ; 
 We'll join the everlasting song, 
 And crown Him Lord of all." 
 
 This last stanza was added by the famous hymn collector, Rev. 
 John Rippon, in 1787. 
 
 At first the hymn was sung to the tune of " Miles' Lane," 
 written for the hymn by William Shrubsole, a London organist, 
 in 1780. Now, however, we use the tune " Coronation," 
 which was composed in 1792, the year Perronet died, by Oliver 
 Holden, a carpenter of Charlestown, Mass. Holden's queer 
 old organ, on which this glorious tune was first played, is still 
 to be seen in Boston. 
 
 The most famous story connected with Perronet's great hymn 
 is told of the missionary to India, Rev. E. P. Scott. One day 
 he saw on the street a man of so strange an appearance that he 
 inquired about him, and learned that he belonged to a wild 
 mountain tribe among whom Christ had never been preached. 
 Mr. Scott prayed over the matter, and decided to visit that 
 tribe. 
 
 As soon as he reached their mountain home, he fell in with a 
 savage band who were on a war expedition. They seized him, 
 and pointed their spears at his heart. 
 
 At once the missionary drew out the violin that he always 
 carried with him, and began to play and sing in the native 
 language, " All hail the power of Jesus' name ! " He closed 
 his eyes, expecting death at any minute. When he reached the 
 third stanza, as nothing had happened, he opened his eyes, and 
 
All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name 1 1 
 
 was amazed to see that the spears had fallen from the hands of 
 the savages, and big tears were in their eyes ! 
 
 They invited Mr. Scott to their homes, and he spent two and 
 a half years among them, winning many of them to Christ. 
 When poor health compelled him to return to America, they 
 followed him for thirty or forty miles, begging him to come 
 back again. This he did, and continued to work among them 
 until his death. 
 
"A Mighty Fortress Is Our God " 
 
 Martin Luther 
 
 Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, Germany, in 1483, 
 a poor miner's son. His heart was full of music when he was 
 a boy, and he used to sing from door to door. After he became 
 a man, and had led in the great revolt from the superstitions, 
 sins, and injustices of the Roman Catholic Church, he did two 
 things that more than all others established Protestantism firmly, 
 — he translated the Bible into the language of the common peo- 
 ple, and he wrote hymns also in their every-day language, to be 
 sung to attractive, familiar tunes. 
 
 The first printed hymn-book was published at Wittenberg in 
 1524, — eight hymns with tunes, and four of them by Luther. 
 Since that beginning it is said that Germans have written more 
 than 100,000 hymns, and the greatest of all is this hymn of 
 Luther's. Luther wrote some thirty-six hymns in all, but this 
 is his noblest. Some say that the strong tune to which the 
 hymn is always sung was composed by Luther, but he prob- 
 ably merely adapted a tune already in existence. 
 
 The hymn was written about 1528, and though many at- 
 tempts have been made to associate it with various stirring 
 events in the life of the great reformer, it is not known what 
 occasion prompted it. He based it on the Forty-sixth Psalm, 
 but it does not follow the course of the psalm ; it merely catches 
 up and carries on the psalm's leading thought. 
 
 Whatever its origin, " Ein' Feste Burg ist Unser Gott " had 
 an immediate influence in Germany, and became for the Refor- 
 
 12 
 
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God 13 
 
 mation what the great French hymn, La Marseillaise, became 
 to France. It is now the national hymn of the Fatherland. 
 
 Says Dr. Benson : 
 
 " It was sung at Augsburg during the Diet, and in all the 
 churches of Saxony, often against the protest of the priest. It 
 was sung in the streets ; and, so heard, comforted the hearts of 
 Melanchthon, Jonas, and Cruciger, as they entered Weimar, 
 when banished from Wittenberg in 1547. 
 
 "It was sung by poor Protestant emigrants on their way into 
 exile, and by martyrs at their death. It is woven into the web 
 of history of Reformation times, and it became the true national 
 hymn of Protestant Germany. 
 
 " Gustavus Adolphus ordered it sung by his army before the 
 battle of Leipzig, in 1631, and on the field of that battle it was 
 repeated, more than two centuries afterward, by the throng 
 assembled at the jubilee of the Gustavus Adolphus Association. 
 Again it was the battle hymn of his army at Liitzen, in 1632, 
 in which the king was slain, but his army won the victory. 
 
 "It has had a part in countless celebrations commemorating 
 the men and events of the Reformation ; and its first line is 
 engraved on the base of Luther's monument at Wittenberg." 
 
 Luther comforted his own heart with the hymn, and when 
 his great cause seemed almost lost he would turn to his friend 
 Melanchthon and say, " Come, Philip, let us sing the Forty- sixth 
 Psalm." 
 
 There is a story of the use of it by the German troops lodged 
 in a church after the battle of Sedan. They were too excited 
 to sleep. At last some one began to play Luther's hymn upon 
 the organ. The soldiers united in a splendid outburst of song, 
 after which they fell into peaceful slumber. 
 
 The hymn has been translated into English more than eighty 
 times, but only twice with such success that the result has won 
 
14 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 popular favor. In England, they sing the translation made by 
 Thomas Carlyle, who was the one that introduced the hymn in 
 that land, in 1831. His first stanza is : 
 
 A sure stronghold our God is He, 
 
 A trusty shield and weapon ; 
 Our help He'll be, and set us free 
 
 From every ill can happen. 
 That old malicious foe 
 Intends us deadly woe ; 
 Armed with might from hell 
 And deepest craft as well, 
 
 On earth is not his fellow. 
 
 Our favorite American version is that by Rev. Frederic 
 Henry Hedge, a great German scholar, himself a poet of no 
 mean ability, whose translation appeared in 1852. Longfellow 
 has a version in his "Golden Legend, " and one of Whittier's 
 war poems is in Luther's metre, and is called, "Em' Feste 
 Burg ist Unser Gott." Here is Dr. Hedge's translation : 
 
 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. 
 
 Did we in our own strength confide, 
 
 Our striving would be losing ; 
 Were not the right man on our side, 
 
 The man of God's own choosing : 
 Dost ask who that may be ? 
 
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God 15 
 
 Christ Jesus, it is He ; 
 Lord Sabaoth His name, 
 From age to age the same, 
 And He must win the battle. 
 
 And though this world, with devils filled, 
 
 Should threaten to undo us ; 
 We will not fear, for God hath willed 
 
 His truth to triumph through us. 
 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. 
 
" Calm on the Listening Ear of Night " 
 Edmund Hamilton Sears 
 
 To be the author of two of the most famous and helpful of 
 Christmas hymns is glory enough for any man. That was the 
 blessed result of the life of Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears, 
 D. D. He was a busy pastor ; he wrote four or five books and 
 many other poems, but long after all his other work is forgotten 
 those two Christmas hymns will be remembered and sung. 
 
 Dr. Sears was born, lived, and died in a narrow region in 
 Massachusetts. His birth was in 1810, at Sandisfield, and his 
 death was on January 14, 1876, at Weston. He was a Sweden- 
 borgian in belief, but he was the pastor of Unitarian churches. 
 
 When he was a young man, in 1834, Mr. Sears wrote the 
 first of his two splendid Christmas odes ; when he was in the 
 prime of life, in 1850, he wrote the second, "It came upon 
 the midnight clear." It is the first that is here given to com- 
 mit to memory, "Calm on the listening ear of night." The 
 two hymns are alike and yet different. In Dr. Sears's volume, 
 "Sermons and Songs," they stand, the one preceding and the 
 other following a sermon for Christmas Eve on 1 Tim. 2 : 6. 
 And here is our hymn, just as it appears in that book : — 
 
 Calm on the listening ear of night 
 
 Come heaven's melodious strains, 
 Where wild Judaea stretches forth 
 
 Her silver mantled plains ; 
 Celestial choirs from courts above 
 
 Shed sacred glories there, 
 And angels, with their sparkling lyres, 
 
 Make music on the air. 
 16 
 
Calm on the Listening Ear of Night 17 
 
 The answering hills of Palestine 
 
 Send back the glad reply, 
 And greet from all their holy heights 
 
 The Day- Spring from on high ; 
 O'er the blue depths of Galilee, 
 
 There comes a holier calm, 
 And Sharon waves, in solemn praise, 
 
 Her silent groves of palm. 
 
 " Glory to God ! " The lofty strain 
 
 The realm of ether fills ; 
 How sweeps the song of solemn joy 
 
 O'er Judah's sacred hills ! 
 " Glory to God ! " The sounding skies 
 
 Loud with their anthems ring, 
 " Peace on the earth ; good will to men 
 
 From heaven's Eternal King." 
 
 Light on thy hills, Jerusalem ! 
 
 The Saviour now is born, 
 And bright on Bethlehem's joyous plains 
 
 Breaks the first Christmas morn, 
 And brightly on Moriah's brow 
 
 Crowned with her temple spires, 
 Which first proclaim the new-born light, 
 
 Clothed with its orient fires. 
 
 This day shall Christian tongues be mute, 
 
 And Christian hearts be cold ? 
 Oh, catch the anthem that from heaven 
 
 O'er Judah's mountains rolled, 
 When burst upon that listening night 
 
 The high and solemn lay : 
 "Glory to God, on earth be peace," 
 
 Salvation comes to-day ! 
 
" O Little Town of Bethlehem " 
 Bishop Brooks 
 
 When Phillips Brooks, the beloved and great preacher, was 
 a boy, his parents had him and his brothers learn hymns. 
 They used to enjoy reciting them on Sunday evenings, and 
 when Phillips went to college he could repeat some two hun- 
 dred of them. He never forgot them, and they often came up 
 in his wonderful sermons. 
 
 It is not at all surprising, then, that Phillips Brooks began to 
 write hymns himself. He often composed poems, and some 
 of his poems have become very dear to all Christians. One of 
 the best of these is the beautiful Christmas hymn that we are 
 to commit to memory this month. 
 
 It is not at all surprising, either, that the great preacher 
 should write poems for children. He loved all children, and 
 liked nothing better, giant of a man as he was, than to get 
 down on the floor and romp with them. He often wrote letters 
 to his child friends, and these letters are among the most 
 delightful bits of his writing. 
 
 Mr. Brooks preached in Philadelphia first, and then in 
 Boston. Our hymn was written when he was rector of the 
 Holy Trinity Church of Philadelphia, and for his Sunday- 
 school. It was used by the children at their Christmas service 
 in the year 1868. How little they understood what a famous 
 song they were singing for the first time ! 
 
 The lovely tune, " St. Louis," to which the hymn is usually 
 sung, was written for it at that time by Mr. Lewis H. Redner, 
 the organist of the church, the superintendent of the Sunday- 
 
 18 
 
O Little Town of Bethlehem 19 
 
 school, and teacher of one of the classes. It was in the middle 
 of the night before that Christmas service that Mr. Redner 
 woke up suddenly with angelic strains ringing in his ears. He 
 took a piece of music-paper and jotted down the melody of the 
 tune ; then the next morning, before going to church, he filled 
 in the harmony. So little did he, too, understand what a great 
 thing he was doing. 
 
 It was a long time before the churches realized the beauty 
 of the song. Not until 1892 was the hymn admitted to the 
 hymnal of Bishop Brooks's own denomination. 
 
 Here is the Christmas carol, as Phillips Brooks wrote it. 
 The fourth stanza is unfamiliar, because the writer himself left 
 it out of the later copies of the poem ; but you will want to see 
 it, and probably to learn it with the others. 
 
 O little town of Bethlehem, 
 
 How still we see thee lie ! 
 Above thy deep and dreamless sleep 
 
 The silent stars go by : 
 Yet in thy dark streets shineth 
 
 The everlasting Light ; 
 The hopes and fears of all the years 
 
 Are met in thee to-night. 
 
 For Christ is born of Mary ; 
 
 And gathered all above, 
 While mortals sleep, the angels keep 
 
 Their watch of wondering love. 
 O morning stars together 
 
 Proclaim the holy birth ; 
 And praises sing to God the King, 
 
 And peace to men on earth. 
 
 How silently, how silently, 
 
 The wondrous Gift is given ! 
 So God imparts to human hearts 
 
 The blessings of His heaven. 
 
20 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 No ear may hear His coming, 
 
 But in this world of sin, 
 Where meek souls will receive Him still, 
 
 The dear Christ enters in. 
 
 Where children pure and happy 
 
 Pray to the blessed Child, 
 Where misery cries out to Thee, 
 
 Son of the Mother mild ; 
 Where Charity stands watching, 
 
 And Faith holds wide the Door, 
 The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, 
 
 And Christmas comes on re more. 
 
 O holy Child of Bethlehem, 
 
 Descend to us, we pray ; 
 Cast out our sin, and enter in, 
 
 Be born in us to-day. 
 We hear the Christmas angels 
 
 The great glad tidings tell ; 
 O come to us, abide with us, 
 
 Our Lord Emmanuel. 
 
" From Greenland's Icy Mountains " 
 Bishop Heber 
 
 One of the greatest and noblest of all hymn-writers is Regi- 
 nald Heber. He was born April 21, 1783, at Malpas, Cheshire, 
 England. His father gave him every advantage, and he made 
 the best use of his opportunities. He became a distinguished 
 poet when a young man at Oxford. The first year after enter- 
 ing, when only seventeen years old, he took a prize for a Latin 
 poem, and two years afterward he won a prize by a remarkable 
 poem on Palestine, which was received with such applause as 
 had never before been heard in that sedate gathering. After 
 this success his parents found him on his knees in grateful 
 prayer. 
 
 He became a minister of the Church of England, and began 
 to write hymns. It was just becoming the custom to use hymns 
 in Episcopal churches, and there were no hymn-books. 
 
 The Christians of England were aroused at that time to the 
 great call of foreign missions, and a collection was ordered to 
 be taken for that object in all the churches. 
 
 On Saturday, May 29, 18 19, young Heber happened to be 
 visiting his father-in-law, in whose church he was to preach 
 the next day. This collection was to be taken, and a suitable 
 hymn was wanted. They asked Heber to write one. 
 
 He retired to another part of the room, and in a short time 
 read the first three stanzas of his famous hymn. 
 
 " There ! That will do very well," they told him. 
 
 "No, no, the sense is not complete," answered Heber; so 
 he added the splendid fourth stanza, the entire hymn being as 
 follows, according to the poet's own manuscript, which has 
 
 21 
 
22 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 fortunately been preserved for us (bringing $210 when sold, — 
 a sum larger than the missionary collection received when it 
 was first sung) : — 
 
 From Greenland's icy mountains, 
 
 From India's coral strand, 
 Where Afric's sunny fountains 
 
 Roll down their golden strand, 
 From many an ancient river, 
 
 From many a palmy plain, 
 They call us to deliver 
 
 Their land from error's chain. 
 
 What though the spicy breezes 
 
 Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle; 
 Though every prospect pleases, 
 
 And only man is vile : 
 In vain with lavish kindness 
 
 The gifts of God are strown ; 
 The heathen in his blindness 
 
 Bows down to wood and stone. 
 
 Can we, whose souls are lighted 
 
 With wisdom from on high, 
 Can we to men benighted 
 
 The lamp of life deny ? 
 Salvation ! O salvation ! 
 
 The joyful sound proclaim, 
 Till each remotest nation 
 
 Has learned Messiah's Name. 
 
 Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, 
 
 And you, ye waters, roll, 
 Till like a sea of glory 
 
 It spreads from pole to pole ; 
 Till o'er our ransomed nature 
 
 The lamb for sinners slain, 
 Redeemer, King, Creator, 
 
 In bliss returns to reign. 
 
From Greenland's Icy Mountains 23 
 
 The beautiful and stirring tune to which the hymn is always 
 sung was written as rapidly as the hymn itself. 
 
 A printed copy of the poem reached Miss Mary W. Howard, 
 of Savannah, Ga. She admired it greatly, and wanted a tune 
 for it. The metre was a new one at that time. So Miss 
 Howard sent the poem to Lowell Mason, then a young bank 
 clerk and singing-teacher in Savannah. In half an hour he 
 sent back the "Missionary Hymn" tune that is universally 
 used. 
 
 When Heber was forty years old, he became first bishop of 
 Calcutta. He refused the appointment twice, for he dearly 
 loved his quiet home and church, but his sense of duty finally 
 compelled him to accept. As he went out to the India of 
 which he had sung, he had an opportunity to breathe the 
 "spicy breezes" that "blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle," and that 
 carry the fragrance of the aromatic forests far out to sea. 
 
 His duties and authority extended all over India, Ceylon, 
 Mauritius, and Australasia. He entered upon his work with 
 great energy. It was he who ordained the first native minister, 
 Christian David. He traveled far and wide, but the climate 
 and the heavy tasks quite wore him out. In less than three 
 years, on April 3, 1826, the good bishop suddenly died. 
 
 Heber was greatly beloved. Thackeray called him "one 
 of the best of English gentlemen." He wrote fifty-seven 
 hymns, which were published after his death in one book. It 
 is said that every one of these hymns is in use — an honor paid 
 to no other hymn-writer that ever lived. 
 
 His missionary hymn is his most famous production, and 
 some one has ventured to say that it has accomplished as much 
 for foreign missions as all the missionary sermons ever preached, 
 — a statement he would be the first to rebuke. 
 
 But Heber wrote other great hymns, the greatest being the 
 
24 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 noblest hymn of adoration in the language, " Holy, holy, holy, 
 Lord God Almighty ! " Tennyson pronounced this the finest 
 hymn ever written in any language. 
 
 He also wrote the noblest warrior hymn ever composed : 
 "The Son of God goes forth to war." Another favorite is 
 his "Brightest and best of the sons of the morning." Still 
 others are: "By cool Siloam's shady rill," "Lord of mercy 
 and of might," and "Bread of the world in mercy broken." 
 
 Altogether, though not the greatest of English hymn -writers, 
 Heber may fairly be called the most poetical of them all ; and 
 his beautiful personal character, when one knows about it, adds 
 a new beauty to his lovely hymns. 
 
"Speed Away!" 
 Fanny Crosby 
 
 Fanny Crosby is one of the greatest of the world's hymn- 
 writers ; perhaps only Watts and Wesley would rank above her. 
 She is great in the number of her hymns — more than three 
 thousand, and in the large number of them that have found fa- 
 vor with Christians and seem destined to live forever. To name 
 only a few, what immortal glory belongs to the author of " Pass 
 me not, O gentle Saviour," " Rescue the perishing," "lam 
 Thine, O Lord," "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine," "Jesus, 
 keep me near the cross," " 'Tis the blessed hour of prayer," 
 "Safe in the arms of Jesus," " Some day the silver cord will 
 break," "Thou, my everlasting portion," " Saviour, more than 
 life to me," " All the way my Saviour leads me," " Hide Thou 
 me," "Jesus is tenderly calling thee home," "Lord, at Thy 
 mercy- seat humbly I fall," and many other hymns almost as 
 well known. 
 
 Frances Jane Crosby was born in Southeast, N. Y., on March 
 24, 1820. She is now, therefore, eighty-six years old, but is 
 still, I believe, in excellent health. 
 
 She has been blind since she was six months old, but she is 
 of a happy, contented disposition, and refuses to be pitied be- 
 cause of her great affliction. Indeed, when only eight years 
 old she wrote: — 
 
 " O what a happy soul am I ! 
 Although I cannot see, 
 I am resolved that in this world 
 Contented I will be ; 
 
 25 
 
26 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 How many blessings I enjoy 
 That other people don't ! 
 
 To weep and sigh because I'm blind, 
 I cannot, and I won't." 
 
 Fanny Crosby spent twelve years as a pupil in the New York 
 Institution for the blind, and then she was a teacher from 1847 
 to 1858, teaching language and history. While she was yet a 
 pupil she was a splendid illustration of what education can do 
 for the blind, and once she recited a poem on the subject be- 
 fore the Senate and House of Representatives at Washington, 
 and also before the governor and legislature of New Jersey. 
 
 In 1845 she began to write words for the music of George F. 
 Root, who became music-teacher in the institution. Many of 
 these songs became famous, and the royalties on one of them, 
 " Rosalie, the Prairie Flower," amounted to nearly three thou- 
 sand dollars. Another well-known song of hers is "There's 
 music in the air." 
 
 It was not, however, till February 5, 1864, that she wrote 
 her first hymn. It was written for W. B. Bradbury, and ever 
 since that time he, and his successors, Biglow and Main, have 
 been her publishers, accepting and paying for all that she writes. 
 She has written many hymns for such singers and composers as 
 Sankey, Doane, Lowry, Philip Phillips, Sweney, Sherwin and 
 Kirkpatrick. Her songs have blessed thousands of lives, and 
 there is scarcely one of them but has won many souls to the 
 Saviour. 
 
 In 1858 Miss Crosby was married to another pupil of the in- 
 stitution, Alexander Van Alstyne, a musician, and the two 
 lived together in tender sympathy and mutual helpfulness. 
 She sometimes uses her full name, but often signs her hymns 
 with pen names : A., C, D. H. W., V. A., Ella Dale; Jenny 
 
Speed Away 27 
 
 V., Mrs. Jenie Glenn, Mrs. Kate Grinley, Viola, Grace J. 
 Francis, Mrs. C. M. Wilson, Lizzie Edwards, Henrietta E. 
 Blair, Rose Atherton, Maud Marion, Leah Carlton, and still 
 others ! 
 
 She writes very rapidly, and some of her most famous hymns 
 have been dictated almost as fast as the words could be taken 
 down. Her hymns are full of the Bible with which her memory 
 is stored. When she was a mere child she committed to 
 memory the first four books of the Old Testament and the four 
 Gospels. 
 
 In her home at Bridgeport, Conn., the aged singer sits 
 peacefully awaiting the call to the world where she shall see all 
 beautiful things and shall join — and what voice will be sweeter ? 
 — in the song of Moses and the Lamb. 
 
 The memory hymn by her which we are to learn this month 
 is " Speed away " — a song that has done much to arouse inter- 
 est in missions. It has become the missionary farewell hymn, 
 being sung at the parting with hundreds of missionaries as they 
 set out upon their noble errands. 
 
 Speed away ! speed away on your mission of light, 
 To the lands that are lying in darkness and night ; 
 'Tis the Master's command j go ye forth in His name, 
 The wonderful gospel of Jesus proclaim ; 
 Take your lives in your hand, to the work while 'tis day, 
 Speed away ! speed away ! speed away ! 
 
 Speed away, speed away with the life-giving Word, 
 To the nations that know not the voice of the Lord ; 
 Take the wings of the morning and fly o'er the wave, 
 In the strength of your Master the lost ones to save ; 
 He is calling once more, not a moment's delay, 
 Speed away ! speed away ! speed away ! 
 
28 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 Speed away, speed away with the message of rest, 
 To the souls by the tempter in bondage oppressed ; 
 For the Saviour has purchased their ransom from sin, 
 And the banquet is ready. O gather them in ; 
 To the rescue make haste, there's no time for delay, 
 Speed away ! speed away ! speed away ! 
 
"How Firm a Foundation" 
 
 Probably by Robert Keene 
 
 Our modern hymn books give but six of the seven original 
 stanzas of the hymn, "How firm a foundation." We give 
 here the entire hymn. Those that prefer may, of course, learn 
 it in the modern form. 
 
 It first appeared in a book entitled "A Selection of Hymns 
 from the Best Authors," published in 1787 by a Baptist minis- 
 ter of London, Dr. John Rippon, who, though an ardent ad- 
 mirer of Watts, desired to have some hymns in addition to those 
 by the great hymn writer. Many of the hymns in his collection 
 were there gathered for the first time, and have been in use ever 
 since. We print the hymn precisely as it stood in Dr. Rippon' s 
 book, old style s's and all : 
 
 SCRIPTURE PROMISES 
 CXXVIII. Elevens. K 
 
 Exceeding great and precious Promifes, 2 Pet. iii. 4 
 
 1 How firm a Foundation, ye Saints of the Lord, 
 Is laid for your Faith in his excellent Word ; 
 What more can he fay than to you he hath faid ? 
 You, who unto Jesus for Refuge have fled. 
 
 2 In every Condition, in Sicknefs, in Health, 
 In Poverty's Vale, or abounding in Wealth ; 
 
 At Home and Abroad, on the Land, on the Sea, 
 " As thy Days may demand, f hall thy Strength ever be. 
 29 
 
30 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 3 " Fear not, I am with thee, O be not difmay'd, 
 ' * I, I am thy God, and will ftill give thee Aid ; 
 
 " I'll ftrengthen thee, help thee, and caufe thee to ftand, 
 "Upheld by my righteous omnipotent Hand. 
 
 4 " When thro' the deep Waters I call thee to go, 
 " The Rivers of Woe f hall not thee overflow ; 
 
 " For I will be with thee, thy Troubles to blefs, 
 " And fanctify to thee, thy deepeft Diftrefs. 
 
 5 " When thro' fiery Trials thy Pathway f hall lie, 
 "My Grace all fufncient fhall be thy Supply; 
 " The Flame fhall not hurt thee, I only defign 
 " Thy Drofs to confume, and thy Gold to refine. 
 
 6 " Even down to old Age, all my People fhall prove 
 "My fovereign, eternal, unchangeable Love; 
 "And when hoary Hairs fhall their Temples adorn, 
 " Like lambs they fhall ftill in my bofom be borne. 
 
 7 " The Soul that on Jesus hath lean'd for Repofe, 
 " / will not, I will not defert to his Foes ; 
 
 "That Soul, tho' all Hell fhould endeavor to fhake, 
 "Til never — ?w never — no never forfake." l 
 
 Agreeable to Dr. Doddridge's Tranflation of Heb. xiii. 5. 
 
 Notice the "K " following the "Elevens," which indi- 
 cates the number of syllables. That K is all that is posi- 
 tively known about the author. After Dr. Rippon's death 
 some one changed the "K " in later editions to "Kirk- 
 ham," but it is not thought that Thomas Kirkham wrote it. 
 Daniel Sedgwick, an old-time student of hymns, heard an old 
 lady in an almshouse say that the hymn was written by George 
 Keith, a hymn-writer of the day, and on that slender ground 
 most of our modern hymnals attribute it to him. It is quite 
 
How Firm a Foundation 31 
 
 certain, however, that the author was Robert Keene, who was 
 precentor in Dr. Rippon's church, and who also wrote the tune 
 " Geard," to which it was originally sung. 
 
 We sing the hymn to the tune called " Portuguese Hymn," 
 because some one heard it in the chapel of the Portuguese Em- 
 bassy in London, and jumped to the conclusion that it was 
 Portuguese in its origin. It is not, however, but is the music 
 of a Latin Christmas hymn, "Adeste Fideles " — the hymn 
 which we have translated in the familiar " O come, all ye faith- 
 ful." "John Reading " is falsely given by many books as the 
 composer of this tune. 
 
 General Curtis Guild, Jr., has told in The Sunday- School 
 Times how this hymn, " How firm a foundation," thus wedded 
 to a Christmas tune, was sung on a famous Christmas morning. 
 The Seventh Army Corps was encamped on the hills above 
 Havana, Cuba, on Christmas Eve of 1898 — a beautiful tropical 
 night. Suddenly a sentinel from the camp of the Forty-ninth 
 Iowa called, "Number ten; twelve o'clock, and all's well! " 
 A strong voice raised the chorus, and many manly voices joined 
 in until the whole regiment was singing. Then the Sixth Mis- 
 souri added its voices, and the Fourth Virginia, and all the 
 rest, till there, as General Guild said, "on the long ridges 
 above the great city whence Spanish tyranny once went forth to 
 enslave the New World, a whole American army corps was 
 singing : 
 
 " ' Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed ; 
 I, I am thy God, and will still give thee aid ; 
 I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, 
 Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.' 
 
 " The Northern soldier knew the hymn as one he had learned 
 beside his mother's knee. To the Southern soldier it was that 
 
32 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 and something more; it was the favorite hymn of General 
 Robert E. Lee, and was sung at that great commander's 
 funeral. 
 
 "Protestant and Catholic, South and North, singing together 
 on Christmas day in the morning — that's an American army ! " 
 
 Notice the Scripture reference that follows the title, "Ex- 
 ceeding great and precious Promifes." Look it up, and note 
 its appropriateness. 
 
 Notice also the second stanza, omitted from many modern 
 hymnals. Would you willingly lose it ? When it is omitted, 
 the real beginning of the Scripture quotation which answers the 
 question, "What more can He say?" is left out. After the 
 first seven lines, the rest of the hymn is all Bible. 
 
 Notice, too, the last line, with its footnote referring to Dod- 
 dridge's translation of Heb. 13:5. This translation brings 
 out more clearly than our Revised or Authorized versions the 
 multiplied negatives of the original Greek: "I will not, I will 
 not leave thee, I will never, never, never forsake thee." 
 
 The story is told of the venerable Dr. Charles Hodge, so 
 greatly honored and beloved at Princeton, that one evening, 
 when conducting prayers, the old man was reading this hymn, 
 but was so overcome by its exalted sentiments, especially in view 
 of his own close approach to the better land, that he had no 
 voice for the last line, but could only indicate it by gestures, 
 beating out the rhythm of the words. 
 
 Andrew Jackson, after retiring from the Presidency, became 
 a devout member of the Presbyterian church. One day in his 
 old age a company of visitors was with him, when General 
 Jackson said, " There is a beautiful hymn on the subject of the 
 exceeding great and precious promises of God to His people. 
 It was a favorite hymn with my dear wife till the day of her 
 death. It begins thus : ' How firm a foundation, ye saints of 
 
How Firm a Foundation 33 
 
 the Lord.' I wish you would sing it now." So the company 
 did what was asked by the old hero. 
 
 Miss Willard wrote once : " Mother says that at family 
 prayers in her home they were wont to sing together, ' How 
 firm a foundation ' ; and her parents used to say it would never 
 wear out, because it was so full of Scripture. When mother 
 came back to us after being confined to her room six weeks, we 
 sang that hymn for her, and she broke in at the verse about 
 1 hoary hairs ' and said : ' How I enjoyed that for my old 
 grandmother who lived to be ninety-seven, and I enjoyed it 
 for my dear father who was eighty-six when he passed away ; 
 and now my daughter enjoys it for me, who am eighty-four, 
 and perhaps she will live on to be as old as I, when I feel sure 
 she will have friends who will enjoy it just as tenderly for 
 her.' " 
 
 A beautiful story is told of that noble woman, Fidelia Fisk, 
 the devoted missionary to the women of Persia. One time 
 when she was worn out with her heavy and difficult labors, she 
 was attending a meeting. Her weary body greatly needed 
 rest. Of a sudden a native woman came behind her as she sat 
 on a mat, and whispered, "Lean on me." Miss Fisk heard, 
 but scarcely heeded. Then again came the whisper, "Lean 
 on me." Miss Fisk then leaned gently on her unknown friend. 
 But again came the whisper, "If you love me, lean hard." 
 The worn-out missionary took the words as a message from her 
 Father in heaven, urging her, if she loved Him, to lean hard 
 upon Him. 
 
 At one time a pastor told this touching story to his people in 
 a Kansas village. They were greatly discouraged because of 
 the failure of their crops. As soon as the story was finished, 
 the minister sat down and let the people make their own appli- 
 cation. At once a voice struck up our hymn, and one after 
 
34 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 another joined in until the little company had begun once more 
 to " lean for repose " on the never-failing Arms : 
 
 " The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose 
 I will not, I will not desert to its foes ; 
 That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, 
 I'll never, no never, no never forsake." 
 
" My Country, Tis of Thee " 
 
 Samuel Francis Smith 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote many poems for the re- 
 unions of his class at Harvard, the famous class of 1829, and 
 one of them, written when all the class were gray-heads, con- 
 tains these lines : — 
 
 " And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith, — 
 Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith ; 
 But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, — 
 Just read on his medal, ' My country,' ' of thee.' " 
 
 This "Smith" was Samuel Francis Smith, who wrote our 
 American national anthem. He was born in Boston, October 
 21, 1808; graduated from Harvard, and studied for the min- 
 istry at Andover, becoming a Baptist clergyman. 
 
 It was while he was at Andover that he wrote the famous 
 hymn. Lowell Mason, the eminent composer, had given him 
 some collections of German songs for children, that he might 
 translate them into English. "One dismal day in February, 
 1832," Dr. Smith wrote long afterward, " about half an hour 
 before sunset, I was turning over the leaves of one of the music 
 books, when my eye rested on the tune which is now known as 
 'America.' I liked the spirited movement of it, not knowing 
 it, at that time to be ' God Save the King. ' I glanced at the 
 German words and saw that they were patriotic, and instantly 
 felt the impulse to write a patriotic hymn of my own, adapted 
 to the tune. Picking up a scrap of waste paper which lay near 
 me, I wrote at once, probably within half an hour, the hymn 
 
 35 
 
36 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 'America,' as it is now known everywhere. The whole hymn 
 stands to-day as it stood on the bit of waste paper, five or six 
 inches long and two and a half wide." 
 This is the hymn : — 
 
 My country, 'tis of thee, 
 Sweet land of liberty, 
 
 Of thee I sing ; 
 Land where my fathers died, 
 Land of the pilgrims' pride, 
 From every mountain side 
 
 Let freedom ring. 
 
 My native country, — thee, 
 Land of the noble free, — 
 
 Thy name I love ; 
 I love thy rocks and rills, 
 Thy woods and templed hills ; 
 My heart with rapture thrills 
 
 Like that above. 
 
 Let music swell the breeze, 
 And ring from all the trees 
 
 Sweet freedom's song : 
 Let mortal tongues awake ; 
 Let all that breathe partake ; 
 Let rocks their silence break, 
 
 The sound prolong. 
 
 Our fathers' God, to Thee, 
 Author of liberty, 
 
 To Thee we sing ; 
 Long may our land be bright 
 With freedom's holy light; 
 Protect us by Thy might, 
 
 Great God, our King. 
 
 " I never designed it for a national hymn," Dr. Smith said 
 
My Country, Tis of Thee 37 
 
 afterwards j "I never supposed I was writing one. ' ' Many of 
 the best things come in just that unconscious way. 
 
 On the Fourth of July of that same year, 1832, the hymn 
 was first sung, under Mr. Mason's superintendency, at a chil- 
 dren's celebration in Park Street Church, Boston, and soon the 
 song of the young poet became popular everywhere. It has 
 never been adopted by our government as a national anthem, 
 but it has been adopted by the people themselves, which is far 
 better. 
 
 Dr. Smith became an honored pastor, in several important 
 churches. At one time he was a professor of modern lan- 
 guages, for he was familiar with fifteen languages, and some 
 one who visited him in his eighty-sixth year found the vigorous 
 old man looking around for a text -book with which to begin 
 the study of Russian ! 
 
 At one time he was editor of The Baptist Missionary Mag- 
 azine ; at another time of The Christian Review. For fifteen 
 years he was secretary of the American Baptist Missionary 
 Union. He was deeply interested in missions, and only second 
 in fame to his national anthem is his missionary hymn, " The 
 morning light is breaking." It was he who did much toward 
 saving the "Lone Star" mission in India, by writing his poem 
 with that title. Other well-known hymns of his are " To-day 
 the Saviour calls " and " Softly fades the twilight ray." 
 
 The fact that "My country, 'tis of thee" is written to the 
 same tune as the English national anthem, " God save the 
 King," has given rise to many stirring scenes at Christian En- 
 deavor conventions all over the world. Very often one stanza 
 of each anthem is sung, the conclusion being one stanza of 
 "Blest be the tie." 
 
 This was done at the magnificent meeting on Boston Com- 
 mon, at the Christian Endeavor Convention of July, 1895. 
 
38 Twenty- Four Memory Hymns 
 
 Eleven thousand persons were present in the great tent, and 
 Dr. Smith probably never received such an ovation as when he 
 came forward to read the poem which he wrote for the occasion, 
 " Arouse ye, arouse ye, O servants of God." The noble verses 
 were read with much fervor, though in a voice whose strength 
 had been stolen by many years. 
 
 On November 19 of that same year the aged poet passed 
 away. He died in the harness, just as he was taking the train 
 to preach in a neighboring town on the following Sunday. 
 And so passed from earth the Christian patriot, whose love for 
 his country widened out into the missionary love for all the 
 ^vorld. 
 
"God Bless Our Native Land" 
 Charles T. Brooks and John S. Dwight 
 
 This brief hymn of only two stanzas is one of the best pa- 
 triotic hymns ever written. Strangely enough, it is uncertain 
 just who wrote it, and when it was composed. At least four 
 different writers have declared positively that the hymn was 
 their own. 
 
 It is certain, however, that the poem was written jointly by 
 two Unitarian clergymen, life-long friends, — Rev. Charles 
 Timothy Brooks and Dr. John Sullivan Dwight. These were 
 both Massachusetts men, the first being born in Salem, and the 
 second in Boston. They were born the same year, 1813, and 
 graduated from Harvard the same year, 1832. Their deaths 
 occurred in each case at an advanced age, but there was here 
 a separation of ten years, for Mr. Brooks passed away in 1883, 
 and Dr. Dwight in 1893. 
 
 Both were men of gentle and retiring disposition. Mr. 
 Brooks was active in literary work, especially as a translator. 
 Dr. Dwight was for many years a leader in the musical interests 
 of Boston, and founded in 1852 Dwight 's Journal of Music, 
 which he continued until 1881. Dr. Dwight was one of the 
 band of enthusiasts who joined in the famous experiment of 
 Brook Farm, where a company of lofty thinkers endeavored to 
 put into practice their theories of simple, ideal living. 
 
 Both Mr. Brooks and Dr. Dwight laid claim at different times 
 to be the author of this hymn, but the truth seems to be that 
 each had a hand in the matter, and it is possible that it was 
 translated from the German, or, at least, that a German poem 
 
 39 
 
40 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 furnished the fundamental idea. At any rate, the hymn first 
 appeared in Lowell Mason's Carmina Sacra, in 1841. 
 
 The following is the form in which it was there printed. 
 Although there are several versions, this is the one best worth 
 committing to memory : 
 
 God bless our native land ; 
 Firm may she ever stand 
 
 Through storm and night : 
 When the wild tempests rave, 
 Ruler of wind and wave, 
 Do Thou our country save 
 
 By Thy great might. 
 
 For her our prayers shall rise 
 To God, above the skies ; 
 
 On Him we wait ; 
 Thou who art ever nigh, 
 Guarding with watchful eye, 
 To Thee aloud we cry, 
 
 God save the state. 
 
" Jesus, Lover of My Soul " 
 Charles Wesley 
 
 The three greatest hymn-writers of our English tongue are 
 Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and Fanny Crosby. There are 
 many who think that the hymn we are to learn this month is the 
 greatest hymn ever written ; all men agree that it is the best of 
 Wesley's hymns, though he wrote no less than six thousand. 
 Many of these six thousand, too, rise to the highest rank of re- 
 ligious poetry, such as those beginning : "Ye servants of God, 
 your Master proclaim," "Come, Thou long-expected Jesus," 
 "A charge to keep I have," "Arise, my soul, arise," "Love 
 divine, all love excelling," " Depth of mercy ! Can there be," 
 "Soldiers of Christ, arise," "Oh, for a thousand tongues to 
 sing," and the noble Christmas hymn, "Hark! the herald 
 angels sing." That is a wonderful list of great hymns to be 
 written by one man. 
 
 Charles Wesley, next to the youngest of nineteen children, 
 was born at Epworth, England, on December 18, 1708. His 
 father was Rev. Samuel Wesley, and his mother, Susannah 
 Wesley, was a very remarkable woman. When he was a lad 
 of fifteen, an Irish member of Parliament, Garret Wesley, a 
 wealthy man, wanted to adopt him. His father left him to 
 decide the matter, and he decided in the negative. The boy 
 that was finally adopted became the father of the Duke of Wel- 
 lington (Lord "Wellesley," as he spelled "Wesley"), who 
 conquered Napoleon at Waterloo. How history might have 
 been changed if young Charles Wesley had not decided as he 
 did! 
 
 4i 
 
42 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 In 1735 Wesley became a clergyman of the Church of Eng- 
 land, and went with his brother John on a missionary journey 
 to Georgia, becoming secretary to Governor Oglethorpe. 
 Within a year, broken in health and discouraged, he was com- 
 pelled to return to England. 
 
 Years before this, when Charles Wesley was at Oxford, he 
 and his comrades were so strict in their religious methods that 
 they were nicknamed "Methodists." But both Charles and 
 John had to learn more truly what religion really is. Charles 
 first learned it from Peter Bonier, a Moravian of devout spirit, 
 and from Thomas Bray, an unlearned mechanic who knew 
 Jesus Christ. John soon after had the same experience, and 
 from their vivified preaching sprung the great Methodist 
 churches of to-day. Under the preaching of the Wesleys — 
 especially that of John Wesley, for Charles soon withdrew from 
 the more active work — revivals flamed all over England. 
 There was much persecution. Charles himself was driven 
 from his church. Many of his hymns were written in time of 
 trial, and it is said that "Jesus, Lover of my soul," was written 
 just after the poet and his brother had been driven by a violent 
 mob from the place where they had been preaching. Another 
 story (and neither tale can be verified) says that the hymn was 
 written just after a frightened little bird, pursued by a hawk, 
 had flown into Wesley's window and crept into the folds of his 
 coat. The probable date of the hymn is 1740. After a long 
 life of nearly eighty years, Charles Wesley died, March 29, 1 788. 
 
 Here is his great hymn, including the third stanza, which is 
 now never sung : — 
 
 Jesus, lover of my soul, 
 
 Let me to Thy bosom fly, 
 While the nearer waters roll, 
 
 While the tempest still is high ! 
 
Jesus, Lover of My Soul 43 
 
 Hide me, my Saviour, hide, 
 
 Till the storm of life be past ; 
 Safe into the haven guide, 
 
 Oh, receive my soul at last ! 
 
 Other refuge have I none, 
 
 Hangs my helpless soul on Thee 
 Leave, ah ! leave me not alone, 
 
 Still support and comfort me ! 
 All my trust on Thee is stayed, 
 
 All my help from Thee I bring ; 
 Cover my defenceless head 
 
 With the shadow of Thy wing. 
 
 Wilt thou not regard my call ? 
 
 Wilt thou not accept my prayer? 
 Lo ! I sink, I faint, I fall — 
 
 Lo ! on Thee I cast my care : 
 Reach me out Thy gracious hand ! 
 
 While I of Thy strength receive, 
 Hoping against hope I stand, 
 
 Dying, and, behold, I live ! 
 
 Thou, O Christ, art all I want ; 
 
 More than all in Thee I find : 
 Raise the fallen, cheer the faint, 
 
 Heal the sick, and lead the blind. 
 Just and holy is Thy name ; 
 
 I am all unrighteousness : 
 False and full of sin I am ; 
 
 Thou art full of truth and grace. 
 
 Plenteous grace with Thee is found, 
 
 Grace to cover all my sin ; 
 Let the healing streams abound, 
 
 Make and keep me pure within. 
 Thou of life the fountain art ; 
 
 Freely let me take of Thee : 
 Spring Thou up within my heart, 
 
 Rise to all eternity ! 
 
44 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 This was Finney's last song, sung by him the day before his 
 death. The hymn has brought comfort to innumerable death- 
 beds. 
 
 Just before the battle of Chickamauga a drummer-boy 
 dreamed that he had gone home and was greeted by his dear 
 mother and sister. He awoke very sad, because both mother 
 and sister were dead, and he had no home. He told the little 
 story to the chaplain before he went into the battle. He was 
 left on the field with the dead and dying, and in the quiet of 
 the night his voice was heard singing "Jesus, Lover of my 
 soul." No one dared go to him. When he reached the lines, 
 
 " Leave, ah ! leave me not alone, 
 Still support and comfort me," 
 
 his voice grew silent ; and the next day his body was found 
 leaning against a stump, beside his drum. He had indeed 
 gone home to his mother and sister. 
 
 Another beautiful story is told of this hymn in connection 
 with the Civil War. In a company of old soldiers, from the 
 Union and Confederate armies, a former Confederate was tell- 
 ing how he had been detailed one night to shoot a certain ex- 
 posed sentry of the opposing army. He had crept near and 
 was about to fire with deadly aim when the sentry began to 
 sing, " Jesus, Lover of my soul." He came to the words, 
 
 " Cover my defenceless head 
 "With the shadow of Thy wing." 
 
 The hidden Confederate lowered his gun and stole away. " I 
 can't kill that man," said he, " though he were ten times my 
 enemy." 
 
 In the company was an old Union soldier who asked quickly, 
 " Was that in the Atlanta campaign of '64 ? " 
 
Jesus, Lover of My Soul 45 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then I was the Union sentry ! " 
 
 And he went on to tell how, on that night, knowing the 
 danger of his post, he had been greatly depressed, and, to keep 
 up his courage, had begun to hum that hymn. By the time he 
 had finished, he was entirely calm and fearless. Through the 
 song God had spoken to two souls. 
 
" Nearer, My God, to Thee " 
 Sarah Flower Adams 
 
 This is the greatest hymn ever written by a woman. Its 
 author was the daughter of Benjamin Flower, an Englishman 
 whose liberal views on politics caused his imprisonment in the 
 Newgate Prison, London, for six months. While there, he was 
 visited by Miss Eliza Gould, whose views were like his. After 
 his release she married him, and they had two daughters, 
 Eliza and Sarah. 
 
 It was Sarah who wrote the great hymn. She was born at 
 Harlow, February 22, 1805. The mother died five years later 
 of consumption, and both girls inherited her delicate constitu- 
 tion. Eliza was musical, and often wrote music for her sister's 
 songs. Sarah, beautiful and vivacious, was fond of acting, 
 and had an idea that the drama could be made to teach great 
 truths as well as the pulpit. Fortunately, however, her frail 
 body compelled her to give up the actor's career. 
 
 Miss Flower married, in 1834, a civil engineer, JohnBrydges 
 Adams, and they made their home in London. Her beauty, 
 her gay manners, her bright conversation, and her exalted 
 character, made a deep impression upon many. 
 
 Eliza, the elder sister, became weakened in caring for Sarah 
 through a long illness, and Sarah's death, in turn, was hastened, 
 doubtless, by her care for Eliza in her last sickness. The two 
 passed away within a short interval, the elder in December, 
 1846, and Sarah on August 14, 1848. The hymns sung at 
 both funerals were by Sarah, with music by Eliza. 
 
 The great hymn was written in 1840, and was first published 
 
 46 
 
Nearer, My God, to Thee 47 
 
 the following year in a book, " Hymns and Anthems," pre- 
 pared by Mrs. Adams's pastor, Rev. William Johnson Fox, for 
 the use of his congregation. In 1844 Rev. James Freeman 
 Clarke introduced the hymn in America, but it did not gain 
 genuine popularity until, in 1856, there was published the 
 beautiful tune, ''Bethany," which Lowell Mason wrote for it. 
 In the Boston Peace Jubilee of 1872 the hymn was sung to this 
 tune by nearly fifty thousand voices, and the venerable com- 
 poser himself was in the audience. 
 
 Many changes have been made in the immortal hymn by the 
 editors of hymn-books, but it is best to learn it and use it just 
 as Mrs. Adams wrote it, which is as follows : — 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 E'en though it be a cross 
 
 That raiseth me ; 
 Still all my song would be, 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee. 
 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 Though like the wanderer, 
 
 The sun gone down, 
 Darkness be over me, 
 
 My rest a stone ; 
 Yet in my dreams I'd be 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 There let the way appear, 
 
 Steps unto heaven : 
 All that Thou send'st to me 
 
 In mercy given ; 
 Angels to beckon me 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
48 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 Then, with my waking thoughts 
 
 Bright with Thy praise, 
 Out of my stony griefs 
 
 Bethel I'll raise; 
 So by my woes to be 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 Or if on joyful wing 
 
 Cleaving the sky, 
 Sun, moon, and stars forgot, 
 
 Upwards I fly, 
 Still all my song shall be, 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 Some interesting incidents are connected with this hymn. 
 In 187 1, three eminent theologians, Professors Hitchcock, 
 Smith, and Park, were traveling in Palestine, when they heard 
 the strains of "Bethany." Drawing near, to their amazement 
 they saw fifty Syrian students standing under some trees in a 
 circle, and singing in Arabic "Nearer, my God, to Thee." 
 Professor Hitchcock, speaking afterward of the event, said that 
 the singing of that Christian hymn by those Syrian youths 
 moved him to tears, and affected him more than any singing he 
 had ever heard before. 
 
 During the Johnstown flood, May 31, 1889, a railroad train 
 rushed into the swirling waters. One car was turned on end, 
 and in it was imprisoned, beyond the hope of rescue, a woman 
 on her way to be a missionary in the far East. 
 
 She spoke to the awe-struck multitude, gazing helpless at the 
 tragedy. Then she prayed, and finally she sung " Nearer, my 
 God, to Thee," in which she was joined by the sorrowing, 
 sympathizing throng. As she sung, she passed away, coming 
 nearer indeed to the God of her worship. 
 
Nearer, My God, to Thee 49 
 
 But the most inspiring of all the associations of this hymn is 
 that connected with the death of the martyred McKinley. 
 Dr. M. D. Mann, the physician, heard him murmur among his 
 last words, " 'Nearer, my God, to Thee, E'en though it be a 
 cross,' has been my constant prayer." On the day of his 
 burial, Thursday, September 19, 1901, at half-past three, in all 
 our cities and villages and wherever the daily press made way, 
 by previous arrangement the people paused in their occupa- 
 tions. Trolley cars stopped. The streets were hushed. Men 
 stood with bared heads. There were five minutes of silence 
 over the land. In Union and Madison Squares, New York 
 City, following this impressive silence, bands played "Nearer, 
 my God, to Thee," and the same hymn was used in countless 
 churches at memorial services. Among others, it was used in 
 Westminster Abbey, at the memorial service celebrated by com- 
 mand of King Edward. 
 
" Just as I Am " 
 Charlotte Elliott 
 
 Probably no hymn ever written has brought so many souls 
 to Christ. 
 
 It was written by Charlotte Elliott, who was born in London, 
 England, in 1789. She lived to be an old lady of 82, but all 
 her life she was an invalid. Her suffering made Miss Elliott 
 most thoughtful for others in distress, and most of her hymns 
 were written with such persons in mind. Did not God have 
 that purpose in permitting her to become sick ? 
 
 This very hymn was written when she was in great pain and 
 trouble, and it must have helped her to take to Christ her poor, 
 worn-out body and find the help she so much needed. 
 
 The hymn first appeared in The Christian Remembrancer, 
 of which Miss Elliott became editor in 1836. Soon after it 
 was published a lady, who admired it greatly, had it printed in 
 leaflet form, and widely distributed. Miss Elliott was very 
 sick, and one day her physician gave her one of these leaflets 
 to comfort her, not knowing that she was the author. It is said 
 that the sufferer wept tears of grateful joy when she saw this 
 evidence that God had so used her efforts, though put forth from 
 a feeble body. 
 
 The hymn, as first printed, had six verses. The seventh 
 stanza was added later, but certainly no one would be willing 
 to lose it. Here is the hymn entire, — and will you not wish to 
 learn all of it ? — 
 
 5o 
 
Just As I Am 51 
 
 Just as I am, without one plea, 
 But that Thy blood was shed for me, 
 And that Thou bidst me come to Thee, 
 O Lamb of God, I come ! 
 
 Just as I am, and waiting not 
 To rid my soul of one dark blot, 
 To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot, 
 O Lamb of God, I come ! 
 
 Just as I am, though tossed about 
 With many a conflict, many a doubt, 
 Fightings and fears within, without, 
 O Lamb of God, I come ! 
 
 Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind ; 
 Sight, riches, healing of the mind, 
 Yea, all I need in Thee to find, 
 
 O Lamb of God, I come ! 
 
 Just as I am, Thou wilt receive, 
 
 Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve, 
 
 Because Thy promise I believe, 
 
 O Lamb of God, I come ! 
 
 Just as I am, (Thy love unknown 
 Has broken every barrier down), 
 Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone, 
 O Lamb of God, I come ! 
 
 Just as I am, of that free love 
 
 The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove, 
 
 Here for a season, then above, 
 
 O Lamb of God, I come ! 
 
 Miss Elliott's brother, a clergyman, Rev. H. V. Elliott, once 
 said, " In the course of a long ministry, I hope I have been 
 permitted to see some fruit of my labors, but I feel far more 
 
52 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 has been done by a single hymn of my sister's." After the 
 author's death more than a thousand letters were found among 
 her papers, giving thanks for blessings received from "Just as 
 I am. ' ' Moody once declared that no hymn has done so much 
 good, or touched so many hearts. 
 
 For example, in the summer of 1895, the young people of 
 the Lenox Road Methodist Church of Brooklyn sung this hymn 
 in their service, and, as it happened, the hymn was sung also 
 in the church service following. A few doors away lay a 
 young lawyer in his room. All windows were open, and he 
 heard the hymn twice repeated. At the time he was in the 
 midst of a fierce struggle with conscience, and the hymn de- 
 termined him to be a Christian. 
 
 One day Mr. Wanamaker told his great Sunday school in 
 Philadelphia that one of their number, a young man who had 
 been present only a week before, lay dying, and had asked the 
 school to sing in his behalf " Just as I am, without one plea." 
 The hymn was sung with so much feeling, and especially the 
 third stanza, that a visitor who was present was led to Christ, 
 being freed on the spot from " many a conflict, many a doubt." 
 
 Once John B. Gough was placed in a pew with a man so re- 
 pulsive that he moved to the farther end of the seat. The con- 
 gregation began to sing "Just as I am," and the man joined 
 in so heartily that Mr. Gough decided that he could not be so 
 disagreeable after all, and moved up nearer, though the man's 
 singing l ' was positively awful. ' ' At the end of the third stanza, 
 while the organ was playing the interlude, the man leaned to- 
 ward Mr. Gough and whispered, "Won't you please give me 
 the first line of the next verse ? ' ' Mr. Gough repeated, 
 
 " Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind," 
 
 and the man replied, "That's it ; and I am blind — God help 
 
Just As I Am 53 
 
 me; and I am a paralytic." Then as he tried with his poor, 
 twitching lips to make music of the glorious words, Mr. Gough 
 thought that never in his life had he heard music so beautiful 
 as the blundering singing of that hymn by the paralytic. 
 
" Rock of Ages " 
 Augustus M. Toplady 
 
 "Rock of Ages" and "Jesus, Lover of my soul/' are the 
 two favorite hymns of most Christians. 
 
 The author of "Rock of Ages," Augustus Montague Top- 
 lady, was an Englishman, and was born November 4, 1740. 
 His father, Major Toplady, died in the siege of Cartagena in 
 Colombia, South America, while his boy was only a few months 
 old. Young Toplady was converted when on a visit to Ireland 
 by an ignorant Methodist preacher, a layman, who was preach- 
 ing in a barn. 
 
 His mind was vigorous, but his body was weak, and soon 
 consumption seized upon him. He fought it for two years 
 before it conquered, and it was during this period that he wrote 
 his immortal hymn. It appeared first in the Gospel Magazine 
 for March, 1776 — a magazine of which he was the editor. It 
 was in the midst of an article in which he tried to figure out 
 the number of a man's sins, and then broke into this hymn, 
 which sets forth our only remedy for sin : — 
 
 Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in Thee ! 
 Let the water and the blood 
 From Thy riven side which flowed, 
 Be of sin the double cure, 
 Cleanse me from its guilt and power. 
 
 Not the labor of my hands 
 Can fulfil Thy law's demands \ 
 
 54 
 
Rock of Ages 5J 
 
 Could my zeal no respite know, 
 Could my tears forever flow, 
 All for sin could not atone ; 
 Thou must save, and Thou alone. 
 
 Nothing in my hand I bring ; 
 Simply to Thy cross I cling ; 
 Naked, come to Thee for dress ; 
 Helpless, look to Thee for grace ; 
 Foul, I to the Fountain fly ; 
 Wash me, Saviour, or I die. 
 
 While I draw this fleeting breath, 
 When my eyestrings break in death, 
 When I soar through tracts unknown, 
 See Thee on Thy judgment throne, — 
 Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in Thee ! 
 
 Toplady's title for the hymn was " A living and dying prayer 
 for the holiest believer in the world. ' ' The title fitly expressed 
 the triumphant faith in which he himself passed away on 
 August ii, 1778, saying, "My prayers are all converted into 
 praise." He was only thirty-eight years old. The hymn was 
 actually used as a dying prayer by Prince Albert, the beloved 
 husband of Queen Victoria. It was sung in Constantinople by 
 the Armenians during the fearful massacre. When the steam- 
 ship London went down in the Bay of Biscay in 1866, the last 
 man to escape from the ill-fated vessel heard the remaining 
 passengers singing this hymn : 
 
 Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in Thee. 
 
 The hymn was an especial favorite with Gladstone, who was 
 often heard humming it in the House of Commons, and who 
 
56 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 translated it into Latin, Greek, and Italian. His Latin trans- 
 lation is one of great beauty. Major-General Stuart, the 
 famous Confederate cavalry officer, sung this hymn as he lay 
 dying after the Battle of the Wilderness. Of many other 
 death-beds this hymn has been the solace and the crown. 
 
 The story is told of a Chinese woman who, for the purpose 
 of "making merit" for herself with her heathen gods, had dug 
 a well twenty-five feet deep and fifteen in diameter. She was 
 converted, and a traveller speaks of meeting her when she had 
 reached the age of eighty. She was bent with age, but she 
 stretched out her crippled hands toward her visitor, and began 
 to sing : 
 
 Nothing in my hand I bring, 
 
 Simply to Thy cross I cling. 
 
 The noblest incident connected with this hymn is related of 
 the celebration of the fiftieth year of the reign of Queen Vic- 
 toria. On this occasion there came an embassy from Queen 
 Ranavalona III., of Madagascar, and in the company was a 
 venerable Hova, who expressed the desires of his people for the 
 prosperity of the Queen, and then asked permission to sing. 
 It was expected that he would render some heathen song, but 
 to every one's amazement he burst forth with 
 
 Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in Thee. 
 
 It was a striking proof of the power of Christian missions. 
 
 "Rock of Ages " was often sung by the Armenians at Con- 
 stantinople during the terrible massacres. 
 
 The hymn is given as Toplady wrote it, and it will be seen 
 that it is often mutilated in our hymn-books. The second line 
 of the last stanza is generally written : 
 
Rock of Ages 57 
 
 When my eyelids close in death. 
 
 Toplady's line refers to an old belief that, when a person dies, 
 the " eyestrings " snap. 
 
 As to the thought of "Rock of Ages," it probably sprung 
 from the marginal translation of Isa. 26 : 4 : ''In the Lord 
 Jehovah is the rock of ages," but Toplady doubtless combined 
 that with such passages as "I will put thee in a cleft of the 
 rock" (Exod. 33: 22), "Enter into the rock" (Isa. 2: 10), 
 and " They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them : 
 and that Rock was Christ " (1 Cor. 10 : 4). 
 
 Toplady wrote 133 poems and hymns, but nearly all are 
 forgotten except this. One other, however, is a hymn of great 
 beauty, and is cherished by many Christians : — 
 
 Inspirer and Hearer of prayer, 
 
 Thou Shepherd and Guardian of Thine, 
 My all to Thy covenant care 
 
 I sleeping and waking resign ; 
 If Thou art my shield and my sun, 
 
 The night is no darkness to me ; 
 And fast as my moments roll on 
 
 They bring me but nearer to Thee. 
 
" Take My Life " 
 Frances Ridley Havergal 
 
 Frances Ridley Havergal wrote so many helpful books, 
 and lived a life so earnest and devoted, that she has had a 
 very deep influence over the hearts of Christians. Of all her 
 poems, the one we are to learn this month meant the most to 
 her, and has meant the most to the world. 
 
 Miss Havergal was born in Astley, England, December 14, 
 1836. Her father was an Episcopal clergyman, a skilful com- 
 poser of music, and himself a hymn-writer. She was baptized 
 by another hymn-writer, Rev. John Cawood, who wrote 
 " Hark ! what mean those holy voices ? " 
 
 Studying in England and Germany, Miss Havergal became a 
 good Hebrew and Greek scholar, and knew several modern 
 languages. She became also a brilliant singer and piano- 
 player, and a glittering career in society was open before her. 
 But she considered all her talents to be only loans from the 
 Lord, to be used in His service. She would not even sing, ex- 
 cept sacred music, and for the purpose of winning souls. She 
 lavished her strength upon work for the Master, teaching in 
 Sunday schools, writing letters, writing many leaflets and 
 books, conducting religious meetings, and making public ad- 
 dresses. She was often sick, and her life was short, but she 
 accomplished a wonderful amount of noble work. 
 
 Miss Havergal' s beautiful consecration hymn was written on 
 February 4, 1874. Here it is. 
 
Take My Life 59 
 
 Take my life, and let it be 
 Consecrated, Lord, to Thee. 
 Take my moments and my days ; 
 Let them flow in ceaseless praise. 
 
 Take my hands, and let them move 
 At the impulse of Thy love. 
 Take my feet, and let them be 
 Swift and beautiful for Thee. 
 
 Take my voice, and let me sing, 
 Always, only, for my King. 
 Take my lips, and let them be 
 Filled with messages from Thee. 
 
 Take my silver and my gold ; 
 Not a mite would I withhold. 
 Take my intellect, and use 
 Every power as Thou shalt choose. 
 
 Take my will, and make it Thine ; 
 It shall be no longer mine. 
 Take my heart, it is Thine own ; 
 It shall be Thy royal throne. 
 
 Take my love ; my Lord, I pour 
 At Thy feet its treasure- store. 
 Take myself, and I will be 
 Ever, only, all for Thee. 
 
 At the close of 1873 Miss Havergal came to long for a 
 deeper knowledge of God. On Sunday, December 2, of that 
 year she was brought to see, as by a flash of light, that she 
 could not have the full blessedness of a Christian without a full 
 surrender to Christ. 
 
 On the first of February, 1874, Miss Havergal was visiting 
 in a home where there were ten persons, some of them not 
 
60 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 converted, some of them Christians but not very happy ones. 
 A great longing seized upon Miss Havergal that all of these 
 might, before she left, come to know her Saviour as joyfully as 
 she had just come to know Him. That prayer was granted, 
 and before she left the house. On the last night of her stay, 
 February 4, she was too happy to sleep, and spent the night 
 writing this hymn, closing with the triumphant line, " Ever, 
 only, ALL for Thee! " 
 
 Miss Havergal made the hymn a standard for her own liv- 
 ing. Years afterward she wrote in a letter, " I had a great 
 time early this morning renewing the never-regretted consecra- 
 tion." Then she went on to tell how she found she had really 
 made her own all but the eleventh couplet, about love ; she 
 felt that she had not given Christ her love as she wanted to, and 
 she made that the object of her morning consecration. 
 
 Sometimes the earnest worker would conduct consecration 
 meetings, and there is an account of one such meeting in par- 
 ticular, at the close of which she gave each person present a 
 card bearing the words of the hymn, and asked them to take 
 the cards home, pray over them, and then, if they could make 
 them their own, sign them on their knees. 
 
 This gifted and truly consecrated woman died in Wales on 
 June 3, 1879, at the age of forty-three. She was buried at 
 Astley, and on her tombstone is engraved, as she herself 
 wished, her favorite text : " The blood of Jesus Christ His 
 Son cleanseth us from all sin." 
 
"My Faith Looks Up to Thee" 
 Ray Palmer 
 
 This is probably the greatest hymn written by an American. 
 Its author, Ray Palmer, was the son of a judge, Hon. Thomas 
 Palmer, and was born at Little Compton, R. I., on November 
 12, 1808. He became a clerk in a Boston dry-goods store, a 
 student at Phillips Academy and at Yale, a teacher in New 
 York and New Haven, pastor of several churches, and corre- 
 sponding secretary of the American Congregational Union. 
 
 In 1830, immediately after his graduation from Yale, when 
 Mr. Palmer was teaching in New York, he wrote his great 
 hymn. He was then a young man of twenty-two. 
 
 " The words of the hymn," he afterwards said, " were born 
 of my own soul." He was reading, in the quiet of his own 
 room, a brief German poem of only two stanzas, picturing a 
 suppliant before the cross. Touched by the lines, he trans- 
 lated them and added four stanzas of his own — the immortal 
 hymn : — 
 
 My faith looks up to Thee, 
 Thou Lamb of Calvary, 
 
 Saviour divine ; 
 Now hear me while I pray, 
 Take all my guilt away, 
 O let me from this day 
 
 Be wholly Thine. 
 
 May Thy rich grace impart 
 Strength to my fainting heart, 
 My zeal inspire ; 
 61 
 
62 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 As Thou hast died for me, 
 O may my love to Thee 
 Pure, warm, and changeless be, 
 A living fire. 
 
 While life's dark maze I tread, 
 And griefs around me spread, 
 
 Be Thou my Guide j 
 Bid darkness turn to day, 
 Wipe sorrow's tears away, 
 Nor let me ever stray 
 
 From Thee aside. 
 
 When ends life's transient dream, 
 When death's cold, sullen stream 
 
 Shall o'er me roll, 
 Blest Saviour, then, in love, 
 Fear and distrust remove ; 
 O bear me safe above, 
 
 A ransomed soul. 
 
 Dr. Palmer afterward said that when he was writing the 
 last line, "A ransomed soul," " the thought that the whole 
 work of redemption and salvation was involved in those words, 
 and suggested the theme of eternal praises, moved the writer 
 to a degree of emotion that brought abundant tears." 
 
 The hymn was copied into a little morocco -covered book, 
 which Mr. Palmer carried in his pocket, reading the verses in 
 his hours of communion with the Father. Its use as a hymn 
 is due to a chance meeting of Mr. Palmer on a Boston street 
 with Lowell Mason, the famous musician. He asked Mr. 
 Palmer for a hymn which he might use in " Spiritual Songs for 
 Social Worship, ' ' which he was then preparing, and a copy of 
 " My faith looks up to Thee," was at once made out in a 
 near-by store. Meeting the author on the street a few days 
 later, Mr. Mason exclaimed, "You may live many years and 
 
My Faith Looks Up to Thee 63 
 
 do many good things, but I think you will be best known to 
 posterity as the author of * My faith looks up to Thee. ' ' ' 
 
 Of this incident Prof. Austin Phelps once wrote : " One of 
 those fleeting conjunctions of circumstances and men ! The 
 doctor of music and future doctor of theology are thrown to- 
 gether in the roaring thoroughfare of commerce for a brief in- 
 terview, scarcely more than enough for a morning salutation ; 
 and the sequence is the publication of a Christian lyric which 
 is to be sung around the world." The tune which Mason 
 composed is the well-known and beautiful "Olivet," to which 
 " My faith looks up to Thee " has always been sung. 
 
 The American publication was in 1832. In 1842 the hymn 
 was introduced into Great Britain, and became very popular 
 there. Indeed, it was not till it had received this approval 
 over the sea that it became widely known in America. 
 
 This was Mr. Palmer's first hymn, and he afterward wrote 
 many others, among them " Come Jesus, Redeemer, abide 
 Thou with me " and " Take me, O my Father, take me." 
 
 His translations of Latin hymns are especially fine, the best 
 known being " Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts, " and " Come, 
 Holy Ghost, in love." Mr. Palmer's own favorite among his 
 hymns was " Jesus, these eyes have never seen." From this 
 hymn were taken the last words the poet uttered, as, the day 
 before he passed away, he was heard faintly murmuring the 
 stanza : 
 
 " When death these mortal eyes shall seal 
 And still this throbbing heart, 
 The rending veil shall Thee reveal 
 All glorious as Thou art." 
 
 Mr. Palmer was a man of gentle, lovable character, a saintly 
 man, but a man of strong feeling and powerful enthusiasms. 
 
64 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 The most touching incident connected with this great hymn 
 is perhaps the story of eight young Christian soldiers that met 
 for prayer in a tent just before one of the terrible battles of 
 the Wilderness in the Civil War. They desired to write a 
 statement which should show how they faced death and go as a 
 comforting message to the relatives of those whom the coming 
 battle might remove from earth. They decided to copy this 
 hymn and sign it as their sufficient declaration of Christian 
 faith, and they did so. On the morrow seven of these brave 
 Union soldiers died for their country, and received in their own 
 experience the blessed realization of the hymn's closing 
 stanza : — 
 
 When ends life's transient dream, 
 When death's cold, sullen stream 
 
 Shall o'er me roll, 
 Blest Saviour, then, in love, 
 Fear and distrust remove ; 
 O bear me safe above, 
 
 A ransomed soul. 
 
" In the Cross of Christ I Glory " 
 Sir John Bowring 
 
 The author of this hymn was a remarkable man, Sir John 
 Bowring, who was born at Exeter, England, in 1792, and died 
 in 1872. He was a very learned man. He could speak flu- 
 ently twenty-two languages, and converse in one hundred. He 
 was consul at Hong Kong, China, when the terrible Opium 
 War broke out, and was afterwards governor of that British 
 colony. He was twice a member of the British Parliament, 
 and he made treaties for Siam and Hawaii with six European 
 countries. He was an ardent student of the songs of Europe, 
 and published several volumes of translations from more than 
 twenty languages. His little book, "Matins and Vespers," is 
 full of beautiful religious poems. He was a sincere Christian, 
 and lived a Christlike life. The words he wrote, " In the Cross 
 of Christ I glory," were no unmeaning words to him, and they 
 are fittingly cut in bold letters upon his tombstone. Sir John 
 Bowring wrote other hymns that are often sung by all Chris- 
 tians. Some of these are : " God is love, His mercy bright- 
 ens," " From the recesses of a lowly spirit," and " Watchman, 
 tell us of the night." The last was written in 1825, and 
 Bowring did not know that it was used as a hymn till ten years 
 later, when he heard it sung in a prayer-meeting of American 
 missionaries in Asiatic Turkey. 
 
 But of course Bowring' s most famous hymn is the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 65 
 
66 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 One incident of the siege of Peking during the Boxer massa- 
 cres shows the hold this hymn has upon the Christian church. 
 After the raising of the siege, and the terrible strain was over, 
 the missionaries gathered in the Temple of Heaven, — that mys. 
 terious shrine which no one but the Emperor of China had been 
 allowed to visit, and he only once a year. Around the royal 
 marble altar in that heathen temple gathered the missionaries 
 of the Cross, and sang the hymn which expressed the spirit 
 that had sustained them during those dreadful weeks of suffer- 
 ing and danger — "In the Cross of Christ I glory." Let us 
 
In the Cross of Christ I Glory 67 
 
 never again sing the second stanza without thinking of that in- 
 spiring scene: — 
 
 " 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." 
 
" Sun of My Soul " 
 John Keble 
 
 " The Christian Year " is one of the world's greatest books 
 of poems. Every Christian should own it and read it. It was 
 written by John Keble, and it is a series of poems on the dif- 
 ferent special services and saints' days of the Episcopal Church. 
 
 The book was published in 1827, and within twenty-six years 
 forty-three editions were sold. Before the writer died, he had 
 seen ninety-six editions, and more than half a million copies 
 had been sold. It is still sold in large numbers. 
 
 One Sunday four travelers chanced to meet in the desert of 
 Mount Sinai, and three of them had copies of " The Christian 
 Year." During the Crimean War a daughter of Dr. Chalmers 
 sent the English hospitals a whole cargo of the book. 
 
 But John Keble himself almost never read the book, and never 
 liked to talk about it or hear it praised. He did not want to 
 publish it, in the first place, and at last consented only on con- 
 dition that his name should not appear in it. All through his 
 life he was modest and retiring. 
 
 His life was very quiet. He was born on April 25, 1792, and 
 died March 29, 1866. He was a remarkable scholar at Oxford, 
 but became a country minister, and lived most of his life in 
 charge of a village church at Hursley, — a church which he re- 
 built largely out of the profits of " The Christian Year." 
 
 He was a most dutiful son and brother, a tender, loving, pure 
 soul. The last book in his hands, before he died, was a hymn- 
 book. 
 
 The two poems that begin " The Christian Year " have each 
 
 68 
 
Sun of My Soul 69 
 
 given us a famous hymn. One is a morning hymn, beginning 
 "New every morning is the love," and containing the famous 
 stanza : — 
 
 " The trivial round, the common task, 
 Will furnish all we need to ask, 
 Room to deny ourselves, a road 
 To bring us daily nearer God." 
 
 The other is the still more famous evening hymn. The poem 
 from which it is taken contains fourteen stanzas. The first 
 stanza is a description of the sunset : — 
 
 " 'Tis gone, that bright and orbed blaze, 
 Fast fading from our wistful gaze ; 
 Yon mantling cloud has hid from sight 
 The last faint pulse of quivering light." 
 
 But not so does the " Sun of the soul " set upon our vision. 
 The poet goes on with the stanzas which, taken here and there 
 from among the others, make up our hymn : — 
 
 Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear, 
 It is not night if Thou be near ; 
 O may no earth-born cloud arise 
 To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes. 
 
 When the soft dews of kindly sleep 
 My wearied eyelids gently steep, 
 Be my last thought, how sweet to rest 
 For ever on my Saviour's breast. 
 
 Abide with me from morn till eve, 
 For without Thee I cannot live ; 
 Abide with rne when night is nigh, 
 For without Thee I dare not die. 
 
70 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 If some poor wandering child of Thine 
 Have spurned to-day the voice divine, 
 Now, Lord, the gracious work begin 
 Let him no more lie down in sin. 
 
 Watch by the sick ; enrich the poor 
 With blessings from Thy boundless store ; 
 Be every mourner's sleep to-night 
 Like infants' slumbers, pure and light. 
 
 Come near and bless us when we wake, 
 Ere through the world our way we take, 
 Till in the ocean of Thy love 
 We lose ourselves in heaven above. 
 
"Amla Soldier of the Cross % " 
 
 Isaac Watts 
 
 Isaac Watts, who wrote this hymn, was the father of hymn- 
 writing in the English language, and the author of many of our 
 greatest hymns. 
 
 He was born in Southampton, England, July 17, 1674. His 
 father was not a member of the state church, and was twice 
 thrown into jail for opposing it, so that when he was a baby his 
 mother often carried him in her arms to visit his father in 
 prison. 
 
 There are remarkable stories of young Isaac's boyhood, one 
 of them declaring that he begged for books before he could 
 talk plainly, and others asserting that he began Latin at the age 
 of four and wrote poetry at the age of seven ! 
 
 He became a minister in London. He was a little man, 
 only about five feet tall. His health was very poor all his life, 
 but his church took loving care of him, for he was greatly liked. 
 One day, when Watts was sick, Sir Thomas Abney invited him 
 to his splendid home for a week. He became so dear to the 
 household that they kept him there for the rest of his life, — 
 thirty- six years ! 
 
 Besides his preaching, Dr. Watts wrote much. He was a 
 most zealous student of geography, astronomy, philosophy, and 
 theology, and he wrote books on all these themes. His great 
 life-work, however, as he himself saw, was his hymn-writing. 
 
 Early in life he became wearied with the versified Psalms 
 which the churches used and set out to compose hymns of his 
 
 7i 
 
72 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 own. This was a new departure and met with persistent opposi- 
 tion, but his hymns soon became widely popular in nearly all the 
 churches. In 1707 Watts published his famous collection of 
 original hymns, which he entitled " Hymns and Spiritual 
 Songs." Only two or three copies are now in existence, and 
 one of these sold in 1901 for $700. There were 210 hymns in 
 this first edition, and 144 were added to the second edition. 
 
 The greatest of Watts' s hymns is probably " When I survey 
 the wondrous cross," and many — Matthew Arnold among them 
 — have called it the greatest hymn in the English language. 
 Among the other great hymns of this splendid Christian poet 
 are "Jesus shall reign where'er the sun," " Before Jehovah's 
 awful throne," " From all that dwell below the skies," " Come, 
 let us join our cheerful songs," "There is a land of pure de- 
 light," "Our God ! our help in ages past," " Alas ! and did 
 my Saviour bleed," "Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove," 
 " Give me the wings of faith to rise." Many of Watts's chil- 
 dren's hymns have become famous, such as " Let dogs delight 
 to bark and bite," " How doth the little busy bee," and the 
 sweet cradle-song, " Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber." 
 Watts had no children of his own, but well did he know the 
 child's heart. 
 
 The poet died November 25, 1748, and was buried at Bun- 
 hill Fields, London, near the graves of John Bunyan and Daniel 
 Defoe. He is to be ranked with Charles Wesley, the two 
 standing together at the summit of English sacred verse. 
 
 The noble hymn that we are to commit to memory was writ- 
 ten by Dr. Watts in 1709, to follow a sermon on 1 Cor. 16 : 13, 
 " Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be 
 strong." It is sometimes condensed to four stanzas, but surely 
 we shall not wish to lose the last two. Here it is : — 
 
Am I a Soldier of the Cross w ? 73 
 
 Am I a soldier of the cross, 
 
 A follower of the Lamb ? 
 And shall I fear to own His cause 
 
 Or blush to speak His name ? 
 
 Must I be carried to the skies 
 
 On flowery beds of ease ? 
 While others fought to win the prize, 
 
 And sailed through bloody seas ? 
 
 Are there no foes for me to face ? 
 
 Must I not stem the flood ? 
 Is this vile world a friend to grace, 
 
 To help me on to God ? 
 
 Sure I must fight, if I would reign ; 
 
 Increase my courage, Lord ! 
 I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, 
 
 Supported by Thy word. 
 
 Thy saints, in all this glorious war, 
 Shall conquer, though they die ; 
 
 They view the triumph from afar, 
 And seize it with their eye. 
 
 When that illustrious day shall rise, 
 
 And all Thy armies shine 
 In robes of victory through the skies, 
 
 The glory shall be Thine. 
 
" Stand Up, Stand Up For Jesus ! " 
 
 George Duffield 
 
 In the spring of 1858 there was a great revival in Philadel- 
 phia, and one of the leaders of it was an earnest, manly young 
 minister, not quite thirty years old, named Dudley A. Tyng. 
 One day Mr. Tyng's arm got caught in some machinery and 
 fearfully torn. The arm was amputated, but in a few days the 
 noble young man died of his injuries. 
 
 As he was dying he sent a message to the ministers who had 
 worked with him in the revival, and the message began with 
 these words : " Tell them, 'Let us all stand up for Jesus.' " 
 The words made a deep impression. They were quoted often 
 before large assemblies, and they were made the basis of more 
 than one poem. 
 
 Among Mr. Tyng's most devoted friends was Rev. George 
 Duffield. A few weeks after the sad accident he preached in 
 his own church in Philadelphia, taking as his text Eph. 6 : 14, 
 "Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, 
 and having on the breastplate of righteousness " ; and closing 
 his sermon with the hymn which he had just written, " Stand 
 up, stand up for Jesus." The song at once became popular, 
 was introduced into the hymn-books, and became an especial 
 favorite of the soldiers during the Civil War. 
 
 Here is the hymn just as Mr. Duffield wrote it, including the 
 two stanzas that are now never printed : — 
 
 74 
 
Stand Up, Stand Up For Jesus ! 75 
 
 Stand up, stand up for Jesus, 
 
 Ye soldiers of the cross ; 
 Lift high His royal banner, 
 
 It must not suffer loss : 
 From victory unto victory 
 
 His army He shall lead, 
 Till every foe is vanquished, 
 
 And Christ is Lord indeed. 
 
 [Stand up, stand up for Jesus, 
 
 The solemn watchword hear , 
 If while ye sleep He suffers, 
 
 Away with shame and fear ; 
 Where'er ye meet with evil, 
 
 Within you or without, 
 Charge for the God of Battles, 
 
 And put the foe to rout.] 
 
 Stand up, stand up for Jesus, 
 
 The trumpet call obey ; 
 Forth to the mighty conflict 
 
 In this His glorious day : 
 Ye that are men now serve Him 
 
 Against unnumbered foes ; 
 Let courage rise with danger, 
 
 And strength to strength oppose. 
 
 Stand up, stand up for Jesus, 
 
 Stand in His strength alone. 
 The arm of flesh will fail you, 
 
 Ye dare not trust your own : 
 Put on the gospel armor, 
 
 Each piece put on with prayer ; 
 Where duty calls, or danger, 
 
 Be never wanting there. 
 
76 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 [Stand up, stand up for Jesus, 
 
 Each soldier to his post ; 
 Close up the broken column, 
 
 And shout through all the host : 
 Make good the loss so heavy, 
 
 In those that still remain, 
 And prove to all around you 
 
 That death itself is gain.] 
 
 Stand up, stand up for Jesus, 
 
 The strife will not be long ; 
 This day the noise of battle, 
 
 The next the victor's song : 
 To him that overcometh 
 
 A crown of life shall be ; 
 He with the King of Glory 
 
 Shall reign eternally. 
 
 Mr. Dumeld was the father of a poet, Rev. Samuel W. Duf- 
 field. He was a Presbyterian, and during his long life (1818 
 to 1888) he served Christ faithfully in many churches ; but 
 probably the most fruitful of all his labors was the writing of 
 this hymn, which has inspired so many to speak and act boldly 
 for their Saviour. 
 
 The reference, in the second stanza, to the disciples' sleeping 
 in Gethsemane, recalls a sermon preached from that passage by 
 Mr. Tyng during the revival, not long before his death. Note 
 especially also the sixth line of stanza four, which is often 
 changed (foolishly) to "And, watching unto prayer." 
 
" Onward, Christian Soldiers " 
 Sabine Baring-Gould 
 
 This stirring poem is the chief marching hymn in the English 
 language. It was written very hastily one evening by a re- 
 markable man, Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, then curate of an 
 Episcopal church at Horbury, Yorkshire, England. It was the 
 day before the Whitmonday holiday, in 1865. The children 
 of his village school were to march to the next village and meet 
 there the children of another school. No good song could be 
 found for them to sing while marching, and it was to meet this 
 emergency that the hymn was written. 
 
 It had originally six stanzas, as follows : 
 
 Onward, Christian soldiers, 
 
 Marching as to war, 
 With the cross of Jesus 
 
 Going on before : 
 Christ the Royal Master 
 
 Leads against the foe ; 
 Forward into battle, 
 
 See, His banners go. 
 
 Onward, Christian soldiers, 
 
 Marching as to war, 
 With the cross of Jesus 
 
 Going on before. 
 
 At the sign of triumph 
 
 Satan's host doth flee ; 
 On then, Christian soldiers, 
 
 On to victory : 
 
 77 
 
78 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 Hell's foundations quiver 
 At the shout of praise ; 
 
 Brothers, lift your voices, 
 Loud your anthems raise. 
 
 Onward, etc. 
 
 Like a mighty army 
 
 Moves the Church of God ; 
 Brothers, we are treading 
 
 Where the saints have trod ; 
 We are not divided, 
 
 All one body we, 
 One in hope and doctrine, 
 
 One in charity. 
 
 Onward, etc. 
 
 What the saints established 
 
 That I hold for true, 
 What the saints believed 
 
 That believe I too. 
 Long as earth endureth 
 
 Men that Faith will hold, — 
 Kingdoms, nations, empires, 
 
 In destruction rolled. 
 
 Onward, etc. 
 
 Crowns and thrones may perish, 
 Kingdoms rise and wane, 
 
 But the Church of Jesus 
 Constant will remain ; 
 
 Gates of hell can never 
 
 'Gainst that Church prevail ; 
 
 We have Christ's own promise, 
 
 And that cannot fail. 
 Onward, etc. 
 
Onward, Christian Soldiers 79 
 
 Onward, then, ye people, 
 
 Join our happy throng, 
 Blend with ours your voices 
 
 In the triumph- song ; 
 Glory, laud, and honor 
 
 Unto Christ the King ; 
 This through countless ages 
 
 Men and angels sing. 
 
 Onward, etc. 
 
 The fourth stanza is now never printed, and is plainly in- 
 ferior to the others ; the second stanza is rarely seen. 
 
 Very soon the hymn appeared in our country, and the mar- 
 tial spirit engendered by our Civil War was, as Dr. Benson 
 thinks, the cause of its immediate and great popularity. This 
 popularity was augmented by the splendid tune written for the 
 hymn in 1871 by Arthur S. Sullivan, the tune to which it is 
 universally sung. 
 
 Mr. Baring-Gould was born in 1834 (January 28), and is 
 still living, being rector of Lew Trenchard, Devonshire, — a 
 "living" within the gift of his family, to which he presented 
 himself in 1881. He is the owner of 3,000 acres of land, in- 
 herited through three centuries of ancestors. He holds the im- 
 portant office of justice of the peace (more important in 
 England than in the United States). 
 
 Mr. Baring-Gould is one of the most versatile and industrious 
 of men. His " Lives of the Saints " is in fifteen volumes. His 
 " Curious Myths of the Middle Ages " is a famous work ; so is 
 his "Legends of the Old Testament." He has written a large 
 number of learned books, besides many devotional writings and 
 volumes of sermons. In addition, he is one of the most popu- 
 lar of English novelists, regularly producing one novel a year. 
 An incomplete list of his works that lies before me includes 
 
80 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 seventy-three titles. All this work has been done with the pen, 
 without the aid of a secretary, and Mr. Baring-Gould gives as 
 the sufficient secret of his accomplishments the fact that when 
 he has begun a task, he sticks to it till it is finished. He often 
 does his best work, he says, when he feels least like working, 
 and he never waits for " inspiration," but plunges determinedly 
 at his work. 
 
 " Onward, Christian soldiers" is not by any means the only 
 famous hymn Mr. Baring-Gould has written. Others from his 
 graceful and vigorous pen are "Now the day is over," and 
 " Through the night of doubt and shadow." 
 
" Awake, My Soul " 
 Bishop Thomas Ken 
 
 The first great hymn-writer of England was the good Bishop 
 Thomas Ken, who lived during the times of Cromwell and the 
 kings that followed him. He was born in 1637, and died in 
 1 71 1, after a long and troubled life, in which he took the part 
 of a hero. 
 
 His mother died when he was a child, and he was brought 
 up by his brother-in-law, that famous and pure- hearted angler, 
 Izaak Walton. He went to school, therefore, at Winchester, 
 and his name may still be seen there, cut in one of the stone 
 pillars. He graduated from Oxford. 
 
 In 1679, the wife of William of Orange, the niece of the 
 English king, asked for a chaplain, and Charles II. sent Thomas 
 Ken to the Hague. But Ken had a dispute there, because he 
 was too bold in rebuking some corruption in the court, and he 
 left the Hague in 1680. Then Charles made him one of his 
 own chaplains. 
 
 Once more he lived in Winchester, and in 1683 King Charles 
 came there and asked Ken to give up his house temporarily for 
 the accommodation of a certain dissolute woman who was with 
 the King. " Not for the King's kingdom," was Ken's prompt 
 and unflinching reply. 
 
 Charles had sense enough to see that such a man was worth 
 while, and the next year, when the bishopric of Bath and Wells 
 became vacant, he asked: "Where is the little man who 
 wouldn't give poor Nell a lodging ? Give it to him." And so 
 Thomas Ken became a bishop. 
 
 81 
 
82 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 But Charles IL died soon after, and the uncompromising 
 character of Ken soon got him into trouble again with the 
 court. In 1688 he so offended James II. that he was sent to 
 the Tower, but he was soon afterward acquitted. When 
 William III. came to the throne, the heroic clergyman was de- 
 posed from his bishopric, and though Queen Anne received 
 him back again into partial favor, and gave him a pension of a 
 thousand dollars a year, he was not restored to his place as a 
 bishop. However, the last years of his life were peaceful, and 
 he died serenely. 
 
 Bishop Ken, though he wrote many hymns, and wished his 
 hymns to live on the lips of all succeeding generations, penned 
 only three hymns that are now in common use. These three, 
 however, are great compositions, and one of them, the "long- 
 metre Doxology," " Praise God from whom all blessings flow," 
 is more often repeated by bodies of Christians than any other 
 set of words except the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 The other two hymns that have become famous are the 
 morning hymn here given, and the evening hymn beginning, 
 " Glory to Thee, my God, this night." The four lines of the 
 immortal Doxology were originally printed at the close of both 
 the morning and the evening hymns. 
 
 Awake, my soul, and with the sun 
 Thy daily stage of duty run ; 
 Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise 
 To pay thy morning sacrifice. 
 
 Awake, lift up thyself, my heart, 
 And with the angels bear thy part, 
 Who all night long unwearied sing 
 High praises to the eternal King. 
 
Awake, My Soul 83 
 
 Glory to Thee, who safe hast kept, 
 And hast refreshed me while I slept ; 
 Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake, 
 I may of endless life partake. 
 
 Lord, I my vows to Thee renew : 
 Scatter my sins as morning dew ; 
 Guard my first springs of thought and will, 
 And with Thyself my spirit fill. 
 
 Direct, control, suggest this day, 
 
 All I design, or do, or say j 
 
 That all my powers, with all their might, 
 
 In Thy sole glory may unite. 
 
"Abide with Me" 
 Henry Francis Lyte 
 
 Henry Francis Lyte, the author of this, one of the greatest 
 of all hymns, was born June i, 1793, at Ednam, near Kelso, 
 Scotland, where also was born the poet James Thomson, author 
 of " The Seasons." He was early left an orphan, and in com- 
 parative poverty. Three times in college his poems won him 
 prizes. At first he intended to be a physician, but fortunately 
 he became a clergyman of the Church of England. 
 
 One day, in Cornwall, a brother clergyman, on his deathbed, 
 sent to Lyte that the young man might give him spiritual com- 
 fort. To their mutual grief, they found themselves groping 
 for the light, veritable blind guides. Their search led them 
 into confident certainty, and Lyte emerged from that sick- 
 room a changed man. 
 
 It was this experience, it is said, that prompted Lyte's noble 
 hymn, " Jesus, I my cross have taken." 
 
 He took charge, in 1823, of a seashore parish, Lower Brix- 
 ham, in Devonshire. There, amid rough seafaring men, he 
 toiled for twenty-four years, till his death. He gathered a 
 Sunday school of several hundred scholars, and trained a splen- 
 did company of seventy or eighty teachers. For this church 
 he wrote nearly all his hymns. 
 
 But " the sword was too sharp for the scabbard." Ever of 
 delicate health and threatened with consumption, he became 
 obliged to spend his winters in the warmth of southern Europe. 
 
 Greatly weakened, on the fourth of September, 1847, he was 
 about to leave England for this purpose when he was seized 
 
 84 
 
Abide With Mc 85 
 
 with an irresistible desire to preach to his people once more. 
 Against the protest of his amazed friends, he accomplished this 
 purpose. " O brethren," he said, as he entered the familiar 
 pulpit for the last time, "I stand here among you to-day, as 
 alive from the dead, if I may hope to impress it upon you, and 
 induce you to prepare for that solemn hour which must come 
 to all, by a timely acquaintance with the death of Christ." 
 He closed his service by administering to his weeping people 
 the Holy Communion. 
 
 That evening the impulse to poetical composition came upon 
 him, and he wrote his last and greatest hymn : — 
 
 Abide with me : fast falls the eventide ; 
 The darkness deepens ; Lord, with me abide : 
 When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, 
 Help of the helpless, O abide with me. 
 
 Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day ; 
 Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away ; 
 Change and decay in all around I see ; 
 O Thou who changest not, abide with me. 
 
 Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word ; 
 But, as Thou dwell'st with Thy disciples, Lord, 
 Familiar, condescending, patient, free, 
 Come, not to sojourn, but abide, with me. 
 
 Come not in terrors, as the King of kings ; 
 But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings ; 
 Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea ; 
 Come, Friend of sinners, and thus 'bide with me. 
 
 Thou on my head in early youth didst smile ; 
 And, though rebellious and perverse meanwhile, 
 Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee : 
 On to the close, O Lord, abide with me. 
 
86 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 I need Thy presence every passing hour \ 
 What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power? 
 Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be ? 
 Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me. 
 
 I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless : 
 Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness. 
 Where is death's sting? where, grave, thy victory? 
 I triumph still, if Thou abide with me. 
 
 Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes ; 
 Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies : 
 Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee 
 In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me. 
 
 This hymn he handed to a member of his family that very 
 night. Setting out the next day, Lyte reached Nice, where he 
 died on November 20 of the same year, 1847, his last words 
 being " Joy ! Peace ! " There his body lies, the grave marked 
 simply by that cross which he named in the last stanza of his 
 immortal lyric. 
 
 Thus " Abide with me " was written in the shadows of death. 
 Moreover, Mr. Lyte had been having some trouble with his 
 people, and it is said that the words, "When other helpers 
 fail," were prompted by the estrangement of some of his helpers 
 in the church. 
 
 In an earlier poem, "Declining Days," Lyte had longed to 
 leave behind him 
 
 " Some simple strain, some spirit-moving lay, 
 Some sparklet of the Soul that still might live 
 When I was passed to clay." 
 
 In the closing stanza he had prayed : 
 
Abide With Me 87 
 
 " O Thou ! whose touch can lend 
 Life to the dead, Thy quick'ning grace supply, 
 And grant me, swanlike, my last breath to spend 
 In song that may not die ! " 
 
 Truly that prayer was answered. Few swan songs in all 
 earth's history have been so honored by God and man. 
 
 The hymn was based, of course, on the scene at Emmaus, 
 and the words (Luke 24 : 29), " Abide with us : for it is toward 
 evening, and the day is far spent." It is not, however, an 
 evening hymn ; for the evening thought of by the poet in his 
 hymn was the twilight of life, the night of death. 
 
 Of the eight verses originally written, and given above, the 
 third, fourth, and fifth are usually omitted from our hymn- 
 books. Contrary to the usual result in such condensations, 
 there is here a gain in force, as most readers will feel. All, 
 however, will wish to commit to memory the entire hymn. 
 
 Lyte himself composed a tune for this hymn on the same 
 evening when he wrote it, but the tune that is universally used 
 with it was written by Dr. William Henry Monk, a noted 
 London musician, in 1861. The tune was composed in ten 
 minutes, to fill a blank in a hymn-book. 
 
 Among Lyte's other hymns the best known are "Pleasant 
 are thy courts above," " As pants the hart for cooling streams," 
 and "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven." "In no other 
 writer," says Dr. Breed, "are poetry and religion more exqui- 
 sitely united," 
 
"God Be With You Till We Meet Again" 
 J. E. Rankin 
 
 This beautiful benediction hymn is known all the world 
 around. It has closed, with its sweet strains of Christian fare- 
 well, Endeavor meetings beyond number. It is always the 
 conclusion of our great Christian Endeavor Conventions. 
 
 The hymn was written in 1882 by Rev. Jeremiah Eames 
 Rankin, D. D., LL. D., who was at that time pastor of the First 
 Congregational Church of Washington, D. C. It was written 
 to interpret the familiar words, "good-by," which are merely 
 a contraction of the sentence, " God be with you," and it was 
 composed as a Christian benediction hymn, without being in- 
 tended for any special occasion. Here is the poem entire. The 
 first, second, fourth, and seventh stanzas are all that are com- 
 monly sung : 
 
 God be with you till we meet again, 
 By His counsels guide, uphold you ; 
 With His sheep securely fold you ; 
 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 
 God be with you till we meet again, 
 'Neath His wings protecting hide you ; 
 Daily manna still divide you ; 
 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 
 God be with you till we meet again, 
 
 With the oil of joy anoint you ; 
 
 Sacred ministries appoint you ; 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 88 
 
God Be With You Till We Meet Again 89 
 
 God be with you till we meet again, 
 When life's perils thick confound you, 
 Put His arms unfailing round you ; 
 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 
 God be with you till we meet again, 
 
 Of His promises remind you ; 
 
 For life's upper garner bind you ; 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 
 God be with you till we meet again, 
 
 Sicknesses and sorrows taking, 
 
 Never leaving nor forsaking ; 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 
 God be with you till we meet again, 
 Keep love's banner floating o'er you ; 
 Smite death's threat'ning wave before you 
 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 Ended when for you earth's story, 
 Israel's chariot sweep to glory ; 
 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 
 Chorus 
 
 Till we meet at Jesus' feet, 
 God be with you till we meet again. 
 
 I copy the poem from Dr. Rankin's own book, giving the 
 form he preferred. He objected very strongly, and quite 
 properly, to the changes introduced by the hymn-tinkers, such 
 as, "Put His loving arms around you," "Daily manna still 
 provide you," and the repetition in the chorus, " Till we meet 
 again." These changes transformed the thought, and are cer- 
 tainly the reverse of an improvement. 
 
90 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 Wherever Christian Endeavor has gone this hymn has been 
 adopted, and it has been translated into many tongues. Not 
 only have Christian Endeavorers come to love the song, but it 
 has been adopted by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union 
 as the benediction song of that organization also. It has been 
 sung on many other farewell occasions, as, for example, in 
 Memphis three years ago, when a company of three thousand 
 persons, bidding farewell to President Roosevelt, broke out 
 spontaneously with the familiar " God be with you till we meet 
 again." 
 
 The music for this famous hymn was composed, at Dr. Rank- 
 in's request, by William Gould Tomer, at that time a school- 
 teacher in Carpentersville, N. J. Mr. Tomer's music was 
 slightly revised by Dr. J. W. Bischoff, the blind organist of 
 Dr. Rankin's church. It was sung in that church for the first 
 time. It is an interesting fact that Mr. Tomer was a Method- 
 ist, and that the Methodists at Ocean Grove first made the 
 hymn popular. 
 
 Dr. Rankin was descended from the Scotch Covenanters. 
 He was the cousin of Melinda Rankin, the stout-hearted pioneer 
 missionary to Mexico. He was born at Thornton, N. H., Jan- 
 uary 2, 1828, and died at Cleveland, O., November, 28, 1904, 
 aged nearly seventy-seven years. His long and useful life in- 
 cluded about thirty-five years as a pastor, and about seven years 
 as professor and president at Howard University, that noble 
 institution for colored people, situated in Washington. 
 
 Dr. Rankin wrote many poems, and published a volume of 
 hymns. Among his hymns that have become especially 
 famous is, 
 
 " Out of my darkness into Thy light, 
 Out of my weakness into Thy might, 
 Jesus, I come ; Jesus, I come." 
 
God Be With You Till We Meet Again 91 
 
 The well-known Christian Endeavor hymn, "Keep Your 
 Colors Flying," was written for the Fifth International Chris- 
 tian Endeavor Convention, at Saratoga, where it was first sung. 
 Dr. Rankin was one of the speakers at that convention, and was 
 from the start deeply interested in Christian Endeavor. Writ- 
 ing concerning his famous benediction hymn, he once said : 
 " It has had no sweeter recognition than that given it by its 
 adoption by the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor. 
 Long, long, may they sing it ! " 
 
"O Day of Rest and Gladness" 
 Bishop Wordsworth 
 
 Christopher Wordsworth, who wrote this beautiful hymn 
 of the Lord's Day, was a nephew of the great poet, William 
 Wordsworth, and his biographer. He was born in England in 
 1807, and died in 1885. 
 
 When a lad, he was athletic, and a famous scholar. At the 
 early age of thirty he won a splendid position, becoming head 
 of the school at Harrow. In 1844 he was made Canon of 
 Westminster Abbey, and opposed the appointment of Dr. 
 Arthur Stanley as dean, because of Stanley's liberal views. In 
 1869 he became Bishop of Lincoln, and labored most suc- 
 cessfully in that position till his death. 
 
 Bishop Wordsworth was a notable scholar, and wrote many 
 books, especially an important work on Greece, and a learned 
 commentary on the Bible. He wrote also many hymns, 127 
 in all, which he placed in a hymn-book called "The Holy 
 Year," published in 1862. These hymns were written to illus- 
 trate his theory that hymns should not deal with personal, in- 
 dividual interests, but that they should teach the truths of 
 Scripture, and voice the worship of the whole congregation. 
 
 The first hymn of the book — almost the only hymn of 
 Wordsworth's that is well known or much used — is the beauti- 
 ful lyric we are to commit to memory. It is printed here just 
 as it was written, but in our hymn-books the fourth stanza is 
 always omitted, as distinctly inferior to the others. 
 
 92 
 
O Day of Rest and Gladness 93 
 
 day of rest and gladness, 
 
 O day of joy and light, 
 O balm of care and sadness, 
 
 Most beautiful, most bright ; 
 On thee the high and lowly, 
 
 Through ages join in tune, 
 Sing Holy, Holy, Holy, 
 
 To the great God Triune. 
 
 On thee, at the creation, 
 
 The light first had its birth ; 
 On thee, for our salvation, 
 
 Christ rose from depths of earth ; 
 On thee our Lord, victorious, 
 
 The Spirit sent from heaven ; 
 And thus on thee, most glorious, 
 
 A triple light was given. 
 
 Thou art a port protected 
 
 From storms that round us rise ; 
 A garden intersected 
 
 With streams of Paradise ; 
 Thou art a cooling fountain 
 
 In life's dry, dreary sand ; 
 From thee, like Pisgah's mountain, 
 
 We view our promised land. 
 
 Thou art a holy ladder, 
 
 Where angels go and come ; 
 Each Sunday finds us gladder, 
 
 Nearer to Heaven, our home. 
 A day of sweet refection 
 
 Thou art, a day of love ; 
 A day of Resurrection 
 
 From earth to heaven above. 
 
94 Twenty-Four Memory Hymns 
 
 To-day on weary nations 
 
 The heavenly manna falls : 
 To holy convocations 
 
 The silver trumpet calls, 
 Where gospel light is glowing 
 
 With pure and radiant beams, 
 And living water flowing 
 
 With soul-refreshing streams. 
 
 New graces ever gaining 
 
 From this our day of rest, 
 We reach the rest remaining 
 
 To spirits of the blest. 
 To Holy Ghost be praises, 
 
 To Father, and to Son ; 
 The Church her voice upraises 
 
 To Thee, blest Three in One.