I will be patient, Lord,
Trustful and still;

I will not doubt Thy Word;
My hopes fulfil:

How can I perish, clinging to Thy side,

My Comforter, my Saviour, and my Guide?

Charles Smith (born 1844) is the author of two hymns, one of which especially deserves mention. It written at my suggestion for "The Book of Praise for Children," which at the time, I was compiling. Its author made many attempts, and at last almost gave up the task in despair, when a sudden inspiration enabled him to write the following hymn, which is quite original in conception, and expressed with great beauty. It was afterwards revised for insertion in "Congregational Hymns," where it appears as quoted below. The comparison of the path of duty to a shining golden street is particularly happy :

Lord! when through sin I wander

So very far from Thee,

I think in some far country,

Thy sinless home must be;
But when with heartfelt sorrow
I pray Thee to forgive,

Thy pardon is so perfect,
That in Thy heaven I live.

That heaven, Lord, so surrounds me,

That when I do the right,

The saddest path of duty

Is lightened by its light:
I know not what its glories
Before Thy throne must be,
But here Thy smiling presence
Is heaven on earth to me.

To love the right and do it,
Is to my heart so sweet,
It makes the path of duty
A shining golden street:

Give me Thy strength, O Father,
To choose this path each day,
Then heaven within, about me,
Shall compass all my way.

The other is a hymn for children on "Joy and Sorrow alike from God," and is of merit, though not equal to the one I have quoted.

George Hunt Smyttan, has shown the use which may be made of Scripture incident, when rightly treated, in the sharply-cut hymn :

Forty days and forty nights

Thou wast fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted and yet undefiled.
Sunbeams scorching all the day,
Chilly dewdrops nightly shed;
Prowling beasts about Thy way;
Stones Thy pillow, earth Thy bed.

Lord, if Satan, vexing sore,
Flesh or spirit should assail,
Thou hast vanquished him before;
Grant we may not faint or fail.

So shall we have peace divine ;!
Holier gladness ours shall be;
Round us, too, shall angels shine,
Such as ministered to Thee.

Keep, O keep us, Saviour dear,

Ever constant by Thy side;
That with Thee we may appear
At th' eternal Eastertide.

David Thomas (born 1813), for many years minister of the Congregational Church at Stockwell, for whose use he compiled "The Biblical Liturgy," and Editor of The Homilist, has written several hymns, which were included in the "Liturgy" I have named. One of these is pathetic and tender in no ordinary degree :

Shew pity, Lord, for we are frail and faint;
We fade away, O list to our complaint!
We fade away, like flowers in the sun;
We just begin, and then our work is done.

Shew pity, Lord, our souls are sore distressed;
As troubled seas, our natures have no rest;
As troubled seas that surging beat the shore,
We throb and heave, ever and evermore.

Show pity, Lord, our grief is in our sin :
We would be cleansed, O make us pure within!
We would be cleansed, for this we cry to Thee;
Thy word of love can make the conscience free.

Shew pity, Lord, inspire our hearts with love;
That holy love which draws the soul above;
That holy love which makes us one with Thee,
And with Thy saints, through all eternity.

Henry Twells (born 1832), rector of Waltham, Melton Mowbray, will be long remembered, and deservedly, by his hymn for Sunday evening, one of the finest we possess, "At even ere the sun was set." Scarcely a hymnal now appears in which this is not included.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

GERMAN HYMNS.

GERMANY holds a place of pre-eminence for her hymns. In sacred poetry, she has had no writers at all to be compared with John Milton, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, John Keble, and a host of others that might be named. Probably now our store of English Hymnody is equal, but before the present century it was far inferior to that of Germany. The reasons for this pre-eminence are twofold: the much earlier period (two or three centuries) at which the Germans began to cultivate hymn-writing, and their greater love for music, so that no sooner was a hymn written than it was at once set to music and its life and influence secured. "As far back as we hear anything of the German race, we hear of their love for song. They sang hymns, we are told, in their heathen worship, and lays in honour of their heroes at their banquets, and their heaven was pictured as echoing with the songs of the brave heroes who had died in battle."* Their love of music was not, however, checked or diverted from a religious use by Calvinism, which had but a very slight hold of the German mind. The more strongly churches have been influenced by the

*Winkworth's "Christian Singers of Germany," p. 6.

theology of Calvin, the less disposed have they been to admit Art, whether in the form of Music, Poetry, or Painting, as a handmaid to their worship. And so we find, that, whilst England was content with such versions of the Psalms as Sternhold and Hopkins, Germany possessed a noble collection of hymns in the vernacular. Mrs. Charles, in her "Voice of Christian Life in Song," attempts to explain the Calvinistic dislike to hymns in public worship in the following way:-"None of the strictly Calvinistic communities have a hymn-book dating back to the Reformation. It cannot, surely, be their doctrines which caused this; many of the best-known and most deeply-treasured hymns of Germany and England have been written by those who receive the doctrines known as Calvinistic. Nor can it proceed from any peculiarity of race, or deficiency in popular love of music and song. French and Scotch national character are too dissimilar to explain the resemblance; whilst France has many national melodies and songs, and Scotland is peculiarly rich in both. Is not the cause, then, simply the common ideal of external ecclesiastical forms which pervaded all the churches reformed on the Genevan type? The intervening chapters of ecclesiastical history were, as it were, folded up, as too blotted and marred for truth to be read to profit in them; and, next to the first chapter of Church History in the Acts of the Apostles, was to stand, as the second chapter, the history of the Reformed Churches. Words were to resume their original Bible meaning; nothing was to be received that could not be traced back to the Divine hand. Ecclesiastical order was to be such as St. Paul had established, or had found established; clearly to be traced, it was believed, in the