Sinclair says: "Hark, my Soul' is the most beautiful of all English hymns. It emphasises what is the essence of the Christian faith, — the appeal of Christ to the individual man. It describes in language that is exquisitely simple and true the work of the Saviour for the soul in redemption. In words hardly less powerful than those of St. Paul, it brings home to the heart the truth that He who speaks to us through the Gospel is the fulness of Him who filleth all in all, and then it closes by bringing the poor human heart, conscious of its own feebleness, into its true attitude of absolute reliance on the Divine peace, in which it lives and moves, and has its being."

64-O LOVE, THAT WILT NOT LET

ME GO.

A CORRESPONDENT, writing from Scotland, pleads for Dr. Matheson's hymn, which begins with "O Love, that wilt not let me go," and says: "At a time of great spiritual darkness, when God, Christ, and Heaven seemed to have gone out of my life, and neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, after months of hopeless misery of mind, I heard this hymn sung in a little country chapel. The first two lines haunted me for weeks, and at last brought light and comfort to my dark soul."

A Presbyterian minister says: "More than any other hymn it appeals to me," for a reason altogether different from that of the previous correspondent. "Amongst students of philosophy Hegel is always gaining appreciation. This hymn is Hegelianism in verse."

LOVE, that wilt not let me go,

I rest my weary soul on Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depth its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O Light, that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;

My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine's blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy, that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,

That morn shall fearless be.

O Cross, that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;

I lay in dust life's glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

TUNE "ST. MARGARET."

65-WHEN I SURVEY THE WONDROUS

CROSS.

THIS is one of the four hymns which stand at the head of all hymns in the English language. Here is the hymn as Dr. Watts wrote it:

WHEN I survey the wondrous Cross,

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

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

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

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

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

TUNE"ROCKINGHAM."

This is said to be Watts's finest hymn. Julian puts it as one of the four which, for popular use, stand at the head of all other English hymns, the other three being Ken's "Morning Hymn," "Hark, the Herald Angels,' and "Rock of Ages." Mrs. Evans, the original of George Eliot's Dinah in "Adam Bede," quoted the third verse when dying. Father Ignatius, when preaching at the Church of St. Edmund the King, Lombard Street, slowly repeated the last line after the congregation had sung it, and added, "Well, I am surprised to hear you sing that. Do you know that altogether you only put fifteen shillings into the bag this morning?"

66-THERE IS A FOUNTAIN FILLED
WITH BLOOD.

THERE is a fummanuel's veins;

'HERE is a fountain filled with blood,

And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;

And there may I, though vile as he,

Wash all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,

Till the whole ransomed church of God
Be saved, to sin no more.

E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,

I'll sing Thy power to save;

When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave.

TUNE

"WILTSHIRE" OR "HORSLEY."

"This hymn," writes a correspondent, 66 was one which first opened my eyes to the need of a Saviour, and brought me also to the Christ. I have seen a thousand hard hearts broken down by the singing of the hymn and the realising of that picture.”

The

Rev. James Spurgeon writes: "This hymn has spoken to my heart as no other hymn has done. revival chorus,

I do believe, I will believe,

That Jesus died for me,

And by His blood, His precious blood,
From sin has set me free,

should be added to this hymn."

Cowper's famous hymn has been fiercely assailed. "This hymn," says Sir Edwin Arnold, editor of the Daily Telegraph and author of "The Light of Asia," is absolutely shocking to my mind." Thousands of sensitive minds in the United States reject words so revolting. Mr. Bird, of Glasgow, denounced it fiercely as "the language of the shambles."

But, as Mr. Price Hughes wrote me sententiously, "if it has been much criticised it has been much blessed." All the animadversions of Matthew Arnold, for instance, are as the lightest dust of the balance compared with the fact of the marvellous influence

which the singing of this hymn has had in softening the heart of man upon such occasions of spiritual quickening as are known as the great Irish Revivals. It has been the means of changing the lives of more men than all those who have ever heard the name of most of its critics, and it is not surprising that it has forced its way by sheer influence of spiritual power into such hymnals as "Ancient and Modern and the Methodist collection, from which it had been jealously excluded, in the one case till 1889, and in the other till 1876.

67 — GRACIOUS SPIRIT, HOLY GHOST. THIS paraphrase of 1 Cor. xiii., by Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln was first published in 1862. Unitarians sing a version beginning "Mighty Spirit, Gracious Guide."

RACIOUS Spirit, Holy Ghost,
Taught by Thee, we covet most

Of Thy gifts at Pentecost,
Holy, heavenly love.

Faith that mountains could remove,
Tongues of earth or heaven above,
Knowledge - all things- empty prove
Without Heavenly Love.

Though I as a martyr bleed,
Give my goods the poor to feed,
All is vain, if love I need;

Therefore give me love.

Love is kind, and suffers long,
Love is meek, and thinks no wrong,
Love than death itself more strong;
Therefore give us love.