body with a view to the ministry. But my fervid fit of exaltation was choked with the dusty facts of life, and smouldered down into a dry indifference. I sought nourishment in secularism and agnosticism, but found none. I was in the slough of despond, at the centre of indifference, with the everlasting 'no' on my lips, when 'Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom' came to my troubled soul like the voice of angels. Wandering in the wilderness, 'o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent,' Newman's Hymn was to me a green oasis, a healing spring, the shadow of a great rock. Through the light and power of God I was led to light and love in Christ in a way I had never before known or experienced." A "Friend" writes: "If thou art sending to Mr. Stead with regard to hymns, I should put for myself rather high 'Lead, Kindly Light,' not only because of its beautiful words, but also because of him who felt them and wrote them. It is such an instruction that so great an intellect found without Christ nothing but an encircling gloom'-that so powerful a nature, a leader among men, wished to be 'humble as a child and guided where to go." " 40-GUIDE ME, O THOU GREAT JEHOVAH. FOR those who have been brought up on the Bible and who have never suffered the bewilderment of the Agnos tic, this famous Welsh hymn in its English dress is worth a hundred "Lead, Kindly Lights." It was written at the close of last century by William Williams, a popular Calvinistic-Methodist evangelist and hymnwriter. It was Richard Knill the missionary's favourite hymn, and was constantly on his lips when dying. The last verse has been the comfort of many a dying Christian, and it has been sung and is still being sung around death-beds, to the accompaniment of heartchoking sobs and streaming tears. Here is a hymn that has helped indeed. G UIDE me, O Thou Great Jehovah ! Hold me with Thy powerful hand. Feed me till I want no more. Open Thou the crystal fountain, Lead me all my journey through: Be Thou still my strength and shield. When I tread the verge of Jordan, Songs of praises I will ever give to Thee. TUNE" DISMISSAL." 41-THE LORD 'S MY SHEPHERD. IF "Lead, Kindly Light," is English, and "Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah," is Welsh, "The Lord's my Shepherd" is Scotch. HE Lord 's my shepherd, I'll not want. TH He makes me down to lie In pastures green: he leadeth me the quiet waters by. My soul he doth restore again; and me to walk doth make Within the paths of righteousness, ev'n for his own name's sake. Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale, For thou art with me; and thy rod and staff me comfort still. My table thou hast furnished My head thou dost with oil anoint, Goodness and mercy all my life And in God's house for evermore TUNE "KILMARNOCK." "For me," writes Mr. S. R. Crockett, the popular author of the "Raiders" and many another delightful romance, "there is no hymn like The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want.' I think I must have stood by quite a hundred men and women as they lay a-dying, and I can assure you that these words-the first learned by the child were also the words that ushered most of them out into the Quiet. To me, and to most among these Northern hills, there are no words like them.' -- Dr. John Ker says: "Every line of it, every word of it, has been engraven for generations on Scottish hearts, has accompanied them from childhood to age, from their homes to all the seas and lands where they have wandered, and has been to a multitude no man can number the rod and staff of which it speaks, to guide and guard them in dark valleys, and at last through the darkest." Of its helpfulness in times of crisis many instances are given, of which that which appeals most to me is the story of Marian Harvey, the servant lass of twenty, who was executed at Edinburgh with Isabel Alison for having attended the preaching of Donald Cargill, and for helping his escape. As the 66 brave lasses were being led to the scaffold, a curate pestered them with his prayers. 'Come, Isabel," said Marian, "let us sing the Twenty-third Psalm." And sing it they did, a thrilling duet on their pilgrimage to the gallows-tree. It was rough on the Covenanters in those days, and their paths did not exactly, to outward seeming, lead them by the green pastures and still waters. But they got there somehow, the Twenty-third Psalm helping them no little. This was the psalm John Ruskin first learnt at his mother's knee. It was this which Edward Irving recited at the last as he lay dying. Even poor Heinrich Heine, on his mattressgrave, in one of his latest poems, recalls the image of the Shepherd Guide whose "Pastures green and sweet refresh the wanderer's weary feet." The magnificent assurance of the fourth verse has in every age given pluck to the heart of the timid and strengthened the nerve of heroes. When St. Francis of Assisi went alone, bareheaded and barefoot, to convert the Sultan, he kept up his spirit on his solitary pilgrimage by chanting this verse. The Moslems did him no harm, and instead of taking off his head, returned him safe and sound to the pale of Christendom. The Rev. D. P. Alford writes me: "When I was chaplain of the Scilly Islands, one of my leading parishioners, a Scotchman, when dying, found the greatest consolation in the metrical version of this psalm. His wife said to me: 'It is no wonder that psalm comforts him, for he has said it every night before going to bed ever since I have known him.' They were elderly people, and had been married many years." In the United States the paraphrase beginning "The King of Love my Shepherd is," is the one commonly used. 42-JESUS, STILL LEAD ON. AFTER the English, Welsh, and Scottish comes in due sequence the German lyrical cry for guidance, Zinzendorf's Hymn, which is said to be the first taught to the children in every German household. In German it begins, Jesu, geh voran Auf der Lebensbahn. The English version is as follows: ESUS, still lead on JE Till our rest be won: And although the way be cheerless, To our Fatherland. If the way be drear, Let not faithless fears o'ertake us, When we seek relief When oppressed by new temptations, Till our rest be won: Till we safely stand In our Fatherland. TUNE- -"WESTON." 43-HE LEADETH ME. THIS hymn with its chorus came to us from across the Atlantic with Mr. Sankey. It was written by Joseph H. |