enly Jerusalem. His aspiration, in the quaint language of the time, has, as we may believe, been abundantly fulfilled:

"Ah, my sweet home, Hierusalem,
Would God I were in thee;
Would God my woes were at an end,
Thy ioys that I might see!"

All this we have reason to believe; but who the man was whose initials we have before us, or what was his history, we shall never positively know, until we too shall have reached the beloved, the eternal city. Perhaps, as has been surmised, he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. It is pleasant to conjecture concerning him; but this is all that is permitted to us. Such a hymn is like a portrait which has come down to us from the past, without any record of the original. Some of the finest heads painted by Titian, as Mrs. Jameson tells us, remain to this hour unknown; but a careful study of them may convey many vivid impressions respecting the persons they represent, what they were, and what they may have accomplished or suffered. So in an anonymous hymn the temperament or experience of the writer may be depicted so clearly that we shall seem to know all about him; we may trace in its lines the saintly virtues, the heroic conflicts, the exultant hopes, of him whose heart first felt and whose lips first uttered it, and we shall find ourselves drawn out towards him as to a brother. And yet it is true, as a rule, that our pleasure in a hymn is enhanced by our acquaintance with its origin and history; as, in a gallery, we delight most to behold the faces of those whose names and deeds are familiar to us.

A comparison of the life of an author with his hymns will throw a new light upon his character, while it will add to the interest of what he has written. Let us refer, as an example, to Isaac Watts, whom Sir Roundell Palmer calls the father of modern hymnody, and who, as he justly adds, is the author of a greater number of good hymns than any other writer in the English language. When we sing his plaintive and dirge-like psalm (146),

"Our God our help in ages past,"

or his tender, penitential, Christ-exalting hymn (316),

"When I survey the wondrous cross,"

it is pleasant to know something of the personal history of him who has struck the key-note for the worship of the sanctuary for all time. We like to think of the pious youth, quietly pursuing his studies in his father's house at Southampton, and composing each week a hymn to be sung on the succeeding Sabbath by the congregation with which he worshipped. His first hymn thus used (337),

"Behold the glories of the Lamb,"

still stands in his collection as the first hymn of the first book, and perhaps is hardly surpassed by any that follow it. Looking across to the Isle of Wight, he was led to meditate upon the "land of pure delight, where saints immortal reign." The river between was, to his poet's eye, the Jordan of death, but his cheerful faith was gladdened by the expanding view on the other side, and he wrote (1191),

"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green."

We like to follow Watts to Stoke-Newington, where, in the midst of valuable public labors, he devoted himself to "the metrical imitation of David's Psalms into New Testament language," and to the composition of songs and catechisms for children; and we readily agree with what Dr. Johnson says in his life of this excellent man, "he never wrote but for a good purpose"; and again, "every one acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year."

It is interesting also to read what is told us of the habit of Charles Wesley in the composition of his hymns: "He

rode every day - clothed for winter, even in summer-a little horse gray with age. When he mounted, if a subject struck him, he proceeded to expand and put it in order. He would write a hymn thus given him on a card kept for the purpose, with his pencil, in short-hand. Not unfrequently he has come to the house in the City Road, and having left the pony in the garden, he would enter, crying out, Pen and ink! Pen and ink!' These being supplied, he wrote the hymn he had been composing. When this was done, he would look round on those present, and salute them with much kindness."

Particular incidents also are interesting. Sir Roundell Palmer, in a note in the Book of Praise, tells us that Kirke White's lines,

"Much in sorrow, oft in woe,"

were found after his death, written on the back of one of his mathematical papers. They were put into the form of a hymn by Dr. Collyer, and again by Miss Maitland, whose verses are considered the best (896):

"Oft in sorrow, oft in woe,"

is Miss Maitland's version, somewhat altered and abbreviated. An anecdote of the same poet, given in his biography, furnishes another glimpse of his character, so devotional, so chastened, so tender. Rowing with his companions on a summer evening upon the river Trent, he sang his own sweet verses, "The Hiding-place," making them doubly his by his melodious utterance of them; and as he sang on this oссаsion, he composed the lines which now stand at the close of the hymn:

"Then pure, immortal, sinless, freed,

We, through the Lamb, shall be decreed;
Shall meet the father face to face,
And need no more a hiding-place."

The more we examine the structure and significance of hymns, the more we shall be impressed with the deep personality of a very great number of them; and we shall find also that those have taken the strongest hold upon the heart of the church which are the most decidedly personal, subjective, and experimental. Nor does an interest of this kind attach only to sacred poetry. It has been said of Byron, that he was "himself the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his poetry, the hero of every tale, the chief object in every landscape." And Southey remarks in his life of Cowper : "There are no passages in a poet's works which are more carped at while he lives, than those wherein he speaks of himself; and if he has any readers after his death, there are none then which are perused with greater interest." In hymns this reference to one's own conditions and feelings may be less obvious to the casual observer than in other poetry, but it will not the less be likely to manifest itself to those whose experiences or sympathies enable them to apprehend it.

John Newton's hymn,

"I asked the Lord that I might grow,
In faith and love and every grace,"

doubtless details a reality in his religious history. No one familiar with the circumstances of the early life of the same composer, will be at a loss to account for his writing the hymn (568),

"In evil long I took delight,"

the second verse of which is,

" I saw one hanging on a tree,
In agony and blood,

Who fixed his languid eyes on me,
As near the cross I stood."

Charles Wesley, we are told, never allowed a birthday to pass, without writing a cheerful hymn. His verses beginning (247),

"O for a thousand tongues to sing,"

were written on the anniversary of his conversion, his spiritual birthday. In his journal Wesley records the labors of a Sunday at Gwennaf in Cornwall, when, as he says, " nine or ten thousand by computation listened with all eagerness while I commended them to God and to the word of his grace. For near two hours I was enabled to preach repentance towards God, and faith in Jesus Christ. I broke out again and again in prayer and exhortation. I believed not one word would return empty. Seventy years' sufferings were overpaid by one such opportunity." After this memorable occasion this faithful servant of the Lord poured out the thanksgiving of his heart in a jubilant hymn:

"All thanks be to God,
Who scatters abroad

Throughout every place,

By the least of his servants, his savor of grace;
Who, the victory gave,

The praise let him have,

For the work he hath done;

All honor and glory to Jesus alone."

Another favorite writer of hymns for the people, Joseph

Hart, the author of (518)

"Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore,"

gives us a view of some of the inner experiences which lead to the composition of devotional and penitential hymns. "The week before Easter 1757, I had such an amazing view of the agony of Christ in the garden as I know not how well to describe. I was lost in wonder and adoration, and the impression was too deep, I believe, ever to be obliterated. I shall say no more of this, but only remark that, notwithstanding all that is talked about the sufferings of Jesus, none can know anything of them but by the Holy Ghost; and I believe that he that knows most knows but very little. It was then I made the first part of my hymn on the Passion:

Come all ye chosen saints of God,
That long to feel the cleansing blood,
In pensive pleasures join with me,
To sing of sad Gethsemane."

In such instances as these we see that certain circumstances in the history of the author were indispensable to the production of the songs which he uttered. An outburst of joy, a wail of anguish, an offering of thanksgiving, a tribute of worship, - whatever the nature of the hymn, it had its