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as the singing went on, and the gradual silence became a hush, till finally one member threw down his cards and declared, "If what they're saying is right, then we're wrong."

Others followed his example, then another, and another.

There is a brother whom some one should save.

Quietly the revellers left their cards, cigars and half-emptied glasses and went home.

Said the ex-member who told the story years after to Mr. Ufford, "Throw Out the Life-line' broke up that club."

He is today one of the responsible editors of a great city daily-and his old club-mates are all holding positions of trust.

A Christian man, a prosperous manufacturer in a city of Eastern Massachusetts, dates his first religious impressions from hearing this hymn when sung in public for the first time, twenty years ago.

Visiting California recently, Mr. Ufford sang his hymn at a watch-meeting and told the story of the loss of the Elsie Smith on Cape Cod in 1902, exhibiting also the very life-line that had saved sixteen lives from the wreck. By chance one of those sixteen was in the audience.

An English clergyman who was on duty at Gibraltar when an emigrant ship went on the rocks in a storm, tells with what pathetic power and effect "Throw out the Life-line" was sung at a special Sunday service for the survivors.

At one of Evan Roberts' meetings in Laughor, Wales, one speaker related the story of a of a "vision," when in his room alone, and a Voice that bade him pray, and when he knelt but could not pray, commanded him to "Throw out the Life-line." He had scarcely uttered these words in his story when the whole great congregation sprang to its feet and shouted the hymn together like the sound of many

waters.

"There is more electricity in that song than in any other I ever heard," Dr. Cuyler said to Mr. Sankey when he heard him sing it. Its electricity has carried it nearly round the world.

The Rev. Edward Smith Ufford was born in Newark, N. J., 1851, and educated at Stratford Academy (Ct.) and Bates Theological Seminary, Me. He held several pastorates in Maine and Massachusetts, but a preference for evangelistic work led him to employ his talent for object-teaching in illustrated religious lectures through his own and foreign lands, singing his hymn and enforcing it with realistic representation. He is the author and compiler of several Sunday-school and chapel song-manuals, as Converts' Praise, Life-long Songs, Wonderful Love and Gathered Gems.

CHAPTER XI.

HYMNS OF WALES.

In writing this chapter the task of identifying the tune, and its author, in the case of every hymn, would have required more time and labor than, perhaps, the importance of the facts would justify.

Peculiar interest, however, attaches to Welsh hymns, even apart from the airs which accompany them, and a general idea of Welsh music may be gathered from the tone and metre of the lyrics introduced. More particular information would necessitate printing the music itself.

From the days of the Druids, Wales has been a land of song. From the later but yet ancient time when the people learned the Christian faith, it has had its Christian psalms. The "March of the White Monks of Bangor" (7th century) is an epic of bravery and death celebrating the advance of Christian martyrs to their bloody fate at the hands of the Saxon savages. "Its very rhythm pictures the long procession of white-cowled patriots bearing peaceful banners and in faith taking their way to Chester to stimulate the valor of their country.

men." And ever since the "Battle of the Hallelujahs"-near Chirk on the border, nine miles from Wrexham-when the invading Danes were driven from the field in fright by the rush of the Cymric army shouting that mighty cry, every Christian poet in Wales has had a hallelujah in his verse.

Through the centuries, while chased and hunted by their conquerors among the Cambrian hills, but clinging to their independent faith, or even when paralyzed into spiritual apathy under tribute to a foreign church, the heavenly song still murmured in a few true hearts amidst the vain and vicious lays of carnal mirth. It survived even when people and priest alike seemed utterly degenerate and godless. The voice of Walter Bute (1372) rang true for the religion of Jesus in its purity. Brave John Oldcastle, the martyr, (1417,) clung to the gospel he learned at the foot of the cross. William Wroth, clergyman, saved from fiddling at a drunken dance by a disaster that turned a house of revelry into a house of death, confessed his sins to God and became the "Apostle of South Wales." The young vicar, Rhys Pritchard (1579) rose from the sunken level of his profession, rescued through an incident less tragic. Accustomed to drink himself to inebriety at a public-house-a socially winked-at indulgence then-he one day took his pet goat with him, and poured liquor down the creature's throat. The refusal of the poor goat to go there again forced the reckless priest to reflect on his own ways. He forsook the ale-house and became a changed man.

Among his writings-later than this-is found the following plain, blunt statement of what continued long to be true of Welsh society, as represented in the common use of Sunday time.

Of all the days throughout the rolling year
There's not a day we pass so much amiss,
There's not a day wherein we all appear
So irreligious, so profaned as this.

A day for drunkenness, a day for sport,
A day to dance, a day to lounge away,
A day for riot and excess, too short
Amongst the Welshmen is the Sabbath day.

A day to sit, a day to chat and spend,
A day when fighting 'mongst us most prevails,
A day to do the errands of the Fiend-

Such is the Sabbath in most parts of Wales.

Meantime some who could read the languageand the better educated (like the author of the above rhymes) knew English as well as Welshhad seen a rescued copy of Wycliff's New Testament, a precious publication seized and burnt (like the bones of its translator) by hostile ecclesiastics, and suppressed for nearly two hundred years. Walter Bute, like Obadiah who hid the hundred prophets, may well be credited with such secret salvage out of the general destruction. And there were doubtless others equally alert for the same quiet service. We can imagine how far the stealthy taste of that priceless book would help to strengthen a better religion than the one doled out professionally to the multitude by a Civil church; and how

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