repeated illness finally broke up his ministry, and he retired, an invalid, to the beautiful home of Sir Thomas Abney at Theobaldo, invited, as he supposed, to spend a week, but it was really to spend the rest of his life-thirty-six years. Numbers of his hymns are cited as having biographical or reminiscent color. The stanza in When I can read my title clear, -which reads in the original copy, Should earth against my soul engage And hellish darts be hurled, Then I can smile at Satan's rage And face a frowning world, -is said to have been an allusion to Voltaire and his attack upon the church, while the calm beauty of the harbor within view of his home is supposed to have been in his eye when he composed the last stanza, There shall I bathe my weary In seas of heavenly rest, According to the record, soul' What shall the dying sinner do? -was one of his "pulpit hymns," and followed a sermon preached from Rom. 1:16. Another, And is this life prolonged to you? -after a sermon from I Cor. 3:22; and another, How vast a treasure we possess, -enforced his text, "All things are yours.' The hymn, Not all the blood of beasts -was, as some say, suggested to the writer by a visit to the abbatoir in Smithfield Market. The same hymn years afterwards, discovered, we are told, in a printed paper wrapped around a shop bundle, converted a Jewess, and influenced her to a life of Christian faith and sacrifice. A young man, hardened by austere and minatory sermons, was melted, says Dr. Belcher, by simply reading, Show pity Lord, O Lord, forgive, -and became partaker of a rich religious experience. The summer scenery of Southampton, with its distant view of the Isle of Wight, was believed to have inspired the hymnist sitting at a parlor window and gazing across the river Itchen, to write the stanza Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood Stand drest in living green; So to the Jews old Canaan stood While Jordan rolled between. The hymn, "Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb," was personal, addressed by Watts "to Lucius on the death of Seneca." A severe heart-trial was the occasion of another hymn. When a young man he proposed marriage to Miss Elizabeth Singer, a much-admired young lady, talented, beautiful, and good. She rejected him-kindly but finally. The disappointment was bitter, and in the first shadow of it he wrote,— How vain are all things here below, Miss Singer became the celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe, the spiritual and poetic beauty of whose Meditations once made a devotional textbook for pious souls. Of Dr. Watts and his offer of his hand and heart, she always said, "I loved the jewel, but I did not admire the casket." The poet suitor was undersized, in habitually delicate health-and not handsome. But the good minister and scholar found noble employment to keep his mind from preying upon itself and shortening his days. During his long though afflicted leisure he versified the Psalms, wrote a treatise on Logic, an Introduction to the Study of Astronomy and Geography, and a work On the Improvement of the Mind; and died in 1748, at the age of seventy-four. "O FOR A THOUSAND TONGUES TO SING." Charles Wesley, the author of this hymn, took up the harp of Watts when the older poet laid it down. He was born at Epworth, Eng., in 1708, the third son of Rev. Samuel Wesley, and died in London, March 29, 1788. The hymn is believed to have been written May 17, 1739, for the anniversary of his own conversion: O for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer's praise, The remark of a fervent Christian friend, Peter Bohler, "Had I a thousand tongues I would praise Christ Jesus with them all," struck an answering chord in Wesley's heart, and he embalmed the wish in his fluent verse. The third stanza (printed as second in some hymnals), has made language for pardoned souls for at least four generations: Jesus! the name that calms our fears And bids our sorrows cease; 'Tis music in the sinner's ears, 'Tis life and health and peace. Charles Wesley was the poet of the soul, and knew every mood. In the words of Isaac Taylor, "There is no main article of belief....no moral sentiment peculiarly characteristic of the gospel that does not find itself....pointedly and clearly conveyed in some stanza of Charles Wesley's poetry." And it does not dim the lustre of Watts, considering the marvellous brightness, versatility and felicity of his greatest successor, to say of the latter, with the London Quarterly, that he "was, perhaps, the most gifted minstrel of the modern Church.' Most of the hymns of this good man were hymns of experience and this is why they are so dear to |