Cheshire, Eng., April 21st, 1783, and educated at Oxford. He served the church in Hodnet, Shropshire, for about twenty years, and was then appointed Bishop of Calcutta, E. I. His labors there were cut short in the prime of his life, his death occurring in 1826, at Trichinopoly on the 3d of April, his natal month.

His hymns, numbering fifty-seven, were collected by his widow, and published with his poetical works in 1842.

Holy! holy! holy! Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee.

Holy! holy! holy! merciful and mighty,

God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.

Holy! holy! holy! all the saints adore Thee,

Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea; Cherubim and seraphim, falling down before Thee, Which wert, and art, and evermore shall be.

THE TUNE.

Grand as the hymn is, it did not come to its full grandeur of sentiment and sound in song-worship till the remarkable music of Dr. John B. Dykes was joined to it. None was ever written that in performance illustrates more admirably the solemn beauty of congregational praise. The name "Nicæa" attached to the tune means nothing to the popular ear and mind, and it is known everywhere by the initial words of the first line.

Rev. John Bacchus Dykes, Doctor of Music, was born at Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1823; and

graduated at Cambridge, in 1847. He became a master of tone and choral harmony, and did much to reform and elevate congregational psalmody in England. He was perhaps the first to demonstrate that hymn-tune making can be reduced to a science without impairing its spiritual purpose. Died Jan. 22, 1876.

"LORD OF ALL BEING, THRONED AFAR."

This noble hymn was composed by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, born in Cambridge, Mass., 1809, and graduated at Harvard University. A physician by profession, he was known as a practitioner chiefly in literature, being a brilliant writer and long the leading poetical wit of America. He was, however, a man of deep religious feeling, and a devout attendant at King's Chapel, Unitarian, in Boston where he spent his life. He held the Harvard Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology more than fifty years, but his enduring work is in his poems, and his charming volume, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Died Jan. 22, 1896.

THE TUNE.

Holmes' hymn is sung in some churches to "Louvan," V. C. Taylor's admirable praise tune. Other hymnals prefer with it the music of “Keble,” one of Dr. Dykes' appropriate and finished melodies.

Virgil Corydon Taylor, an American vocal composer, was born in Barkhamstead, Conn., April 2, 1817, died 1891.

CHAPTER II.

SOME HYMNS OF GREAT

WITNESSES.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS.

Ἔρχεσθε, ὦ πιστοί,

̓Αναστάσεως Ἡμέρα.

John of Damascus, called also St. John of Jerusalem, a theologian and poet, was the last but one of the Christian Fathers of the Greek Church. This eminent man was named by the Arabs "Ibn Mansur," Son (Servant?) of a Conqueror, either in honor of his father Sergius or because it was a Semitic translation of his family title. He was born in Damascus early in the 8th century, and seems to have been in favor with the Caliph, and served under him many years in some important civil capacity, until, retiring to Palestine, he entered the monastic order, and late in life was ordained a priest of the Jerusalem Church. He died in the Convent of St. Sabas near that city about A. D. 780.

His lifetime appears to have been passed in

comparative peace. Mohammed having died before completing the conquest of Syria, the Moslem rule before whose advance Oriental Christianity was to lose its first field of triumph had not yet asserted its persecuting power in the north. This devout monk, in his meditations at St. Sabas, dwelt much upon the birth and the resurrection of Christ, and made hymns to celebrate them. It was probably four hundred years before Bonaventura (?) wrote the Christmas "Adeste Fideles" of the Latin West that John of Damascus composed his Greek "Adeste Fideles" for a Resurrection song in Jerusalem.

Come ye faithful, raise the strain

Of triumphant gladness.

'Tis the spring of souls today

Christ hath burst His prison;

From the frost and gloom of death

Light and life have risen.

The nobler of the two hymns preserved to us, (or six stanzas of it) through eleven centuries is entitled "The Day of Resurrection."

The day of resurrection,
Earth, tell its joys abroad:
The Passover of gladness,

The Passover of God.
From death to life eternal,

From earth unto the sky,
Our Christ hath brought us over,

With hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil,

That we may see aright

The Lord in rays eternal
Of resurrection light;
And, listening to His accents,

May hear, so calm and plain,
His own, "All hail!" and hearing,
May raise the victor-strain.

Now let the heavens be joyful,
Let earth her song begin,
Let all the world keep triumph,

All that dwell therein.

In grateful exultation,

Their notes let all things blend,

For Christ the Lord is risen,

O joy that hath no end!

Both these hymns of John of Damascus were translated by John Mason Neale.

THE TUNE.

"The Day of Resurrection" is sung in the modern hymnals to the tune of "Rotterdam," composed by Berthold of Tours, born in that city of the Netherlands, Dec. 17, 1838. He was educated at the conservatory in Leipsic, and later made London his permanent residence, writing both vocal and instrumental music. Died 1897. "Rotterdam" is a stately, sonorous piece and conveys the flavor of the ancient hymn.

"Come ye faithful" has for its modern interpreter Sir Arthur Sullivan, the celebrated composer of both secular and sacred works, but best