strangely omitted verses of H. 147: "O Love divine, how sweet thou art!" which add greatly to its force and pathos as a hymn of contrition, give it roundness and finish as a work of art; add two fine allusions to the Life of Christ to the one already there and embody in the Hymn-Book a stanza which, forty or fifty years ago, was one of the most frequent quotations in Class-meeting, Prayermeeting and Methodist biography:

"O that with humbled Peter, I

Could weep, believe, and thrice reply
My faithfulness to prove,

'Thou know'st (for all to Thee is known) Thou know'st, O Lord, and Thou alone, Thou know'st that Thee I love!'

"O that I could with favoured John Recline my weary head upon

The great Redeemer's breast! From care, and sin, and sorrow free, Give me, O Lord, to find in Thee

My everlasting rest."

Truly, this lifts us to a much higher, and leaves us in a much happier position, as to lean on Christ's breast is higher and happier than even to sit at His feet. But yet we fully sympathize with those who have derived so much rest, refreshment and elevation from the hymn even in its mutilated form, that they at first

feel the restored verses to be rather intrusive and impertinent "more last words." To such, however, we would venture to say, Be respectful, or at least indulgent, to the genius of the poet himself, and reverential to the heavenly afflatus which would not let him stay "with Mary at the Master's feet," but bore him onward, to aspire like Abraham or Moses to a loftier privilege than even this. Those who object to the recovered verses because they were not in the Hymn-Book as they have been accustomed to it, who seem to think that the Past tense is always the Perfect tense, we must remind that these verses had become bless

edly familiar to the Methodist mind long before the last rescension of the Hymn-Book.

We have another precious restoration in the next hymn, 148, vv. 4, 5. True, the third verse gives a far finer close to the hymn, as a poem and a work of art. It is sublime in its abruptness:

"The gift unspeakable impart;

Command the light of faith to shine, To shine in my dark, drooping heart, And fill me with the life divine: Now bid the new creation be!

O God, let there be faith in me!"

But for direct, practical helpfulness to the penitent, in fulfilment of the prophet's admonition "Take with you words, and turn to the Lord," the hymn in its original and now restored completeness seems clearly preferable :

"Thee without faith I cannot please,

Faith without Thee I cannot have, etc." Besides this we have eight additional penitential hymns of rare power and beauty, from the Wesley Poetry, placed under the section with the heading Penitential Hymns, Hs. 776 -783. The first two have all the compactness and completeness of rhythmical collects. The former is surely the most touching, hopeinspiring prayer which could be put into the quivering lips of an agestricken or a dying penitent; a hymn "which might create a soul Under the ribs of death."

We must make room for it here: "The harvest of my joys is passed,

Sung to some plaintive air on a minor key, after a sermon on the penitent thief, this must be overpowering. The first verse strikes upon the soul like some slow-timed funeral hymn, sung by a train of mourners, bearing a neighbour's corpse to a secluded burial-ground. The last verse is like

"the bubbling cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony," who finds himself on the surface for the third time, and sees a vessel within hail. Byron might envy the vigorous compression of these verses. Pope or Dryden seldom reached it, except in the savage earnestness of satire.

The next hymn is in quite another key. The last verse bounds onward like a mountain torrent, and then jets heavenward like a bursting waterspring, forced upwards from a cavernous depth :

"In vain for redemption I look ;

My hope in a Saviour unknown, It passes away like a brook

Dried up in a moment and gone! But God cannot finally fail;

The Fountain of life from above Shall rise in the depth of the vale, Shall flow with a current of love." This is finer than Byron's

"In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wild waste there still is a tree."

H. 778 is a most precious exhibition of genuine evangelical penitence. What a doctrine of grace is implicitly affirmed in such lines as these:

"The sins with which I cannot part
I pray thee to remove,
And calm and purify my heart
By Thy forgiving love." !
Where is "Repentance in Be-
lievers" so powerfully or patheti-

cally put as in these verses:
"Repentance, permanent and deep,

To Thy poor suppliant give,
Indulge me at Thy feet to weep
When Thou hast bid me live ;

When Thou record'st my sins no more,
O may
I still lament !

A sinner, saved by grace, adore,
A pardoned penitent.

*

"Myself the chief of sinners know,
Till all my griefs are past;
And of my gracious acts below,
Repentance be the last."?

Hs. 779, 781 are poetical comments, on the Touching of the hem. of Christ's Garment, worthy of the author of

"Come, O Thou Traveller unknown."

The latter of the two is more tender, if less triumphant, than Charles Wesley's most celebrated hymn.

Hs. 780, 782, 783, bring the soul to resolute reliance on Christ for present salvation :

"Lord, I believe thou wilt forgive,

But help me to believe thou dost, etc. "; "Why should I till to-morrow stay, etc.," and

"To-day, while it is called to-day, etc." They give a golden key by which the "unopposing heart may open the door to the knocking Saviour.

The next new hymn in this section, "Lord, I hear of showers of blessing," has won its rank among popular revival strains, and well deserves a place in the Collection of a revival Church. Its admission proves, however, that the Methodist standard is not so stiff, as to homely and even rugged rhymes, as it was at any earlier period of enlargement, when no such ditties could pass muster; though it is happily raised in another direction, that of languid sentimentalism. "He dies! the Friend of sinners dies!" though retained,-with an alteration of the most objectionable stanza, which is of quite another texture than the rest of the hymn,-would scarcely have been received had it for the first time made its appearance.

H. 791 is in evidence of this more robust and hearty taste in hymnology. How strange that the strong vernacular carol, "Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched," which breathes the very spirit of Gospel invitation, the very spirit of Methodism; whose simple, urgent sentences have impressed themselves as household words, as current maxims, on the consciousness of the evangelical churches, should now, for the first time, be found in the Methodist Collection! We are glad, moreover, to have another hymn by the author of "This, this is the God we adore." Next we have the touching and persuasive canticle, "Return, O wanderer, to thy home," so suitable to a Sunday evening service, wedded as it is to a sweet and winning air.

Still more indebted to its musical accompaniment is the next new hymn, Dr. Neale's version of a Greek hymn, by St. Stephen, the Sabaite, "Art thou weary, art thou languid." This is, as Mr. Gladstone heads it in his most masterly Latin version of it, in the "Contemporary" for December last, Hymnus Responsorius. It is a semi-dramatic composition, originally designed to be sung antiphonatim-the first verse by the choir and congregation; the first two lines of each succeeding verse, containing the question, to be given as a solo; the choir and congregation pealing out the answer in the last two lines. If Mr. Gladstone could have given us an English rendering of the hymn, to match the melody, the majesty and the iron strength of his Latin translation, he would have won the gratitude of the churches. But this would have been, even for him, a very difficult feat. It must be admitted that Dr. Neale's version has some weak, prosy, loose, and even inaccurate lines, which contrast

very disadvantageously with Mr. Gladstone's infallible power and precision, e.g.,—

"Hath He marks to lead me to Him, If He be my Guide?"

and,

"Hath He diadem as Monarch
That His brow adorns?"

Contrast this with Gladstone,

"Ecquid portat, pro coronâ
Quæ Monarchas ornat?"

and still worse

"Not till earth, and not till heaven
Pass away,"

instead of not when or not though, as Mr. Gladstone has it—

Quanquam Terra, quanquam Coelum
In ruinam iret."

We want hymns for the drawingroom as well as the mission-room, the social party as well as the cottage prayer-meeting; and to many sensitive and cultivated minds; and to most minds in some moods, a pleasing, delicate ode, with a certain quaint refinement and elegant artificiality, has a balsamic sweetness

and a sedative effect.

Stone's

The next hymn, Mr. "Weary of earth and laden with my sin" is a far superior production; highly artistic, but in no wise artificial; the language, choice, yet natural. Its rhythm is the very "echo of tranquillity." Its movement is throughout slow, and musically monotonous. It ripples on like a quiet, bankful stream, stirred only by the regular stroke of some pensive rower, and the light drippings of the lifted oar. Each verse finds its perfect cadence; and the next swells up afresh with liquid buoyancy. 'Tis a delicious hymn.

Then come Elven's simple lines, "With broken heart and contrite sigh." It owes its selection doubtless, to its refrain, "O God! be

merciful to me," and to its honest, homespun strength.

Next comes one of those perfect hymns on which comment seems impertinent; a new jewel in the trousseau of the Bride of Christ, which will never dim and which she will never drop. A modern Hymnbook, without "Just as I am," is pitiably defective.

Then follows a fine old hymn, which has been sung for more than two hundred and fifty years, Mard

ley's cry for mercy, "O Lord, turn

not Thy face away," with all the charm of archaic simplicity; so natural and passionate, placing God's penitent people in their true position,

"As children that have done amiss
Fall at their father's knee."

The pulsing of the broken heart is felt in every line :

"Mercy, O Lord! mercy we ask,

This is the total sum:

For mercy, Lord, is all our prayer,
O let Thy mercy come !"

Hymn 798, Cowper's "There is a fountain filled with blood," the evangelical churches have adopted by acclamation. The impetus of its melodious rhythm and its fervid faith carries us over the few flaws which might be stumbling-blocks to a cool, unbending criticism.

This section is appropriately closed by William M. Bunting's Hymn after Sermon on Sunday Evening, with its mighty indirect appeal. There is reasonable ground for hope that thousands will be brought to immediate decision by that one hymn, if given out with intelligence, reality and feeling, by a preacher yearning for the salvation of his hearers, and sung by a choir and congregation on whom the Word has taken hold. It is well worthy of a place in the same Hymn-Book with "Stay, thou insulted Spirit, stay," and "Yes, from this instant now, I will."

Here, then, we have one hundred and eleven hymns directly dedicated to the use of conscience-stricken sinners, besides versions of penitential psalms. True penitence is presented in all its phases, and receives a variety, depth and intensity of vocalization nowhere else to be found.

The experience of believers has the next claim to a large space in a Collection of hymns for a Christian Church. Of this the Book of Psalms sets the precedent and supplies the pattern. There all the fluctuations of feeling, all the struggles and triumphs of the spiritual life, are revealed and rendered vocal, till dumb despondency, yea, inarticulate doubt, is surprised to overhear its own voiceless self-communing. Methodism, above all other Christian organizations, should have an ample endowment of experimental hymns. Its theology is the theology of experience; its internal mechanism is constructed with reference to the cultivation and the perfecting of Christian experience. And what a wealth of hymns of this class it had already! in ten distinct sections of the old Hymn-Book, from that Describing Formal Religion to that for Believers Saved; beside that in the Supplement, headed, The Experience, etc., of Believers; not to mention the rich sections "for the Society." But now we have another plenteous honey-harvest of hymns specially adapted to the joys and sorrows, exigencies and emergences of the Christian life. Here again the Wesley Poetry yields up its stores. "The praying Spirit breathe," Hymn 296, has received completion and an indication of its special original intention, by restoring the old heading, and an omitted verse. Its reappearance is very timely in these days of eager trading and feverish competition.

"Help, Lord! the busy foe

Is as a flood come in!
Lift up a standard, and o'erthrow
The soul-distracting sin :
This sudden tide of care
Roll back, O God, from me,
Nor let the rapid current bear

My soul away from Thee."

The companion hymn, or rather the complement to this, we have in H. 858, a terse, sententious little hymn-homily, after the style of Gay, beginning:

"Their earthly task who fail to do, Neglect their heavenly business too;"

and ending with the sweet aphorism:

"And, like the blessed spirits above, The more we serve, the more we love."

Spiritually-minded men of business would do well to have these twinhymns framed and hung up in their offices. One of the noblest trades

men Methodism ever had, who showed how beautifully the virtues of the Christian citizen and the graces of the Christian gentleman combine with the simplicity and system of a true follower of John Wesley; one who practically proved

"Full well the labour of our hands With fervency of spirit stands ;" and

Happy we live, when God doth fill Our hands with work, our hearts with zeal; "

a man, moreover, greatly honoured in his children and his grandchildren,— owed much of the cheerful sanctification of his secular life, to setting the latter of these hymns always before him during his business hours.

From the same source, we have in H. 803, one of the most potent hymns ever written for a Christian in "The Wilderness State," or for the November of the Christian year; in the form of a very bold but equally happy paraphrase of Hab. iii. 16, 17.

This is one of the strains in which the Wesleys carried out their generous purpose of coming as close to their Calvinistic brethren, both in sentiment and expression, as they possibly could, without impinging on any vital verity of the Gospel. Here they seem to come within a hair's breadth of Antinomianism; as in Hymn 274," O my old, my bosom foe," they tread the very verge of unconditional perseverance; and in H. 158, “O my God, what must I do?" they all but affirm the doctrine of irresistible grace. In all three, Charles Wesley is like a charioteer in the Grecian games, who, confident in his own skill and absolute command of his fiery coursers, and whose rivals had left him scant room to pass them, would dash at full speed, with one wheel broadening the boundary line with its parallel track; yet always keeping within the lists; striving for the mastery, but striving lawfully Here too it must be remembered that the poet is describing a state, and not defining a doctrine.

The next Hymn, 804, on the same subject, is one of which only a master-minstrel were capable, Cowper's "Sometimes a light surprises; " blithesome as the matin-song of a lark in the earliest Spring.

Next to this we find two more of Charles Wesley's metrical collects, Hs. 805, 806, closing with one of his felicitous apothegms:

"If with a faithful heart I simply follow Thee, Whate'er Thou hast, whate'er Thou art, Thou art, and hast for me."

H. 807 is an old friend that has been strangely left out in the cold" for many years; the classical description of a believer's first love; much sung and much quoted forty years ago, in Lovefeast and in Memoirs, both in England and America: