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to that city, and did the main work of his life there, dying, in 1872, at the good old age of eightynine. His musical collections number fifty-three. He wrote his famous tune in 1830.

"MY SOUL BE ON THY GUARD.”

Strangely enough, this hymn, a trumpet note of Christian warning and resolution, was written by one who himself fell into unworthy ways.* But the one strong and spiritual watch-song by which he is remembered appeals for him, and lets us know possibly, something of his own conflicts. We can be thankful for the struggle he once made, and for the hymn it inspired. It is a voice of caution to others.

George Heath, the author, was an English minister, born in 1781; died 1822. For a time he was pastor of a Presbyterian Church at Honiton, Devonshire, and was evidently a prolific writer, having composed a hundred and forty-four hymns, an edition of which was printed.

THE TUNE.

No other has been so familiarly linked with the words as Lowell Mason's “Laban" (1830). It has dash and animation enough to reënforce the hymn, and give it popular life, even if the hymn had less earnestness and vigor of its own.

*I have been unable to verify this statement found in Mr. Butterworth's "Story of the Hymns."-T. B.

Ne'er think the vic'try won

Nor lay thine armor down:

Thy arduous work will not be done

Till thou hast gained thy crown.

Fight on, my soul till death

Shall bring thee to thy God;

He'll take thee at thy parting breath

To His divine abode.

"PEOPLE OF THE LIVING GOD."

Montgomery felt every line of this hymn as he committed it to paper. He wrote it when, after years in the "swim" of social excitements and ambitions, where his young independence swept him on, he came back to the little church of his boyhood. His father and mother had gone to the West Indies as missionaries, and died there. He was forty-three years old when, led by divine light, he sought readmission to the Moravian" meeting" at Fulneck, and anchored happily in a haven of peace.

People of the living God

I have sought the world around,
Paths of sin and sorrow trod,

Peace and comfort nowhere found:

Now to you my spirit turns

Turns a fugitive unblest;

Brethren, where your altar burns,

Oh, receive me into rest.

James Montgomery, son of Rev. John Montgomery, was born at Irvine, Ayeshire, Scotland,

Nov. 4, 1771, and educated at the Moravian Seminary at Fulneck, Yorkshire, Eng. He be came the editor of the Sheffield Iris, and his pen was busy in non-professional as well as professional work until old age. He died in Sheffield, April 30, 1854.

His literary career was singularly successful; and a glance through any complete edition of his poems will tell us why. His hymns were all published during his lifetime, and all, as well as his longer pieces, have the purity and polished beauty, if not the strength, of Addison's work. Like Addison, too, he could say that he had written no line which, dying, he would wish to blot.

The best of Montgomery was in his hymns. These were too many to enumerate here, and the more enduring ones too familiar to need enumeration. The church and the world will not soon forget "The Home in Heaven,❞—

Nor

Forever with the Lord,

Amen, so let it be.

Life from the dead is in that word;
'Tis immortality.

O where shall rest be found,

-with its impressive couplet

'Tis not the whole of life to live

Nor all of death to die.

Nor the haunting sweetness of

There is a calm for those who weep.

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