was not till eight years later that Henry Ward Beecher introduced it, or a part of it, to American Congregationalists, and fourteen years after the author's death it began to be sung as we now have it, in this country and England. Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide, The darkness deepens,-Lord with me abide! Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; THE TUNE There is a pathos in the neglect and oblivion of Lyte's own tune set by himself to his words, especially as it was in a sense the work of a dying man who had hoped that he might not be "wholly mute and useless" while lying in his grave, and who had prayed O Thou whose touch can lend Life to the dead. Thy quickening grace supply, In song His prayer was answered in God's own way. Another's melody hastened his hymn on its useful career, and revealed to the world its immortal By the time it had won its slow recognition in England, it was probably tuneless, and the compilers of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) discovering the fact just as they were finishing their work, asked Dr. William Henry Monk, their music editor, to supply the want. "In ten minutes," it is said, "Dr. Monk composed the sweet, pleading chant that is wedded permanently to Lyte's swan song." William Henry Monk, Doctor of Music, was born in London, 1823. His musical education was early and thorough, and at the age of twentysix he was organist and choir director in King's College, London. Elected (1876) professor of the National Training School, he interested himself actively in popular musical education, delivering lectures at various institutions, and establishing choral services. His hymn-tunes are found in many song-manuals of the English Church and in Scotland, and several have come to America. Dr. Monk died in 1889. "COME, YE DISCONSOLATE." By Thomas Moore-about 1814. The poem in its original form differed somewhat from the hymn we sing. Thomas Hastings-whose religious experience, perhaps, made him better qualified than Thomas Moore for spiritual expressionchanged the second line, -and for practically the whole of the last stanza Go ask the infidel what boon he brings us, -Hastings substituted— Here see the Bread of life, see waters flowing Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove. Dr. Hastings was not much of a poet, but he could make a singable hymn, and he knew the rhythm and accent needed in a hymn-tune. The determination was to make an evangelical hymn of a poem "too good to lose," and in that view perhaps the editorial liberties taken with it were excusable. It was to Moore, however, that the real hymn-thought and key-note first came, and the title-line and the sweet refrain are his ownfor which the Christian world has thanked him, lo these many years. THE TUNE. Those who question why Dr. Hastings' interest in Moore's poem did not cause him to make a tune for it, must conclude that it came to him with its permanent melody ready made, and that the tune satisfied him. The "German Air" to which Moore tells us he wrote the words, probably took his fancy, if it did not induce his mood. Whether Samuel Webbe's tune now wedded to the hymn is an arrangement of the old air or wholly his own is immaterial. One can scarcely conceive a happier yoking of counterparts. Try singing "Come ye Disconsolate" to "Rescue the Perishing," for example, and we shall feel the impertinence of divorcing a hymn that has found its musical affinity. "JESUS, I MY CROSS HAVE TAKEN.” This is another well-known and characteristic hymn of Henry Francis Lyte-originally six stanzas. We have been told that, besides his bodily affliction, the grief of an unhappy division or difference in his church weighed upon his spirit, and that it is alluded to in these lines— Man may trouble and distress me, O, 'tis not in grief to harm me Were that joy unmixed with Thee. Tunes, "Autumn," by F. H. Barthelemon, or "Ellesdie," (formerly called "Disciple") from Mozart-familiar in either. "FROM EVERY STORMY WIND THAT BLOWS.” This is the much-sung and deeply-cherished hymn of Christian peace that a pious Manxman, Hugh Stowell, was inspired to write nearly a hundred years ago. Ever since it has carried consolation to souls in both ordinary and extraordinary trials. It was sung by the eight American martyrs, Revs. Albert Johnson, John E. Freeman, David E. Campbell and their wives, and Mr. and Mrs. McMullen, when by order of the bloody Nana Sahib the captive missionaries were taken prisoners and put to death at Cawnpore in 1857. Two little children, Fannie and Willie Campbell, suffered with their parents. From every stormy wind that blows, Ah, whither could we flee for aid |