There, there on eagle wings we soar, And heaven comes down our souls to greet Rev. Hugh Stowell was born at Douglas on the Isle of Man, Dec. 3, 1799. He was educated at Oxford and ordained to the ministry 1823, receiving twelve years later the appointment of Canon to Chester Cathedral. He was a popular and effective preacher and a graceful writer. Forty-seven hymns are credited to him, the above being the best known. To presume it is "his best," leaves a good margin of merit for the remainder. "From every stormy wind that blows" has practically but one tune. It has been sung to Hastings "Retreat" ever since the music was made. "CHILD OF SIN AND SORROW." Child of sin and sorrow, filled with dismay, Words and music by Thomas Hastings. "LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT." John Henry Newman, born in London, Feb. 21, 1801-known in religious history as Cardinal Newman-wrote this hymn when he was a young clergyman of the Church of England. "Born within the sound of Bow bells," says Dr. Benson, “he was an imaginative boy, and so superstitious, that he used constantly to cross himself when going into the dark." Intelligent students of the fine hymn will note this habit of its author's mind -and surmise its influence on his religious musings. The agitations during the High Church movement, and the persuasions of Hurrell Froude, a Romanist friend, while he was a tutor at Oxford, gradually weakened his Protestant faith, and in his unrest he travelled to the Mediterranean coast, crossed to Sicily, where he fell violently ill, and after his recovery waited three weeks in Palermo for a return boat. On his trip to Marsailles he wrote the hymn-with no thought that it would ever be called a hymn. When complimented on the beautiful production after it became famous he modestly said, "It was not the hymn but the tune that has gained the popularity. The tune is Dykes' and Dr. Dykes is a great master.” Dr. Newman was created a Cardinal of the Church of Rome in the Catholic Cathedral of London, 1879Died Aug. 11, 1890. THE TUNE. "Lux Benigna," by Dr. Dykes, was composed in Aug. 1865, and was the tune chosen for this hymn by a committee preparing the Appendix to Hymns Ancient and Modern. Dr. Dykes' statement that the tune came into his head while walking through the Strand in London "presents a striking contrast with the solitary origin of the hymn itself" (Benson). Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom, The night is dark and I am far from home; Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see * So long Thy power hath bless'd me, sure it still O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till And with the morn those angel faces smile "I HEARD THE VOICE OF JESUS SAY." Few if any Christian writers of his generation have possessed tuneful gifts in greater opulence or produced more vital and lasting treasures of spiritual verse than Horatius Bonar of Scotland. He inherited some of his poetic faculty from his grandfather, a clergyman who wrote several hymns, and it is told of Horatius that hymns used to come to❞ him while riding on railroad trains, He was educated in the Edinburgh University and studied theology with Dr. Chalmers, and his 66 |