of the latter's songs detached themselves, with their music, from the main work, and lingered in choral or solo service in places where the sacred operetta was presented, both in America and England. One of these is an effective solo in deep contralto, with a suggestion of recitative and chant

By the dark Euphrates' stream,

By the Tigris, sad and lone

I wandered, a captive maid; And the cruel Assyrian said, "Awake your harp's sweet tone!"

I had heard of my fathers' glory from the lips of holy men, And I thought of the land of my fathers; I thought of my fathers' land then.

Another is

O church of Christ! our blest abode,
Celestial grace is thine.

Thou art the dwelling-place of God,
The gate of joy divine.

Whene'er I come to thee in joy,
Whene'er I come in tears,
Still at the Gate called Beautiful
My risen Lord appears.

-with the chorus

Where'er for me the sun may set,

Wherever I may dwell,

My heart shall nevermore forget

Thy courts, Immanuel!

"IF YOU CANNOT ON THE OCEAN."

This popular Christian ballad, entitled "Your Mission," was written one stormy day in the winter of 1861-2 by Miss Ellen M. Huntington (Mrs. Isaac Gates), and made her reputation as one of the few didactic poets whose exquisite art wins a hearing for them everywhere. In a moment of revery, while looking through the window at the falling snow, the words came to her:

If you cannot on the ocean

Sail among the swiftest fleet.

She turned away and wrote the lines on her slate, following with verse after verse till she finished the whole poem. “It wrote itself,” she says in her own account of it.

Reading afterwards what she had written, she was surprised at her work. The poem had a meaning and a "mission." So strong was the impression that the devout girl fell on her knees and consecrated it to a divine purpose. Free copies of it went to the Cooperstown, N. Y., local paper, and to the New York Examiner, and appeared in both. From that time the history and career of “Your Mission" presents a marked illustration of “catenal influence," or transmitted suggestion.

In the later days of the Civil War Philip Phillips, who had a wonderfully sweet tenor voice, was invited to sing at a great meeting of the United States Christian Commission in the Senate Chamber at Washington, February, 1865, President Lincoln and

Secretary Seward (then president of the commission) were there, and the hall was crowded with leading statesmen, army generals, and friends of the Union. The song selected by Mr. Phillips was Mrs. Gates' "Your Mission":

If you cannot on the ocean

Sail among the swiftest fleet,
Rocking on the highest billows,
Laughing at the storms you meet,
You can stand among the sailors
Anchored yet within the bay;
You can lend a hand to help them
As they launch their boats away.

The hushed audience listened spell-bound as the sweet singer went on, their interest growing to feverish eagerness until the climax was reached in the fifth stanza:

If you cannot in the conflict

Prove yourself a soldier true,
If where fire and smoke are thickest
There's no work for you to do,
When the battlefield is silent

You can go with careful tread;
You can bear away the wounded,
You can cover up the dead.

In the storm of enthusiasm that followed, President Lincoln handed a hastily scribbled line on a bit of paper to Chairman Seward,

"Near the close let us have 'Your Mission' repeated."

Mr. Phillips' great success on this occasion. brought him so many calls for his services that he

gave up everything and devoted himself to his tuneful art. "Your Mission" so gladly welcomed at Washington made him the first gospel songster, chanting round the world the divine message of the hymns. It was the singing by Philip Phillips that first impressed Ira D. Sankey with the amazing power of evangelical solo song, and helped him years later to resign his lucrative business as a revenue officer and consecrate his own rare vocal gift to the Christian ministry of sacred music. Heaven alone can show the birth-records of souls won to God all along the journeys of the "Singing Pilgrims," and the rich succession of Mr. Sankey's melodies, that can be traced back by a chain of causes to the poem that "wrote itself" and became a hymn. And the chain may not yet be complete. In the words of that providential poem

Though they may forget the singer

They will not forget the song.

Mrs. Ellen M. H. Gates, whose reputation as an author was made by this beautiful and always timely poem, was born in Torrington, Ct., and is the youngest sister of the late Collis P. Huntington. Her hymns-included in this volume and in other publications are much admired and loved, both for their sweetness and elevated religious feeling, and for their poetic quality. Among her published books of verse are "Night," "At Noontide," and "Treasures of Kurium." Her address is New York City.