feed upon all the rains, and, only just before the winter comes, burst forth into bloom, so it is with some of the noblest blossoms of the soul. The bolt that prostrated Saul gave him the exceeding brightness of Christ; and so some hymns could never have been written but for a heart-stroke that well-nigh crushed out the life. It is cleft in two by bereavement, and out of the rift comes fōrth, as by resurrection, the form and voice that shall never die out of the world. Angels sat at the grave's mouth; and so hymns are the angels that rise up out of our griefs and darkness and dismay. 5. Thus born, a hymn is one of those silent ministers which God sends to those who are to be heirs of salvation. It enters into the tender imagination of childhood, and casts down upon the chambers of its thought a holy radiance which shall never quite depart. It goes with the Christian, singing to him all the way, as if it were the airy voice of some guardian spirit. When darkness of trouble, settling fast, is shutting out every star, a hymn bursts through and brings light like a torch. It ăbides by our side in sickness. It goes forth with us in joy to syllable that joy. 6. And thus, after a time, we clothe a hymn with the memories and associations of our own life. It is garlanded with flowers which grew in our hearts. Born of the experience of one mind, it becomes the unconscious record of many minds. We sang it, perhaps, the morning that our child died. We sang this one on that Sabbath evening when, after ten years, the family were once more all together. There be hymns that were sung while the mother lay a-dying; that were sung when the child, just converted, was filling the family with the joy of Christ new-born, and laid, not now in a manger, but in a heart. And thus sprung from a wondrous life, they lead a life yet more wonderful. When they first come to us they are like the single strokes of a bell ringing down to us from above; but, at length, a single hymn becomes a whole chime of bells, mingling and discoursing to us the harmonies of a life's Christian experience. 7. And oftentimes, when in the mountain country, far from noise and interruption, we wrought upon these hymns' for our vacation tasks, we almost forgot the living world, and were lifted up by noble lyrics as upon mighty wings, and went back to the Hymns, “Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes," published in 1855. days when Christ sang with his disciples, when the disciples sang too, as in our churches they have almost ceased to do. Oh! but for one moment even, to have sat transfixed, and to have listened to the hymn that Christ sang and to the singing! But the olive-trees did not hear his murmured notes more clearly than, rapt in imagination, we have heard them! 8. There, too, are the hymns of St. Ambrose' and many others, that rose up like birds in the early centuries, and have come flying and singing all the way down to us. Their wing is untired yet, nor is the voice less sweet now than it was a thousand years ago. Though they sometimes disappeared, they never sank; but, as engineers for destruction send bombs that, rising high up in wide curves, overleap great spaces and drop down in a distant spot, so God, in times of darkness, seems to have caught up these hymns, spanning long periods of time, and letting them fall at distant ēras, not for explosion and wounding, but for healing and consolation. 9. There are crusaders' hymns, that rōlled fōrth their truths upon the oriental air, while a thousand horses' hoofs kept time below, and ten thousand palm-leaves whispered and kept time above! Other hymns, fulfilling the promise of God that His saints should mount up with wings as eagles, have borne up the sorrows, the desires, and the aspirations of the poor, the oppressed, and the persecuted, of Huguenots, of Covenanters, and of Puritans, and winged them to the bosom of God. 10. In our own time, and in the familiar experiences of daily life, how are hymns mossed over and vine-clad with domestic associations! One hymn hath opened the morning in ten thousand families, and dear children with sweet voices have charmed the evening in a thousand places with the utterance of another. Nor do I know of any steps now left on earth by which one may 1 St. Ambrose, a celebrated Christian father, was probably born at Trèves, in 340. After a careful education at Rome, he practiced with great success, as an advocate, at Milan; and about 370 was appointed prefect of the provinces of Liguria and Æmilia, whose seat of government was Milan. He was appointed Bishop of Milan in 374; and finally acquired so much influence, that after the mas- so soon rise above trouble or weariness as the verses of a hymn and the notes of a tune. And if the angels, that Jacob saw, sang when they appeared, then I know that the ladder which he beheld was but the scale of divine music let down from heaven to earth. H. W. BEECHER W IV. 169. THE PASSIONS. HEN MUSIC, heavenly maid, was young, In lightnings owned his secret stings : And swept, with hurried hands, the strings.- Low sullen sounds!-his grief beguiled; A solemn, strange, and mingled air; 'Twas sad, by fits-by starts, 'twas wild. And både the lovely scenes at distance hail! She called on ECHO still, through all her song; A soft responsive voice was heard at every close; He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down ; The war-denouncing trumpet took, And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woes; The doubling drum with furious heat; And though, sometimes, each dreary pause between, Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien ; While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head. 5. Thy numbers, JEALOUSY, to naught were fixed— Sad proof of thy distressful state! Of differing themes the veering song was mixed; Pale MELANCHOLY sat retired; And, from her wild, sequestered seat, In notes, by distance made more sweet, Bubbling runnels joined the sound; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole Love of peace, and lonely musing, In hollow murmurs died away. 6. But, oh! how altered was its sprightlier tone, When CHEERFULNESS, a nymph of healthiest hue, Her bow across her shoulder flung, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,- The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen, Peeping from forth their alleys green: Brown EXERCISE rejoiced to hear; And SPORT leaped up, and seized his beechen spear. 7. Last came Joy's ecstatic trial: He, with viny crown, advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addressed; To some unwearied minstrel dancing; While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings, As if he would the charming air repay, COLLINS WILLIAM COLLINS, one of the most interesting and exquisite of English poets. was born at Chichester.on Christmas-day, 1720. He was educated at Winchester, and Magdalen College, Oxford. Before leaving college he published the "Oriental Eclogues," which, to the disgrace of the university and the literary public, were wholly neglected. In 1744 he came to London as a literary adventurer, and about two years later published his "Odes," and made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, who held him in the highest esteem. His life in the metropolis was irregular, and, until the death of an uncle, who left him a legacy of £2000, was one of continual hardship. On the receipt of this little fortune, he repaid Miller, the bookseller, the loss sustained by the publication of his neglected 'Odes," which were afterward destined to become immortal. Unhappily, the seeds of disease and occasional insanity had been too deeply sown in his former poverty to be eradicated, and after a short sojourn in France, he passed through the doors of a lunatic asylum to his early home, where, in care of his sister, he died, in 1756, at the early age of thirty-six. His appearance was manly, his conversation elegant, his views extensive, his disposition cheerful, and his morals 1 Tempe, (têm' på), a valley of European Turkey, in the N. E. of Thessaly, between the mountains of Olym pus on the N., and Ossa on the S. The beauties of its scenery are much celebrated by ancient writers. |