of this poem have been occasionally used in hymnbooks, and Lord Selborne gave twelve verses in his Book of Praise. It is, however, little known. The following are among the best verses. Come, immortal King of Glory! Now with all Thy saints appear; And Thy Deity maintain. Lo! He comes with clouds descending: Rise and stand before your God! Hail! Thou Alpha and Omega! He that is, and was, and shall be, GREAT ETERNAL THREE IN ONE! Praise be to the Father given: Praise to the co-eval Son : Everlasting praise be Thine. John Bakewell (1721-1819), a Methodist schoolmaster, wrote several hymns, and is widely known as the author of 'Hail, Thou once despisèd Jesus.'1 Benjamin Rhodes (1743-1815), converted under the preaching of Whitefield, and for many years a Methodist preacher, wrote one really fine hymn, 'My heart and voice I raise.' Another of the early Methodist preachers, John Murlin, the weeping prophet,' published a small volume of hymns, some of which are quite as good as most of the eighteenth-century songs. 1 JULIAN, p. 478, thinks that Bakewell wrote a very small portion of this hymn. Some readers will be interested to know that more than thirty years ago a great-grandson of John Bakewell's was selling newspapers in the streets of a town in the North of England-friendless, homeless, ragged, and in delicate health. He came to The Children's Home, and grew up worthy of his remote ancestors. He became an architect, and did come excellent work, but died in early manhood of consumption. IV Eighteenth-century Hymns III. THE OLNEY HYMNS HE contribution of evangelical Churchmen, apart from the Wesleys, to the hymnody of the eighteenth century, is slight, with the important exception of the remarkable collection of hymns issued by William Cowper and John Newton, which takes its title from the little Buckinghamshire town in which Newton was for years curate for an absentee vicar. Our little England has been the mother of so many famous sons that it often happens that some out-of-theway village or obscure country town is rich in memories of the great and good, for One half her soil has walked the rest Such a spot is Olney, the town of Cowper and of Cowper's Mary, of John Newton, and for a time of Thomas Scott, of whom Newman speaks as 'the writer who made a deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe my soul.' Where William Carey, after some hesitation on the ground of his slight abilities, was 'allowed to go on preaching,' and finally sent forth to the ministry by the unanimous vote of the Baptist Church, over which John Sutcliff presided. Where also Dr. H. J. Gauntlett, when a boy of ten, was organist at the parish church.2 The Olney hymns are at once the 'monument' of 'an intimate and endeared friendship' and of a memorable literary partnership. The old African blasphemer' must have felt it even more a matter of thankfulness that he found himself collaborating with William Cowper than that he should become minister of the nearest church to the Mansion House. John Newton's romantic story is too well known to be repeated here. He is a unique figure in the Christian choir, and the story of our hymn-writers would be vastly poorer if his life were omitted. Influenced, as he gladly recognized, by the mother who died when he was a boy of seven, his soul lay open to intellectual and spiritual impressions, even in the midst of his wanderings and sins. Euclid, as well as Thomas à Kempis, shared in the saving of his soul and kept him from sinking to the level of his com panions and oppressors. His hair-breadth escapes were so many and so remarkable that he might well regard them as interpositions of Providence, indicating that he was 'a chosen vessel' whom God had designated to special work when his hour should come. Among the many interesting men who occupy secondary places in the religious life of the eighteenth century, he is one of the most interesting and attractive. The promise of his childhood blighted by the death of his mother, his restless, roving, adventurous manhood, his pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, his seven years' faithful love for Mary Catlett, thoughts of whom were never absent from his mind for an hour amidst all his 'misery and wretchedness,' the unegotistic frankness of his Authentic Narrative, his profound and thankful modesty, The genuine meek humility, The wonder why such love to me, his genius for friendship, his good-humoured perplexity as to his proper theological and ecclesiastical affinities, his ready wit and manly tenderness, unite to make John Newton's a name over which one may well linger. He was a Calvinist for the same reason that the Wesleys were Arminians. They were convinced that only a love divine which included every soul of man could have stooped to them. Newton believed that only God's determinate counsel could have set such wandering feet as his upon the rock and established his goings. To such elect souls the divers ways of contradictory theologies blend in the one path which leads the sinner to the Saviour. 'The views,' he says, 'I |