tibilities they awoke, like the winds sweeping over an air-harp, wild and mysterious music in the soul." When he was twelve years old, Montgomery's father and mother set sail for the West Indies, bent upon missionary labor. He never saw them again. His school career was not successful. Listlessness, inactivity; these seem to have been its chief characteristics. So school was left behind, and an apprenticeship entered upon. From that he soon ran away. Concerning this experience he afterwards wrote: "Had I taken the right instead of the left-hand road to Wakefield, had I not crossed over, I knew not why, to Wentworth, and had not Joshua Hunt noticed me there, it is quite certain that not a single occurrence of my future being, perhaps not a single thought, would have been the same. The direction of life's after current would have been entirely changed, whether for the better or the worse, who can tell? I only know that I did wrong in running away." Then came a comparatively brief residence in London, and afterwards a permanent settlement at Sheffield. This soon gave him work as an editor and the privilege of going to jail for some expression of opinion upon charges which he declared to be ridiculous as well as false. Emigration to the United States was urged upon him. His reply was: "In truth, I am not partial to America, and I believe I shall never emigrate thither till banished by imperious necessity; and God grant that moment may never arrive. I love England, with all its disadvantages, its cares, vexations, horrors,—perhaps my misfortunes themselves have only endeared me the more to my native island." So for a long period of years he continued to be editor of the Sheffield Iris. When he gave up this work his solemn testimony was: "From the first moment that I became the director of a public journal, I took my own ground. I have stood upon it through many years of changes, and I rest by it this day, as having afforded me a shelter through the far greater portion of my life, and yet offering me a grave, when I shall no longer have a part in anything done under the sun. And this was my ground-a plain determination, come wind or sun, come fire or flood, to do what was right. I lay stress on the purpose, not the performance, for this was the polar star to which my compass pointed, through the considerable 'variation of the needle.' When he was forty-three years old he sought and obtained readmission to the Moravian congregation at Fulneck, and afterwards engaged actively in the support of such organizations as the Bible Society, the Sunday School Union, and Missionary Societies of one kind and another. One of his biographers tells us: "From temperament and bodily infirmities, Montgomery was prone to look upon the dark side of all events; and his religious character, of course, partook in some measure of the same element; his soul struggled long in darkness and despair, and only slowly did he appropriate to himself the comforts of the Christian faith. In such a state of mind, wrestling with inward doubts, and lingering under the shadows of Sinai, the new religious organizations of the day, instinct with a social, active, and joyous Christian life, were precisely what was needed to draw off and strengthen his religious affections; and by giving him a work to do, enabled him to gain, through love to man, a more personal consciousness of love to the Redeemer of men." Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler, who visited him in 1842, is authority for the statement that Montgomery, though a Moravian, was "a constant worshiper in St. George's Episcopal Church in Sheffield." Two of Montgomery's most popular hymns were written for missionary occasions, the one beginning: 288 O Spirit of the living God, the other beginning: 323 Hail to the Lord's Anointed. Two others are associated with the life to come, the one beginning: 675 Forever with the Lord, the other beginning: 180 Who are these in bright array. In the biography of Arthur Christopher Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, we read concerning his last hours at Hawarden, where he was visiting Mr. Gladstone: "The Lord's Prayer was beginning as they carried him out of church, and as they went down the path to the rectory they saw the spirit had passed without a word or a pang. "They laid him on a wide sofa in the library, and tried, as they were bound to do, some remedies. After half an hour they ceased and went quietly out, leaving my mother alone with him. "The knowledge of his passing had come back to the church. Mr. Stephen Gladstone told it in a few words, and gave out the appointed hymn; by a strange and beautiful coincidence, it was 'Forever with the Lord." In the biography of Phillips Brooks we read: "It was a custom of Mr. Brooks through many years to speak in his sermons of eminent persons who had died, whether in Church or State. One of his favorite hymns was 'Who are These in Bright Array? When he announced it, the people knew that he had lost some friend, or was about to commemorate the departure of some one known for distinguished services." Our other hymns for which we are debtors to Montgomery (Hymn 235 is only partly his), begin: 30 To Thy temple I repair. 60 Angels, from the realms of glory. 93 Go to dark Gethsemane. 183 Lord, pour Thy Spirit from on high. 233 According to Thy gracious word. 235 Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless. 402 Jerusalem, my happy home. 415 Call Jehovah thy salvation. of songs. 448 Come, let us sing the song 513 Oh, where shall rest be found. 547 Glory to the Father give. 561 When Jesus left His Father's throne. 649 Lord, forever at Thy side. HORATIUS BONAR belonged to a family of prominence in Edinburgh, where he was born December 19, 1808, and died July 31, 1889. After graduation from the university of his native city he became minister of the North Parish (Church of Scotland), Kelso, November 30, 1837, joined the Free Church of Scotland May 18, 1843, and continued minister of that church, at Kelso. He was admitted minister of the Chalmers Memorial Church, Grange, Edinburgh, June 7, 1866, and chosen Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1883. This is the short record of a long life full of joy and light and power. The most interesting sketch of this saintly life known to me is contained in a sermon printed in a volume entitled "Horatius Bonar, D.D. A Memorial." From this I take a few extracts: "Beginning in Leith, the hymns were multiplied in Kelso. The first seems to have been, 'I Was a Wandering Sheep;' the second, 'I Lay My Sins on Jesus;' the third, ‘A Few More Years Shall Roll.' Leith and Kelso children loved them. The children of Scotland and of England heard and loved them. Our sons in the colonies and our brothers in America heard and loved them. And now children and old people, too, on the continent of Europe, from Spain to Russia, find in them, as rendered into their own tongues, fitting utterance for their spiritual longings. Hymn succeeded hymn, and some of them are scattered over the globe in millions. Like the richest of our Scottish songsters, which "Trills her thick warbled note, the summer long,' the singer ceased not to pour his lays. In joy they welled up, not without a shade of pathos in them, from the fountain of a thankful heart. In sorrow, as they flowed tenderly and touchingly, they assuaged the keenness of his woe. "As he tells us, in that exquisite fragment of poetic autobiography, his preface to 'My Old Letters': |