With the music of psalms the shepherds and ploughmen cheered their toil in ancient Palestine; and to the same music the Gallic boatmen kept time as they rowed their barges against the swift current of the Rhone. A psalm supplied the daily grace with which the early Christians blessed their food; and the same psalm was repeated by the communicants as they went to the Lord's table. St. Chrysostom fleeing into exile; Martin Luther going to meet all possible devils at Worms; George Wishart facing the plague at Dundee; Wicliffe on his sick-bed, surrounded by his enemies; John Bunyan in Bedford gaol; William Wilberforce in a crisis when all his most strenuous efforts seemed in vain, and his noble plans were threatened with ruin-all stayed their hearts and renewed their courage with verses from the psalms. The Huguenots at Dieppe marched to victory chanting the sixty-eighth psalm; and the same stately war-song sounded over the field of Dunbar. It was a psalm that Alice Benden sung in the darkness of her Canterbury dungeon; and the lips of the Roman Paulla, faintly moving in death, breathed their last sigh in the words of a psalm. The motto of England's proudest university is a verse from the Psalms; and a sentence from the same book is written above the loneliest grave on earth, among the snows of the Arctic Circle. It was with the fifth verse of the thirty-first psalm that our Lord Jesus Christ commended his soul ter the hands of God; and with the same words, St. Stephen, St. Polyver St. Basil St. Bernard, St. Louis, Huss, Columbus, Luther, and Melanchthon-yea, and many more saints of whom no man knowethdave bad their farewell to earth and their welcome to heaven.

HENRY VAN DYKE.

XVII.

FRAGMENTS GATHERED UP.

There are many fragments of hymnody which must remain ungathered by this volume. Only the more conspicuous can it attempt to pick up. Of these, much the most noteworthy is "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me." Of all hymns in our language this is the most generally popular. Concerning it Dr. Julian's words are not too strong: "No other English hymn can be named which has laid so broad and firm a grasp upon the English-speaking world."

In this connection the following letter, from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Harriet Beecher Stowe, will be read with interest:

"A thousand thanks for all the trouble you have taken to copy the poem. It is a beautiful poem and a precious autograph. In an article published many years ago in the Foreign Quarterly Review, I think—its title was 'Hymnology'—'Rock of Ages' was set down as the best hymn in the English language. I recognize its wonderful power and solemnity. If you asked me what is the secret of it, I should say that of all the Protestant hymns I remember it is richest in material imagery. We think in getting free of Romanism we have lost our love of image-worship, but I do not think so myself. Thirty years ago I remember seeing a great gilt cross put on top of the steeple of a Baptist meeting house in Pittsfield, and since that time you know how symbolism has come into the Episcopal Church and overflowed it into the Congregational and other denominations.

"The imagination wants help, and if it cannot get it in pictures, statues, crucifixes, etc., it will find it in words. That, I believe, is the reason why 'Rock of Ages' impresses us more

than any other hymn,-for I think it does. It is the Protestant Dies Irae!

'Quid sum miser tunc dicturus'-
'Could my tears forever flow'—

the utter helplessness of the soul and its passionate appeal are common to both. Our hymn has more of hope and less of terror, but it is perfectly solid with material imagery, and that is what most of us must have to kindle our spiritual exaltation to its highest point."

In one of his "Sermons on Hymns," Henry Twells has this to say: "From time to time attempts have been made by magazines of large circulation to tell the relative popularity of hymns. This they have done by requesting their readers to forward them lists of their favorite hymns, in order of merit, and by carefully reckoning up the votes. I have seen the results of three such competitions. One in a Church of England magazine, one in a Nonconformist, and one circulating indiscriminately among Churchmen and Nonconformists. The verdicts, as might have been expected, differ. Churchmen are very fond of some hymns of which Nonconformists are ignorant, and Nonconformists value others which Churchmen have failed to notice. But there was one hymn at the top of all three lists, 'Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.' And it is just as great a favorite, if not more so, in the United States of America as in England and her colonies.

"There are two things which make this fact more noticeable, and perhaps at first sight a little strange. The first is, that it was one of the outcomes of a fierce and embittered controversy between two good men of the eighteenth century, Augustus Montague Toplady and John Wesley."

"The other noticeable thing is that the poetic merits of this hymn are not high. If we could suppose it to come for the first time before a hymnal committee of the present day, without its grand history and its traditional acceptance, it would stand no chance of inclusion. The bad rhymes alone,