wandering idly in the streets of the City of Destruction, stern and shrill as the bugle-blast that rouses the sleeping camp to prepare for the onslaught of the foe. Their melody has haunted the ear amid the murmur of the mart and the roar of the street. In the storm and stress of life's battle the echo of their sweet refrain has renewed our strength and dispelled our fears. They have been, as it were, the voices of the angels of God, and when we have heard them we could hear no other sound, neither the growling of the lions in the path nor the curses and threatenings of the fiends from the pit. Around the hymn and the hymn tune how many associations gather from the earliest days, when, as infants, we were hushed to sleep on our mother's lap by their monotonous chant! At this moment, on the slope of the Rockies, or in the sweltering jungles of India, in crowded Australian city, or secluded English_hamlet, the sound of some simple hymn tune will, as by mere magic spell, call from the silent grave the shadowy forms of the unforgotten dead, and transport the listener, involuntarily, over land and sea, to the scene of his childhood's years, to the village school, to the parish church. In our pilgrimage through life we discover the hymns which help. We come out of trials and temptations with hymns clinging to our memory like burrs. Some of us could almost use the hymn-book as the key to our autobiography. Hymns, like angels and other ministers of grace, often help us and disappear into the void. It is not often that the hymn of our youth is the hymn of our old age. Experience of life is the natural selector of the truly human hymnal. There is a curious and not a very creditable shrinking on the part of many to testify as to their experience in the deeper matters of the soul. It is an inverted egotism, selfishness masquerading in disguise of reluctance to speak of self. Wanderers across the wilderness of Life ought not to be chary of telling their fellowtravellers where they found the green oasis, the healing spring, or the shadow of a great rock in a desert land. It is not regarded as egotism when the passing steamer signals across the Atlantic wave news of her escape from perils of iceberg or fog, or welcome news of good cheer. Yet individuals shrink into themselves, repressing rigorously the fraternal instinct which bids them communicate the fruits of their experience to their fellows. Therein they deprive themselves of a share in the communion of saints, and refuse to partake with their brother of the sacramental cup of human sympathy, or to break the sacred bread of the deeper experiences. 66 Hymns that have Helped Me." What hymns have helped you? And if they have helped you, how can you better repay the debt you owe to your helper than by setting them forth, stamped with the tribute of your gratitude, to help other mortals in like straits to yourself? All of us have our moments when we are near to the mood of the hero and the saint, and it is something to know what hymns help most to take us there, and keep us at that higher pitch. Such in substance was my appeal. I sent it out in broadcast, and received many widely varying responses. Lord Rosebery, for instance, declined "confession in general" to the public on the subject. The Archbishop of Canterbury referred me to a hymnal which he himself had compiled many years ago. The Prince of Wales indicated his preference for Mrs. Adams' wellknown hymn. The Dean of St. Paul's disapproved of the principle of the hymn-book, and wrote as follows: I imagine that hymns are one of the best instruments for implanting religious ideas in the minds of children, and as I cannot think of any religion that can have the desired influence from which the essential doctrines of Christianity are excluded, I must decline to accept your courteous invitation to take part in compiling an unsectarian hymn book. As if the "essential doctrines" must be excluded because the Hymnal is unsectarian! Mr. Grant Allen replied: : I do not remember that any hymn, or, for the matter of that, any text of scripture, maxim, or line of poetry, was ever of the least use to me. There are poems which I love, such as Shelley's Skylark; but I cannot honestly say they ever helped" me. I never needed help, other than physical or monetary. My own philosophy has always amply sufficed me. 66 66 It is no doubt difficult to obtain a frank and full statement as to the "Hymns that have Helped " people, owing to the fact that all such confessions must be more or less autobiographical, and deal with the hidden matters of inner spiritual life. The Bishop of Winchester says: I agree with you in thinking that a compilation made in the manner and on the lines proposed will have a special interest, and, subject to the limitations I refer to in this note, I heartily wish you success in your endeavour; but I am not quite at one with you in regarding it to be the duty of all who could do so to tell you for publication not merely what hymns they have found helpful, but how, and where, and when the help has been given. To do this with any approach to completeness would require not an autobiography only, but an autobiography respecting the sins, the sorrows, the temptations, and the blessings of the inner life of each one of us. There may be a few men who can make such thoughts and memory public without harm to themselves or others, but the number of such is small, and I am not of them. Mrs. Humphry Ward goes further than the Bishop, and maintains that she cannot help saying that the question she is asked seems to her to be just that one which should not be answered, if one sets any value upon religious feeling and religious life. This is rather a hard saying, coming as it does from the author of "Robert Elsmere," which is a more or less successful attempt to unveil the hidden movements of religious thought and religious life in the soul of her hero before the eyes of the million. Dr. Rigg, the well-known Wesleyan Methodist minister, noted with a certain grim satisfaction the Methodist note in my appeal for experiences, and made me out a list of hymns which he found peculiarly helpful as customary and companion-aids in times of spiritual need. He said: In my list of hymns I do not include such hymns or religious poems as may have deeply touched my sympathy and even expressed my feelings, but yet at the same time have not been the means of lifting me above myself into the region of faith or hope, or in any way of strengthening me against my moods of despondency or weakness. One eminent philosopher excused himself from contributing on grounds characteristically stated in the following letter: DEAR SIR,I fear I shall be unable to aid you in the undertaking described in your letter of the 11th. My own experience furnishes no examples of the kind you wish. If parents had more sense than is commonly found among them, they would never dream of setting their children to learn hymns as tasks. With me the effect was not to generate any liking for this or that hymn, but to generate a dislike for hymns at large. The process of learning was a penalty, and the feeling associated with that penalty became a feeling associated with hymns in general. Hence it results that I cannot name any "hymn that has helped me." - Faithfully yours, HERBERT SPENCER. On the other hand, Mr. Mark Whitwell, the wellknown citizen and philanthropist of Bristol, sends me a list of twenty-three hymns, all of which he committed to memory before he was four years of age. writes: He I really enjoyed learning them; it was a real pleasure to me, partly because it gave my father so much pleasure to hear me repeat them. For my own part, I will gladly take my turn with the rest in testifying, conscious though I am that the hymn which helped me most can lay no claim to pre-eminent merit as poetry. It is Newton's hymn, which begins, "Begone, unbelief." I can remember my mother singing it when I was a tiny boy, barely able to see over the book-ledge in the minister's pew; and to this day, whenever I am in doleful dumps, and the stars in their courses appear to be fighting against me, that one doggerel verse comes back clear as a blackbird's note through the morning mist: His love in time past Forbids me to think To help me quite through. The rhyme is bad enough, no doubt; the logic may or may not be rational; but the verse as it is, with all its shortcomings, has been as a life-buoy, keeping my head above the waves when the sea raged and was tempestuous, and when all else failed. What that verse has been to me, other verses have been to other men and other women. And what I have tried to do in this Penny Hymnal " is to collate from the multitudinous record of diversified human experience the hymns which have helped most, in order to present them with some record of how, and where, and when, and whom they have helped, as a compendious collection for the use of every one. ་ I have to express my indebtedness to many friends and helpers of all sorts and conditions of men and women who have communicated with me on the subject of" Hymns that have Helped." The books which have been most helpful are Julian's monumental "Dictionary of Hymns," Horder's "Hymn-Lover," Duffield's" English Hymns," Marson's "Psalms at Work," Dr. Ker's "The Psalms in History and Biography," and Stevenson's "Notes on the Methodist Hymn Book." I have also to acknowledge my indebtedness to the following authors or owners of copyright hymns for permission kindly given to use them in this collection : |