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of praise to Him who saveth from death. But, more than this, it knits the Head and the members together in love; for his heart is drawn out to them in supplying their many wants, and their hearts are drawn out to Him by the benefits they are constantly receiving.

varied their wants. He says, 'Come unto me, and rest;''Come unto me, and drink;' 'Commit thy way to me, and I will direct thy steps.' You never think of Him aright, till you see Him by faith, thus full, overflowing, and ready to respond to every supplicant. It is this that makes Him the chief of ten thousand;' 'the This arrangement of putting all the fulness Brother born for adversity;''the Lamb, as it into Christ pleases the Father: does it please were slain, in the midst of the throne, having you? Are you willing to live a life of faith seven horns and seven eyes.' It is this that fits upon the Son of God; a life of constant, entire Him to be the Days-man, making and maintain-dependence; a new-creaturely life? Have you ing peace for ever; it is this that makes Him learned to saythe Captain of salvation, bringing many sons to glory. He is saying at this moment, 'Look unto me, and be saved.' Look, I beseech you, till you are made from the heart to cry, 'Yes, I am saved. Surely in the Lord have I righteousness and strength." They are in Him, but yet they are mine, as really and beneficially mine as if I had them in my own possession and in my own control; for He ministers them to me seasonably, sufficiently, unfailingly.'

'It pleased the Father, that in Christ should all the fulness dwell.' There are many reasons for this. It is his right and due. He brought in the fulness by his obedience unto death, and therefore He is worthy to be God's Steward over it, even as Joseph was set over the granaries of Egypt. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.' But, again, He is the fittest to dispense the treasures; for He is ever near the sufferers, He has had experience of their miseries, He knows the burden of sin, the power of temptation, the hidings of God's face, and so He hastens to succour them in their distress. But, again, this puts honour upon Him, for all salvation comes from Him through faith; and thus every deliverance, restoration, supply, produces a fresh sense of indebtedness, and stirs up a new song

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'I am a poor sinner, and nothing at all,
But Jesus Christ is my all in all ?'

Do you begin to see a beauty, sweetness, desir-
ableness in this arrangement, which makes you
rejoice and thank God for it? Do you say, 'It
is safe for me. I find, every hour, how frail
and fickle I am, how soon I lose received grace.
It passes in the using, amid the tear and wear
of life. But, when I am cold, and weak, and
dark, I know where to go to obtain a fresh
supply, and He does not upbraid me; He only
chides me for not coming sooner, not coming
oftener.' What unsearchable riches, what bound-
less possibilities, are here put within our reach!
He who believeth on me, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water.' His name, through
faith in his name, is as mighty as ever to make
poor sinners like us peaceful, patient, fruitful,
happy. Lord, greatly increase our faith, that
we may be filled with all the fulness of God.

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Friend, keep up constant, uninterrupted communion with Christ. Stop in the midst of your busiest, happiest moments, to renew your fellowship with Him. Thus you will grow regularly, abundantly; will bear fruit at all seasons; will be carried sweetly, comfortably through duties and trials. You will walk in light, and have much fellowship of divine love.

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HYMN.

across plains, till it has settled down in this strange land? We feel such an interest in the old rock, that we cannot help putting such questions: very impatient for, though hardly counting upon,

an answer.

THE STORY OF A N passing leisurely up some valley, we | alight, perhaps, on a huge boulder, whose size and figure attract us strangely, compelling us to linger and examine. It is rugged and seamed, yet not the less interesting on that account. It stands before us 'moss'd with age,' time-worn and weather-wasted, nestling in its own débris, just the very rock on which one loves to sit and muse. It contains no record of its parentage, no date of its emigration, and no record of the scenes it has witnessed, or of the storms that have beaten on its massive front. Whence has it come? and how has it found its way to this solitude? Did it descend from yon neighbouring crags? or, clasped in ice, has it travelled many a mile, floating over ridges and

It is with some such feelings that we turn over and over again this old Scottish 'Broadside' that lies upon our table. About one foot in length by eight inches in breath, in small type, without leads,' in three columns; it contains a hymn of sixty stanzas, common measure, like many of the old ballads, and like most of the Scottish Psalms. Its title is given in large letters: "THE NEW JERUSALEM; and its third column finishes with Finis, in due form. It is without date; but one might guess it to be about 160 years old. It is embrowned with age as well as soiled with use;

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and its ragged edges intimate the freedom as well as the frequency with which it has been thumbed' by more than one generation. The 'hard hand' of the northern peasant has been upon it, when, perhaps, going a-field at early dawn, or, at even, teaching it to his children round the hearth, as that which their fathers sang in the city prison, or at Cameron's grave, or on Peden's Knowe,' or on Eckford Moss, or on the Moors of Fenwick, or amid the 'Hopes' and Cleuchs' of Meggatdale.

This ballad-hymn begins with words which have gone over the breadth and length of the land, till every cottage-roof has echoed them:

'O mother dear Jerusalem!

When shall I come to thee?
When shall my sorrows have an end,
Thy joys when shall I see?

O happy harbour of God's saints!
O sweet and pleasant soil!
In thee no sorrow may be found,

No grief, no care, no toil!'

Whence has this noble plant come from? What is its pedigree? What story has it to tell? Like the boulder we spoke of, it has for generations been embedded in Scottish soil. But has it always been there? No; not always. We can trace it backwards to England. From England we can trace it backward to a more southern region. It has traversed seas, it has crossed mountains, it has drifted over plains to the spot where we find it.

Wodrow, in his Life of David Dickson, minister of Irvine, in the middle of the seventeenth century, ascribes the hymn to that man of God, who, in his hours of leisure, used to solace himself with song. Here, however, he is incorrect. That Dickson revised it and sent it out in the shape in which we find it in the 'Broadsides,' is, we think, certain. He was evidently the editor of the Scottish versions of it; and to him Scotland owes much for putting into the lips of her sons, for generations, a song so sweet and holy, -a song which threw a fragrance over her hills, which, even to this day, is not only remembered but felt.

But the hymn is not Dickson's, nor is it of Scottish origin. We can trace it out of Scotland, and show that it existed in England nearly half a century before the minister of Irvine gave it to Scotland.

Much about the same time that it became known in the north, it seems to have been going abroad through the south, though in a briefer form. In the year 1693, the Rev. W. Burkitt, the well-known expositor, published a small thin volume of prayers and hymns. Among the latter we find the hymn, reduced, however, to eight stanzas, and very much the same as Mr. Montgomery gives in his Christian Psalmist, or Dr. Williams in his Collection.

In 1692, John Hall published a small volume, entitled Jacob's Ladder, in which the hymn is given at considerable length. Its heading is 'The Soul's breathing after her Heavenly Country,' and consists of twenty stanzas. This edition resembles, in several respects, that of Dickson. It begins

'Jerusalem, my happy home,

O that I were in thee! O that my woes were at an end, Thy joys that I might see!'

During the earlier part of the seventeenth century (between 1610 and 1660), we find no traces of the hymn. William Drummond of Hawthornden, and others also, have given us translations of the Latin medieval hymn, 'Urbs Jerusalem Beata;'* but it is quite distinct in sentiment, tone, and language, from the other class of hymns whose history we are tracing out. The keynote is altogether different. In these Latin hymns the tone is quite jubilant,-full of exultation, because of something already come, or just on its way. In the others, the prevailing sentiment is plaintive, longing for something which still seems afar off.

It is not till we come to the beginning of the seventeenth century that we get trace of our hymn again. In the year 1601 was published a small quarto of forty-five pages, entitled The Song of Mary the Mother of Christ.' It contains two poems on the 'Heavenly Jerusalem,' the one consisting of fifty-two four-line stanzas, the other of nineteen four-line stanzas. The latter we strongly suspect to be the very hymn in question. We have not been able to cast eyes on the volume in spite of every effort. It is not in the British Museum, nor in the Bodleian. The longer hymn in it is remarkably like the one we are in quest of, and must have been quarried from the same deposit, or composed by the same hand. Most of it is given at length in the Parker Society Collection of Poetry, vol. ii. p. 427. It thus begins :

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was called to a manuscript in the British Museum, said to contain the hymn in question, and, moreover, affirmed to establish a Popish origin for it. the manuscript is numbered 15,225, and is lettered on the back Queen Elizabeth,' though internal evidence shows it to belong to James.*

That manuscript seems to be the scrap-book of some Popish gentleman about 1617 or 1618, and is of a miscellaneous nature, containing several old and well-known pieces printed in the Paradise of daintie Devises, many years before. It contains, at full length, the hymn printed in part by the Parker Society, with this commencing stanza:

'Hierusalem! thy joyes divine,

Noe joyes may be compared to them;
Noe people blessed soe as thine;

Noe cittie like Hierusalem.'

Its title is 'A Prisoner's Songe,' after which, by way of motto, and separate from the rest of the hymn, comes the verse already quoted, 'My thirstie soule,' etc.

Along with this there is another hymn quite in the same tone, and containing many like expressions and figures. It has no title, but runs thus:

'Amounte, my soule, from earth a while,
Sore up with wings of love,

To see where saints and angels dwell
With God in bliss above.

Hierusalem the place is calld,

Most sumptuous to behold,

The place with pretious stones is walld,
And streetes are paved with gold.

The gates with pretious pearles are framed,
There rubies do abound;

The pretious pearles that can be named,
Are there in plenty found.

Amidst the streetes the well of life,
With golden streames doth flowe;
Upon whose banks the tree of life

In statelie sort doth growe.'

Thus the hymn runs on for fifty-four stanzas, all of them, or almost all of them, quite parallel with the other hymn we have described. It contains one or two fierce lines against 'rude and railing heretikes,' as well as against 'persecuting potentates; and it is evidently the composition of some of those Romanists who, during the reigns both of Elizabeth and James, were imprisoned for their Jesuitical intrigues.

But in this manuscript there is a third hymn which has only this heading, 'A Song by F. B. P. to the tune of Diana.' It is evidently the original of our hymn, being in most respects quite identical. We only give a verse:

'Hierusalem! my happy home!
When shall I come to thee?
When shall my sorrows have an end,
Thy joys when shall I see?'

We counted some five or six allusions to James as then reigning, besides references to events in his reign, such as the execution of John Thulis in 1616. This is evidently the Thulis whose name occurs in Calderwood, along with one F. Barth-Pere. We mention this last name because of its curious coincidence with the initials in the manuscript hymn, and because it shows that the P. in the manuscript stands for Pere. (Calderwood's Hist. vol. v. p. 194.)

It then goes on precisely like Dickson's, in most places word for word, so far as it goes. It contains, however, only twenty-six stanzas.

It is strange to find three such hymns in one manuscript volume, and all of them anonymous. The first is sometimes ascribed to Breton; but this is doubtful. The style is more like that of Southwell;* but he was executed in 1595, and the volume in which it was printed was not published till 1601. It is evident, however, that they must have been, at least to a certain extent, the work of Romanists, to what extent will immediately appear.

In going over these various pieces, one begins to draw the conclusion that they must have had a common origin. That they all sprang out of the last two chapters of the Apocalypse is obvious enough; but this is not all. There is clearly some one piece or poem on which they are modelled; which poem, though itself founded on the Apocalypse, had drawn together kindred passages, and embodied peculiar expressions and figures, which are preserved in all the different hymns.

We have already remarked that we do not consider them as having any real affinity with the hymns in the Breviary which refer to Jerusalem. But there is a hymn of Hildebert, in the beginning of the twelfth century, which comes much nearer to them:

'Me receptet Syon illa

Syon, David urbs tranquilla,' etc.

Just about the same time there is the hymn of Bernard of Clugny: 'Laus patriæ cælestis,' in which there is considerable resemblance to our hymn. Then, farther back, there is the hymn of Damiani, which is generally ascribed to Augustine, and is often printed among his Meditations. This is, perhaps, the likest of all the Latin pieces to our hymn. Were it not for overstretching our limits we should gladly cite a few lines; but we must refer our readers to the original itself. †

Strange to say, however, these Latin hymns resemble the English ones in this, that they give rise to the suspicion of a common fount. There are expressions and figures common to all of them; and they are on the same chord. We have been at some pains to trace out these expressions, and we have discovered most of them in Augustine, scattered throughout his works. Some, for instance, of Hildebert's lines are word for word from Augustine ('De spiritu et anima'). This raises the question, Is not Augustine the real fountain-head of all the hymns, Latin and English? Such we have no doubt is the case; and if the reader has a copy of his Meditations at hand, and will turn to chapter xxv., he will find the whole of David Dickson's hymn, and the greater part of all the

*See Southwell's Epistle of Comfort to the Priests, etc., where there is a passage in prose descriptive of the New Jerusalem.

See Königsfeld's Lateinische Hymnen, p. 22; and Daniel, Thesaurus, vol. i, p. 116. All these Latin hymns are collected in the volume referred to beforeThe New Jerusalem.

rest. He will find the same allusions, the same figures, the same passages of Scripture; he will find all but the Popish references to the Virgin and the saints, etc., which were thrust upon the original by the versifier or versifiers in England in the end of the sixteenth century. Thus the original of the hymn has nothing in it of Popery or superstition; and it is very evident that while David Dickson had before him the English version or versions formerly referred to, he had specially Augustine's chapter in his eye; for, while he has more than doubled the length of the English hymn, he has taken all his additions from Augustine, making his version a more exact translation of that father than any of the preceding hymns had been.

Here, then, we bring our researches to a close. We wish that space had allowed us to be somewhat minuter in details, and more abundant in extracts. But we have sketched the story of the old hymn, and our readers can go into details for themselves. We found the rugged old boulder upon the sandy hillocks of Irvine;' and we have traced its journeyings backward for no inconsiderable way. We have traced it from Scotland to England, from England to France, | crossing hill and dale. From France we have traced it to the shores of Africa, floated over the Mediterranean in the folios of a Latin father, having taken just about a thousand years in the passage between Hippo and Irvine. A long period, we may think, yet not by any means injurious either to the fragrance or the vigour of the hymn; nay, rather, by such a venerable age, imparting a mellow tenderness and solemnity which a less antiquity would have failed to give.

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It is soothing to the soul to stroll along the Ayrshire strand, with the rustling bent' or the grey sand underfoot, the broad ocean in front, Arran rising in abrupt majesty from its bosom, the sun sinking down behind its island-hills, and sending out a burst of radiance, as if it would splinter the obstructing peaks of Goatfell; it is soothing at such an hour, and in such a scene, to sing to the ocean-solitude words which, two hundred years ago, had been sung to the same

ocean:

'Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

Would God I were in thee! Oh that my sorrows had an end, Thy joys that I might see!'

and, while singing, to hear the sound of a more distant and venerable voice from the shores of the Mediterranean, uttering the same words, and breathing out the same melody: O Jerusalem, my mother, holy city of God, dearest spouse of Christ; thee my heart loves; for thy beauty my soul longs with excessive desire ! How fair, how glorious, how noble, art thou! Altogether beautiful; there is no spot in thee! .. Happy should my soul for ever be, if I might be thought worthy to behold thy glory, thy blessedness, thy comeliness, thy gates, and walls, and streets, thy many mansions, thy thrice noble citizens, and thy mighty King in his beauty. For thy walls are of precious stones, thy gates of the most excellent pearls, thy streets of purest gold, in which a joyful Allelujah, without ceasing, is sung. Thy many mansions are founded upon square stones, built up with sapphires, covered in with golden tiles, into which no one enters save the clean; no defilement dwells in thee. . . . There charity reigns full and perfect, because God is there all in all. Him without end they see; and in always seeing Him they beam with his love. They love and praise, they praise and love. Their whole employment is the praise of God, without end, without flagging, without toil. Happy were I,-yes, truly and eternally happy, if, after this frail body is dissolved, I might be deemed worthy to hear those songs of heavenly melody which are sung to the praise of the Eternal King, by these citizens of the upper country and the bands of blessed souls. Fortunate were I, and too blessed, if I were deemed worthy to sing those songs, and to stand in the presence of my King, my God, my Captain, and to behold Him in his glory, as He has condescended to promise, saying, "Father, I will that they whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am," etc.; and again, "If any man serve me, let him follow me,” etc.; and again, “He who loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."' H. B.

WHAT LUTHER LOVED.

LUTHER, when studying, always had his dog lying at his feet-a dog he had brought from Wartburg, and of which he was very fond. An ivory crucifix stood at the table before him. He worked at his desk for days together, without going out; but when fatigued, and the ideas began to stagnate, he took his guitar with him to the porch, and there executed some musical fantasy (for he was a skilful musician), when the ideas would flow upon him as fresh as flowers

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| after a summer's rain. Music was his invariable solace at such times. Indeed, Luther did not hesitate to say that, after theology, music was the first of arts. Music,' said he, 'is the art of the prophets; it is the only other art which, like theology, can calm the agitation of the soul, and put the devil to flight.' Next to music, if not before it, Luther loved children and flowers. That great gnarled man had a heart as tender as a woman's.

The Treasury Hymnal.

The hymns are selected from Dr. Bonar's "Hymns of Faith and Hope." The Letter-note Method of musical notation, by permission of Messrs. Colville & Bentley, is introduced as a help to young singers.

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The letter is placed to the right when the note is sharpened, and to the left when it is flattened.

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