m a juvenile mind. A precocious child is
certainly as far as possible from being an interesting one. Children
ought to be children, and nothing else. But I am not sorry that I
learned to read when so young, because there were years of my childhood
that came after, when I had very little time for reading anything.

To learn hymns was not only a pastime, but a pleasure which it would
have been almost cruel to deprive me of. It did not seem to me as if I
learned them, but as if they just gave themselves to me while I read
them over; as if they, and the unseen things they sang about, became a
part of me.

Some of the old hymns did seem to lend us wings, so full were they of
aspiration and hope and courage. To a little child, reading them or
hearing them sung was like being caught up in a strong man's arms, to
gaze upon some wonderful landscape. These climbing and flying
hymns,--how well I remember them, although they were among the first I
learned! They are of the kind that can never wear out. We all know them
by their first lines,--

"Awake, our souls! away, our fears!"

"Up to the hills I lift mine eyes."

"There is a land of pure delight."

"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace!"

How the meeting-house rafters used to ring to that last hymn, sung to
the tune of "Amsterdam!" Sometimes it seemed as if the very roof was
lifted off,--nay, the roof of the sky itself--as if the music had burst
an entrance for our souls into the heaven of heavens.

I loved to learn the glad hymns, and there were scores of them. They
come flocking back through the years, like birds that are full of the
music of an immortal spring!

"Come, let us join our cheerful songs
With angels round the throne."

"Love divine, all love excelling;
Joy of heaven, to earth come down."

"Joy to the world! the Lord is come!"

"Hark! the song of jubilee,
Loud as mighty thunders' roar,
Or the fullness of the sea
When it breaks upon the shore!

"Hallelujah! for the Lord
God Omnipotent shall reign!
Hallelujah! let the word
Echo round the earth and main."

Ah, that word "Hallelujah!" It seemed to express all the joy of spring
mornings and clear sunshine and bursting blossoms, blended with all
that I guessed of the songs of angels, and with all that I had heard
and believed, in my fledgling soul, of the glorious One who was born in
a manger and died on a cross, that He might reign in h