NTAINS."

The familiar story of this hymn scarcely needs repeating; how one
Saturday afternoon in the year 1819, young Reginald Heber, Rector of
Hodnet, sitting with his father-in-law, Dean Shipley, and a few friends
in the Wrexham Vicarage, was suddenly asked by the Dean to "write
something to sing at the missionary meeting tomorrow," and retired to
another part of the room while the rest went on talking; how, very soon
after, he returned with three stanzas, which were hailed with delighted
approval; how he then insisted upon adding another octrain to the hymn
and came back with--

Waft, waft, ye winds, His story,
And you, ye waters, roll;

--and how the great lyric was sung in Wrexham Church on Sunday morning
for the first time in its life. The story is old but always fresh.
Nothing could better have emphasized the good Dean's sermon that day in
aid of "The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,"
than that unexpected and glorious lyric of his poet son-in-law.

By common consent Heber's "Missionary Hymn" is the silver trumpet among
all the rallying bugles of the church.

_THE TUNE._

The union of words and music in this instance is an example of spiritual
affinity. "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." The
story of the tune is a record of providential birth quite as interesting
as that of the hymn. In 1823, a lady in Savannah, Ga., having received
and admired a copy of Heber's lyric from England, desired to sing it or
hear it sung, but knew no music to fit the metre. She finally thought of
a young clerk in a bank close by, Lowell Mason by name, who sometimes
wrote music for recreation, and sent her son to ask him if he would make
a tune that would sing the lines. The boy returned in half an hour with
the composition that doubled Heber's fame and made his own.

In the words of Dr. Charles Robinson, "Like the hymn it voices, it was
done at a stroke, and it will last through the ages."

"THE MORNING LIGHT IS BREAKING."

Not far behind Dr. Heber's _chef-d'oeuvre_ in lyric merit is the still
more famous missionary hymn of Dr. S.F. Smith, author of "My Country,
'Tis of Thee." Another missionary hymn of his which is widely used is--

Yes, my native land, I love thee,
All thy scenes, I love them well.
Friends, connections, happy country,
Can I bid you all farewell?
Can I leave you
Far in heathen lands to dwell?

Drs. Nutter and Breed