e
intervals of his teaching labors. His works are chiefly motets and
concertos, which show his genius for rich harmony. Died 1825.

"JUST AS I AM, WITHOUT ONE PLEA."

Charlotte Elliott, of Brighton, Eng., would have been well-known through
her admired and useful hymns,--

My God, my Father, while I stray,

My God, is any hour so sweet,

With tearful eyes I look around,

--and many others. But in "Just as I am" she made herself a voice in the
soul of every hesitating penitent. The currency of the hymn has been too
swift for its authorship and history to keep up with, but it is a
blessed law of influence that good works out-run biographies. This
master-piece of metrical gospel might be called Miss Elliott's
spiritual-birth hymn, for a reply of Dr. Caesar Malan of Geneva was its
prompting cause. The young lady was a stranger to personal religion
when, one day, the good man, while staying at her father's house, in his
gentle way introduced the subject. She resented it, but afterwards,
stricken in spirit by his words, came to him with apologies and an
inquiry that confessed a new concern of mind. "You speak of coming to
Jesus, but how? I'm not fit to come."

"Come just as you are," said Dr. Malan.

The hymn tells the result.

Like all the other hymns bound up in her _Invalid's Hymn-book_, it was
poured from out the heart of one who, as the phrase is, "never knew a
well day"--though she lived to see her eighty-second year.

Illustrative of the way it appeals to the afflicted, a little anecdote
was told by the eloquent John B. Gough of his accidental seat-mate in a
city church service. A man of strange appearance was led by the kind
usher or sexton to the pew he occupied. Mr. Gough eyed him with strong
aversion. The man's face was mottled, his limbs and mouth twitched, and
he mumbled singular sounds. When the congregation sang he attempted to
sing, but made fearful work of it. During the organ interlude he leaned
toward Mr. Gough and asked how the next verse began. It was--

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind.

"That's it," sobbed the strange man, "I'm blind--God help me!"--and the
tears ran down his face--"and I'm wretched--and paralytic," and then he
tried hard to sing the line with the rest.

"After that," said Mr. Gough, "the poor paralytic's singing was as
sweet to me as a Beethoven symphony."

Charlotte Elliott was born March 18, 1789, and died in Brighton, Sept.
22, 1871. She stands