history as Cardinal Newman--wrote this hymn when he was a young
clergyman of the Church of England. "Born within the sound of Bow
bells," says Dr. Benson, "he was an imaginative boy, and so
superstitious, that he used constantly to cross himself when going into
the dark." Intelligent students of the fine hymn will note this habit of
its author's mind--and surmise its influence on his religious musings.

The agitations during the High Church movement, and the persuasions of
Hurrell Froude, a Romanist friend, while he was a tutor at Oxford,
gradually weakened his Protestant faith, and in his unrest he travelled
to the Mediterranean coast, crossed to Sicily, where he fell violently
ill, and after his recovery waited three weeks in Palermo for a return
boat. On his trip to Marseilles he wrote the hymn--with no thought that
it would ever be called a hymn.

When complimented on the beautiful production after it became famous he
modestly said, "It was not the hymn but the _tune_ that has gained the
popularity. The tune is Dykes' and Dr. Dykes is a great master."

Dr. Newman was created a Cardinal of the Church of Rome in the Catholic
Cathedral of London, 1879. Died Aug. 11, 1890.

_THE TUNE._

"Lux Benigna," by Dr. Dykes, was composed in Aug. 1865, and was the tune
chosen for this hymn by a committee preparing the Appendix to _Hymns
Ancient and Modern_. Dr. Dykes' statement that the tune came into his
head while walking through the Strand in London "presents a striking
contrast with the solitary origin of the hymn itself" (Benson).

Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on.
The night is dark and I am far from home;
Lead Thou me on.
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene,--one step enough for me.

* * * * *

So long Thy power hath bless'd me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

"I HEARD THE VOICE OF JESUS SAY."

Few if any Christian writers of his generation have possessed tuneful
gifts in greater opulence or produced more vital and lasting treasures
of spiritual verse than Horatius Bonar of Scotland. He inherited some of
his poetic faculty from his grandfather, a clergyman who wrote several
hymns, and it is told of Horatius that hymn