s used to "come to" him while
riding on railroad trains. He was educated in the Edinburgh University
and studied theology with Dr. Chalmers, and his life was greatly
influenced by Dr. Guthrie, whom he followed in the establishment of the
Free Church of Scotland.

Born in 1808 in Edinburgh, he was about forty years old when he came
back from a successful pastorate at Kelso to the city of his home and
Alma Mater, and became virtually Chalmers' successor as minister of the
Chalmers Memorial Church.

The peculiar richness of Bonar's sacred songs very early created for
them a warm welcome in the religious world, and any devout lyric or poem
with his name attached to it is sure to be read.

Dr. Bonar died in Edinburgh, July 31, 1889. Writing of the hymn, "I
heard the voice," etc., Dr. David Breed calls it "one of the most
ingenious hymns in the language," referring to the fact that the
invitation and response exactly halve each stanza between them--song
followed by countersong. "Ingenious" seems hardly the right word for a
division so obviously natural and almost automatic. It is a simple art
beauty that a poet of culture makes by instinct. Bowring's "Watchman,
tell us of the night," is not the only other instance of similar
countersong structure, and the regularity in Thomas Scott's little hymn,
"Hasten, sinner, to be wise," is only a simpler case of the way a poem
plans itself by the compulsion of its subject.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
Come unto me and rest,
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast:

I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad,
I found in Him a resting-place,
And He has made me glad.

_THE TUNE._

The old melody of "Evan," long a favorite; and since known everywhere
through the currency given to it in the _Gospel Hymns_, has been in many
collections connected with the words. It is good congregational
psalmody, and not unsuited to the sentiment, taken line by line, but it
divides the stanzas into quatrains, which breaks the happy continuity.
"Evan" was made by Dr. Mason in 1850 from a song written four years
earlier by Rev. William Henry Havergal, Canon of Worcester Cathedral,
Eng. He was the father of Frances Ridley Havergal.

The more ancient "Athens," by Felice Giardini (1716-1796), author of the
"Italian Hymn," has clung, and still clings lovingly to Bonar's hymn in
many communities. Its simplicity, and the involuntary a