t to
preface a missionary sermon when he cited a line from a poem of Aratus
(B.C. 272) familiar, doubtless, to the majority of his hearers.

Dr. Lyman Abbot has thus translated the passage in which the line
occurs:

Let us begin from God. Let every mortal raise
The grateful voice to tune God's endless praise,
God fills the heaven, the earth, the sea, the air;
We feel His spirit moving everywhere,
And we His offspring are.[17] He, ever good,
Daily provides for man his daily food.
To Him, the First, the Last, all homage yield,--
Our Father wonderful, our help, our shield.

[Footnote 17: [Greek: Tou gar kai genos esmen.]]

"RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT."

Alexander Pope, a Roman Catholic poet, born in London 1688, died at
Twickenham 1744, was not a hymnist, but passages in his most serious and
exalted flights deserve a tuneful accompaniment. His translations of
Homer made him famous, but his ethical poems, especially his "Essay on
Man," are inexhaustible mines of quotation, many of the lines and
couplets being common as proverbs. His "Messiah," written about 1711, is
a religious anthem in which the prophecies of Holy Writ kindle all the
splendor of his verse.

_THE TUNE._

The closing strain, indicated by the above line, has been divided into
stanzas of four lines suitable to a church hymn-tune. The melody
selected by the compilers of the _Plymouth Hymnal_, and of the
_Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book_ is "Savannah," an American sounding name
for what is really one of Pleyel's chorals. The music is worthy of
Pope's triumphal song.

The seas shall waste, the skies to smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away,
But fixed His Word; His saving power remains:
Thy realm shall last; thy own Messiah reigns.

"OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT?"

This is a sombre poem, but its virile strength and its literary merit
have given it currency, and commended it to the taste of many people,
both weak and strong, who have the pensive temperament. Abraham Lincoln
loved it and committed it to memory in his boyhood. Philip Phillips set
it to music, and sang it--or a part of it--one day during the Civil war
at the anniversary of the Christian Sanitary Commission, when President
Lincoln, who was present, called for its repetition.[18] It was written
by William Knox, born 1789, son of a Scottish farmer.

[Footnote 18: This account so nearly resembles the story of Mrs. Gates'
"