als of New England, in parts of the South, and especially in
the Middle West, are suggestive of spontaneous melody forest-born, and
as unconscious of scale, clef or tempo as the song of a bird. The above
"hand-shaking" ditty at the altar gatherings apparently took its tune
self-made, inspired in its first singer's soul by the feeling of the
moment--and the strain was so simple that the convert could join in at
once and chant--

When my Lord comes I trust _I shall_

--through all the loving rotations of the crude hymn-tune. Such
song-births of spiritual enthusiasm are beyond enumeration--and it is
useless to hunt for author or composer. Under the momentum of a
wrestling hour or a common rapture of experience, counterpoint was
unthought of, and the same notes for every voice lifted pleading and
praise in monophonic impromptu. The refrains--

O how I love Jesus,

O the Lamb, the Lamb, the loving Lamb,

I'm going home to die no more,

Pilgrims we are to Canaan's land,

O turn ye, O turn ye, for why will you die,

Come to Jesus, come to Jesus, just now,

--each at the sound of its first syllable brought its own music to every
singer's tongue, and all--male and female--were sopranos together. This
habit in singing those rude liturgies of faith and fellowship was
recognized by the editors of the _Revivalist_, and to a multitude of
them space was given only for the printed melody, and of this sometimes
only the three or four initial bars. The tunes were the church's rural
field-tones that everybody knew.

Culture smiles at this unclassic hymnody of long ago, but its history
should disarm criticism. To wanderers its quaint music and "pedestrian"
verse were threshold call and door-way welcome into the church of the
living God. Even in the flaming days of the Second Advent following, in
1842-3, they awoke in many hardened hearts the spiritual glow that never
dies. The delusion passed away, but the grace remained.

The church--and the world--owe a long debt to the old evangelistic
refrains that rang through the sixty years before the Civil War, some of
them flavored with tuneful piety of a remoter time. They preached
righteousness, and won souls that sermons could not reach. They opened
heaven to thousands who are now rejoicing there.

CHAPTER VIII.

SUNDAY-SCHOOL HYMNS.

_SHEPHERD OF TENDER YOUTH._

[Greek: Stomion polon adaon]

We are assured by repeated references in the p