ie of Bellefonte,
Pa. So careful a narrative deserves all the respect due to a family
tradition. Whether this or still another theory of the incidental cause
of the wonderful hymn shall have the last word may never be decided nor
is it important.

There is "antecedent probability," at least, in the statement that
Wesley wrote the first two stanzas soon after his perilous experience in
a storm at sea during his return voyage from America to England in 1736.
In a letter dated Oct. 28 of that year, he describes the storm that
washed away a large part of the ship's cargo, strained her seams so
that the hardest pumping could not keep pace with the inrushing water,
and finally forced the captain to cut the mizzen-mast away. Young Wesley
was ill and sorely alarmed, but knew, he says, that he "abode under the
shadow of the Almighty," and finally, "in this dreadful moment," he was
able to encourage his fellow-passengers who were "in an agony of fear,"
and to pray with and for them.

It was his awful hazard and bare escape in that tempest that prompted
the following stanzas--

O Thou who didst prepare
The ocean's caverned cell,
And teach the gathering waters there
To meet and dwell;
Toss'd in our reeling bark
Upon this briny sea,
Thy wondrous ways, O Lord, we mark,
And sing to Thee.

* * * * *

Borne on the dark'ning wave,
In measured sweep we go,
Nor dread th' unfathomable grave,
Which yawns below;
For He is nigh who trod
Amid the foaming spray,
Whose billows own'd th' Incarnate God,
And died away.

And naturally the memory of his almost shipwreck on the wild Atlantic
colored more or less the visions of his muse, and influenced the
metaphors of his verse for years.

The popularity of "Jesus, Lover of my Soul" not only procured it, at
home, the name of "England's song of the sea," but carried it with "the
course of Empire" to the West, where it has reigned with "Rock of Ages,"
for more than a hundred and fifty years, joint primate of inspired human
songs.

Compiled incidents of its heavenly service would fill a chapter. A
venerable minister tells of the supernal comfort that lightened his
after years of sorrow from the dying bed of his wife who whispered with
her last breath, "Hide me, O my Saviour, hide."

A childless and widowed father in Washington remembers with a more than
earthly