peace, the wife and mother's last request for Wesley's hymn, and
her departure to the sound of its music to join the spirit of her babe.

A summer visitor in Philadelphia, waiting on a hot street-corner for a
car to Fairmount Park, overheard a quavering voice singing the same hymn
and saw an emaciated hand caressing a little plant in an open
window--and carried away the picture of a fading life, and the words--

Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee.

On one of the fields of the Civil War, just after a bloody battle, the
Rev. James Rankin of the United Presbyterian Church bent over a dying
soldier. Asked if he had any special request to make, the brave fellow
replied, "Yes, sing 'Jesus, Lover of my Soul.'"

The clergyman belonged to a church that sang only Psalms. But what a
tribute to that ubiquitous hymn that such a man knew it by heart! A
moment's hesitation and he recalled the words, and, for the first time
in his life, sang a sacred song that was not a Psalm. When he reached
the lines,--

Safe into the haven guide,
O receive my soul at last,

--his hand was in the frozen grip of a dead man, whose face wore "the
light that never was on sea or land." The minister went away saying to
himself, "If this hymn is good to die by, it is good to live by."

_THE TUNE._

Of all the tone-masters who have studied and felt this matchless hymn,
and given it vocal wings--Marsh, Zundel, Bradbury, Dykes, Mason--none
has so exquisitely uttered its melting prayer, syllable by syllable, as
Joseph P. Holbrook in his "Refuge." Unfortunately for congregational
use, it is a duo and quartet score for select voices; but the four-voice
portion can be a chorus, and is often so sung. Its form excludes it from
some hymnals or places it as an optional beside a congregational tune.
But when rendered by the choir on special occasions its success in
conveying the feeling and soul of the words is complete. There is a
prayer in the swell of every semitone and the touch of every accidental,
and the sweet concord of the duet--soprano with tenor or bass--pleads
on to the end of the fourth line, where the full harmony reinforces it
like an organ with every stop in play. The tune is a rill of melody
ending in a river of song.[36]

[Footnote 36: Holbrook has also an arrangement of Franz Abt's, "When the
Swallows Homeward Fly" written to "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," but with
Wesley's words it is far less effect