nday after coming from church." It was a
heart experience noted down without literary care or artistic effort,
and in its original form was in too irregular measure to be sung. She
set little value upon it as a poem, but when shown hesitatingly to
inquiring compilers, its intrinsic worth was seen, and various revisions
of it were made. The following is one of the best versions--stanzas one,
two and three:--

One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o'er and o'er,
I am nearer home to-day,
Than I ever have been before.

Nearer my Father's house,
Where the many mansions be,
Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the crystal sea.

Nearer the bound of life,
Where we lay our burdens down,
Nearer leaving the cross
Nearer gaining the crown.

_THE TUNE._

The old revival tune of "Dunbar," with its chorus, "There'll be no more
sorrow there," has been sung to the hymn, but the tone-lyric of Philip
Phillips, "Nearer Home," has made the words its own, and the public are
more familiar with it than with any other. It was this air that a young
man in a drinking house in Macao, near Hong-Kong, began humming
thoughtlessly while his companion was shuffling the cards for a new
game. Both were Americans, the man with the cards more than twenty years
the elder. Noticing the tune, he threw down the pack. Every word of the
hymn had come back to him with the echo of the music.

"Harry, where did you learn that hymn?"

"What hymn?"

"Why the one you have been singing."

The young man said he did not know what he had been singing. But when
the older one repeated some of the lines, he said they were learned in
the Sunday-school.

"Come, Harry," said the older one, "here's what I've won from you. As
for me, as God sees me, I have played my last game, and drank my last
bottle. I have misled you, Harry, and I am sorry for it. Give me your
hand, my boy, and say that, for old America's sake, if for no other,
you will quit this infernal business."

Col. Russel H. Conwell, of Boston, (now Rev. Dr. Conwell of
Philadelphia) who was then visiting China, and was an eye-witness of the
scene, says that the reformation was a permanent one for both.

"I WILL SING YOU A SONG OF THAT BEAUTIFUL LAND."

One day, in the year 1865, Mrs. Ellen M.H. Gates received a letter from
Philip Phillips noting the passage in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ which
describes the joyful music of heaven when C