hristian and Hopeful enter on
its shining shore beyond the river of death, and asking her to write a
hymn in the spirit of the extract, as one of the numbers in his _Singing
Pilgrim_. Mrs. Gates complied--and the sequel of the hymn she wrote is
part of the modern song-history of the church. Mr. Phillips has related
how, when he received it, he sat down with his little boy on his knee,
read again the passage in Bunyan, then the poem again, and, turning to
his organ, pencil in hand, pricked the notes of the melody. "The 'Home
of the Soul,'" he says, "seems to have had God's blessing from the
beginning, and has been a comfort to many a bereaved soul. Like many
loved hymns, it has had a peculiar history, for its simple melody has
flowed from the lips of High Churchmen, and has sought to make itself
heard above the din of Salvation Army cymbals and drums. It has been
sung in prisons and in jailyards, while the poor convict was waiting to
be launched into eternity, and on hundreds of funeral occasions. One man
writes me that he has led the singing of it at one hundred and twenty
funerals. It was sung at my dear boy's funeral, who sat on my knee when
I wrote it. It is my prayer that God may continue its solace and
comfort. I have books containing the song now printed in seven different
languages."

A writer in the _Golden Rule_ (now the _Christian Endeavor World_) calls
attention to an incident on a night railroad train narrated in the late
Benjamin F. Taylor's _World on Wheels_, in which "this hymn appears as a
sort of Traveller's Psalm." Among the motley collection of passengers,
some talkative, some sleepy, some homesick and cross, all tired, sat two
plain women who, "would make capital country aunts.... If they were
mothers at all they were good ones." Suddenly in a dull silence, near
twelve o'clock, a voice, sweet and flexible, struck up a tune. The
singer was one of those women. "She sang on, one after another the good
Methodist and Baptist melodies of long ago," and the growing interest of
the passengers became chained attention when she began--

"I will sing you a song of that beautiful land,
The far-away home of the soul,
Where no storms can beat on the glittering strand,
While the years of eternity roll.

O, that home of the soul, in my visions and dreams,
Its bright jasper walls I can see;
Till I fancy but thinly the veil intervenes
Between the fair city and me."

"The ca