:

I love to meditate on death!
When shall his message come
With friendly smiles to steal my breath
And take an exile home?

One of the other hymns by Mrs. Brown included in "Village Hymns" is a
missionary lyric, "Go, messenger of love, and bear." This was written a
year earlier than her "Twilight Hymn." Her little son Samuel was seven
years old at the time, and the pious mother's prayer was that he might be
used of the Lord in His service. It was the period when the
English-speaking world was experiencing a tremendous revival of interest
in foreign missions, and in her heart she cherished the fond hope that
her own boy might become a messenger of the gospel. Then came the
inspiration for the hymn:

Go, messenger of love, and bear
Upon thy gentle wing
The song which seraphs love to hear,
The angels joy to sing.

Go to the heart with sin oppressed,
And dry the sorrowing tear;
Extract the thorn that wounds the breast,
The drooping spirit cheer.

Go, say to Zion, "Jesus reigns"--
By His resistless power
He binds His enemies with chains;
They fall to rise no more.

Tell how the Holy Spirit flies,
As He from heaven descends;
Arrests His proudest enemies,
And changes them to friends.

Her prayer was answered. The son, Samuel R. Brown in 1838 sailed as a
missionary to China, and eleven years later, when Japan was opened to
foreigners, he was transferred to that field. He was the first American
missionary to the Japanese.

Mrs. Brown died at Henry, Illinois, October 10, 1861. She was buried at
Monson, Mass., where some thirty years of her life had been spent. Her
son, the missionary, has written this beautiful tribute to her memory:

"Her record is on high, and she is with the Lord, whom she loved and
served as faithfully as any person I ever knew; nay, more than any other.
To her I owe all I am; and if I have done any good in the world, to her,
under God, it is due. She seems even now to have me in her hands, holding
me up to work for Christ and His cause with a grasp that I can feel. I
ought to have been and to be a far better man than I am, having had such
a mother."

A Triumphant Missionary Hymn

Hail to the brightness of Zion's glad morning!
Joy to the lands that in darkness have lain!
Hushed be the accents of sorrow and mourning,
Zion in triumph begins