all obey,
And seek the Saviour's blessing,
A nation in a day.

Blest river of salvation,
Pursue thine onward way;
Flow thou to every nation,
Nor in thy richness stay;
Stay not till all the lowly
Triumphant reach their home:
Stay not till all the holy
Proclaim: "The Lord is come!"

Samuel Francis Smith, 1832.

SAMUEL SMITH, A PATRIOTIC HYMN-WRITER

Nearly a century has now elapsed since our national hymn, "America," was
written, and, despite all efforts to displace it by other anthems, it
seems to retain its hold on the hearts of the people. Samuel Francis
Smith will always be gratefully remembered as the author of this hymn,
but we should not lose sight of the fact that the New England pastor who
gave his country such an inspiring patriotic song has also given to the
Christian Church some of the choicest gems in her hymnody.

Associated with "My country, 'tis of thee" will be the stirring
missionary hymn, "The morning light is breaking," the two being regarded
as the foremost of Dr. Smith's poetical works. Both were written in the
winter of 1832, when he was only twenty-four years old. He was a student
at Andover Theological Seminary at the time.

Altogether Dr. Smith contributed nearly 150 hymns to American hymnody,
many of them on missionary themes. They were written in an era that
witnessed a remarkable revival of interest in foreign missions. The
famous "Haystack Meeting" at Williams College, which marked the beginning
of the modern missionary movement in America, was held in 1806, just two
years before Smith was born. Smith himself, while a theological student
at Andover, caught the spirit of the times and felt constrained to become
a missionary.

At this time reports came from Adoniram Judson in Burmah that, after
years of painful disappointment and failure, the light was breaking, and
multitudes were turning to Christ. Smith was fired with hopeful
enthusiasm, and it was in this spirit of glad exultation that he sat down
to write his immortal missionary hymn:

The morning light is breaking,
The darkness disappears;
The sons of earth are waking
To penitential tears.

Many other missionary hymns came from the gifted writer in succeeding
years, and immediately after his graduation from Andover he became editor
of a missionary magazine, through which he wielded a great influence.
When t