THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 279
nder-..> whose ministry his father had been converted. As the Moravians had no chapel at Sheffield, the poet continued to worship with the "Wesleyans. Treated as a martyr for principle, we might expect to find in Montgomery acerbity of disposition and severity of language, provoking such persecution and increased by it. But, on the contrary, he was peculiarly urbane and charitable in his disposition, and his writings are less marked for their assertion of dogmas than for their advocacy of Christianity as fruitful in whatsover is " pure, lovely, and of good report." Re ligious and benevolent objects found in him an earnest advocate, and he went on journeys to advocate the Bible and Moravian Mis sionary Societies. His hymns are valued as giving adequate ex pression to the best thoughts of believers, and even his secular pieces have a religious aim. He died in his sleep, April 30th, 1854, at the venerable age of eighty-two.
Willmott says of Montgomery that "he followed no leader in poetry, and belonged to no school, but appealed to universal prin ciples, to imperishable affections, and to the elements of our common nature." Without being a Milton or a Shakspere, there are in his poems flights of fancy and flashes of genius that sus tain his claim to the honoured name of poet. And in all his poems we mark his skill in versification, his purity of taste, and the excellence of his moral purpose.
Montgomery has laid the modern Christian church under great obligations by his hymns. In 1822 he published his " Songs of Zion, being Imitations of Psalms." This work consisted of sixty- seven pieces. The psalms are closely, as well as beautifully, rendered. Several of these are given in the " New Congregational Hymn Book." No. 206, his rendering of Psalm 122, may be taken as a favourable example. And in 1825 he published his " Christian Psalmist ; or Hymns Selected and Original." This work consists of 562 hymns, of which 103, most of which are placed at the end, are by Montgomery, and the rest are by various authors. It is from this work that most of Montgomery s hymns in the " New Congregational Hymn Book" are taken. In 1853
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