Page:Our Hymns.djvu/362

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842 CUE HYMNS :

interest in hymnology, and he has most promptly and kindly given the benefit of his reminiscences and researches to the author of this work.

" Jesus, immortal King, ariae." No. 920.

This hymn, erroneously attributed in the " New Congregational " to Burder, appears in Mr. Seymour s "Vital Christianity," 1810, with three more verses. " It was written more than sixty years ago," says its author. At that period the mind of the writer was much perplexed and agitated on the subject of missions to the heathen, principally owing to a very intimate correspondence with a female relative, the wife of a missionary who had been dedicated to the work at Spafields Chapel, London, and was captured on board the missionary ship "Duff," in 1798. It was sent with another, commencing

" Awake ! all conquering arm, awake ! "

to the editor of the " Evangelical Magazine " some years after, when a younger brother, who had just then taken his degree in the University of Dublin, was accepted by the Directors of the London Missionary Society as a suitable person to send to Calcutta ; but the obstinate refusal of the East India Company at that time to the landing of missionaries in India caused a very considerable delay, and in the interval he was taken to his eternal reward. Mr. G. Burder inserted this hymn (920) in the small collection published by the Missionary Society, and hence the mistake in attributing the hymn to him. In 1813, Mr. Seymour heard this hymn given out at a monthly missionary prayer meeting at Lady Henrietta Hope s Chapel, at the Hotwells, Bristol, and recognized it as his own.

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