126 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
On December 19, 1824, when Bishop Heber consecrated the church at Meerut, he says, I had the gratification of hearing my own hymns, " Brightest and best," and that for St. Stephen s Day ( The Son of God goes forth to war, ) sung better than I ever heard them in a church before. It is a remarkable thing that one of the earliest, the largest, and handsomest churches in India, as well as one of the best organs, should be found in so remote a situation, and in sight of the Himalaya mountains.
The MS. of this and other hymns by Heber is preserved in the British Museum. It is a compilation in two small exercise-books, with problems of Euclid on one side, possibly made by the bishop s children, and on the other side a small collection of hymns in the bishop s beautiful handwriting. The collection was made after he had seen the Olney Hymns, of which he was a great admirer, and was given to his friend Dean Milman.
Hymn 128. As with gladness men of old. WILLIAM CHATTERTON Dix (1837-98).
An Epiphany hymn, written for use at St. Raphael s, Bristol ; printed in the Rev. A. H. Ward s Supplement, 1860, and in Mr. Dix s Hymns of Love and Joy, 1861.
Mr. Dix was the son of John Dix, the Bristol surgeon, who wrote the Life of Chattcrton. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and became manager of a marine insurance company in Glasgow. He published several volumes of poetry and devotional works. His renderings of Greek and Abyssinian hymns deserve careful attention. Mr. Dix was recovering from a serious illness in 1860, when one evening the lines of this hymn took shape in his mind, and he committed them to paper. Lord Selborne considered it one of the finest English hymns. He brought it into notice in his paper on English Church Hymnody at the York Church Congress, 1866: I may be permitted to say, that the most favourable hopes may be enter tained of the future prospects of British hymnody, when among its most recent fruits is a work so admirable in every respect as the Epiphany Hymn of Mr. Chatterton Dix ; than which there can be no more appropriate conclusion to this lecture, " As with gladness men of old. ;)
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