THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 30!
The first of these verses sums up many a thrilling scene in the early life of Newton. It illustrates his own words, I commit my soul to my gracious God and Saviour, who mercifully spared me when I was an apostate, a blasphemer, and an infidel, and delivered me from that state of misery on the coast of Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me, and who has pleased to admit me (though most unworthy) to preach His glorious gospel.
A lady wrote from the Citadel of Cairo to Mr. Stead, It is the hymn that I love best of the hundreds that I know ; it has helped me scores of times in the dark days of my life, and has never failed to inspire me with fresh hope and confidence when life looked " dark and dreary " ; and it is dear to me from associations with the memory of the best of fathers. To him, in his many and sore troubles, it was a source of comfort and help, and, I believe, was to him a sort of link by which he held on to God. To me the words are not doggerel at all, they are just lovely. I often go about singing them when alone to help me on the way.
Mr. Stead says that the hymn has helped him more than any other. I can remember my mother singing it when I was a tiny boy, hardly able to see over the book-ledge in the minister s pew ; and to this day, whenever 1 am in doleful dumps, and the stars in their courses appear to be fighting against me, that one doggerel verse comes back clear as a blackbird s note through the morning mist : " His love in time past forbids me to think." The verse has been as a lifebuoy, keeping my head above the waves when the sea raged and was tempestuous, and when all else failed.
Hymn 493. Our Father, at Thy feet we bow. MARY BERTHA BRADFIELD.
Miss Bradfield, of Kingsclere, Newbury, is the sister of Revs. William and Alfred Bradfield, Weslcyan ministers. This hymn is from her Songs of Faith and Hope and Love (Charles H. Kelly, 1898).
Hymn 494. I do not ask, O Lord, that life may be.
ADELAIDE A. PROCTER (379). Resignation, in her Legends and Lyric s t enlarged edition, 1862.
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