Let us seek the same close and joyful communion with our Lord Jesus, the same realization of union with Him, the same spirit of praise that cannot keep silence, the same clear and steadfast gaze of faith, which brings the "shining shore" "almost within sight," and then may we strive, not all in vain, to follow William Pennefather as he followed Christ.

II.

CHARLOTTE ELLIOTT'S HYMNS.

ISS Elliott's hymns are all heartwork; and whether written in the first, second, or third person we feel that she has lived every line; and this is why they touch

other lives so magnetically. That which springs straight out of a living and beating heart is "poetry," and lives; that which does not is just "rhyming," and dies.

It may take many a year of living to produce a hymn which comes to the surface in one flash of thought, and is written in ten minutes. Even the writer does not know when the true making of that hymn began: perhaps far back in childhood, or among the "mists of the valley" which have been left behind years ago. Neither do our hymn-writers know how even to-day they are living out hymns unthought of, which will not be ready for the

"One has said, what doubtless many have felt:-'I would rather have written that one hymn,-" Just as I am,"-than all the sermons I ever preached."-PAGE 25.

readiest pen till ten or twenty years have fed the hidden and growing germ. But some sudden touch of earth's tears or heaven's sunlight will set them free, and the growth of half a lifetime will blossom in an hour. And that is not the end, for there may be fruit unto life eternal to follow.

Such hymns are generally the simplest: every line is plain and clear; but it is the clearness of depth, very different from the mystical muddiness of verse shallows, that have only been thought out, not lived out.

Such are Miss Elliott's hymns. Any one might have been written in half an hour, but more than half a century of patient suffering went to the making of them. "From early years she was more or less of an invalid," writes her sister, in the touching memorial* prefixed to her poems. It is rarely that a life so full of weakness and pain is prolonged for eighty-two years, before the silver cord is loosed.

But surely it was worth any suffering only to have written that one hymn, "Just as I am." Could any greater crown be set upon any life than to have been made God's messenger of peace to unknown thousands? We say thousands; but how could we count? All over the world that hymn has gone forth, and still goes-a bright, strong, heaven-sent

* "Selections from the Poems of Charlotte Elliott. With a Memoir by her Sister." London: The Religious Tract Society.