early morning service at the time that it occurred, and when a great cry of terror arose from the women and children in the assembly, he left the text he had given out, and shouted, Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed.' Charles Wesley himself found, in this awful visitation, the inspiration of some stirring hymns-among them one in which the words, 'Look up and see your Lord appear,' is the refrain of every verse. The following hymn appeared the year after the great catastrophe at Lisbon :

'Stand the omnipotent decree !
Jehovah's will be done!
Nature's end we wait to see,
And hear her final groan.
Let this earth dissolve, and blend
In death the wicked and the just;
Let those ponderous orbs descend,
And grind us into dust.

'Rests secure the righteous man!
At his Redeemer's beck,
Sure to emerge and rise again,
And mount above the wreck.

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Lo! the heavenly spirit towers

Like flame, o'er nature's funeral pyre, Triumphs in immortal powers, And claps his wings of fire!

'Nothing hath the just to lose

By worlds on worlds destroyed;
Far beneath his foot he views,
With smiles, the flaming void.
Sees the universe renewed,

The grand millennial reign begun ;
Shouts, with all the sons of God,

Around the eternal throne.

Resting in this glorious hope
To be at last restored,
Yield we now our bodies up

To earthquake, plague, or sword;
Listening for the call divine,

The latest trumpet of the seven, Soon our souls and dust shall join, And both fly up to heaven.'

The following is a free translation of a hymn composed by Thomas Aquinas :

'Good and tender Shepherd, hear us!

Bread of Heaven, in love come near us !

Feed us, lead us, and defend us,

Make us see whate'er Thou send us ;

In the land of earthly living

Is Thy wise and gracious giving.

6

'Thou, who feedst us here as mortals, Ordering all things that befall us, Safe within celestial portals,

Oh! at last, in mercy call us!

'Take us to the realms of love,
Fold us with Thy flock above;
Let the peerless name be given,
"Heirs and denizens of heaven!"

In early Christian Art the symbol of the Good Shepherd and the sheep is frequently given, and richly illustrated. Tertullian incidentally mentions it as even being painted on the communion-cups, or chalices of glass, in that early age.-Dr. Macduff.

Very many, and these among the most glorious, compositions in the hymn-book of Protestant Germany date from the period of the Thirty Years' War. Many men,' as a poet of our own has said,

Are cradled into poetry by wrong,

And learn in suffering what they teach in song.'

So was it in his case; and as this was a time full of suffering and wrath

and wrong-doing, so was it also a time when sacred song-which since Luther had shown comparatively little vitality—burst forth with a new luxuriance, and it may be noticed as remarkable, that it is rich, not so much as one might beforehand have expected, in lamentations, in Misereres, and in cries of De profundis (though these also are not wanting), as in Te Deums and Magnificats, hymns of high hope and holy joy, rising up from the darkness and distress of this world to the throne of Him who giveth songs in the night,' and enables His servants to praise Him even in the fires. Some among the chief sufferers by these prolonged and terrible wars-Paul Gerhard, for instance, and Schirmer (the German 'Job,' as he called himself, with allusion to all that he had gone through)—were also the chief lyrists. -Trench, in the Thirty Years' War.'

The following hymn was composed by Paul Gerhard at a time of peculiar distress and perplexity, when no help seemed likely to come to him :

'Commit thy way to God

The weight which makes thee faint; Worlds are to Him no load,

To Him breathe thy complaint.
He who for winds and clouds
Maketh a pathway free,
Through wastes, or hostile crowds,
Can make a way for thee.

'Thou must in Him be blest,
Ere bliss can be secure ;
On His work must thou rest,
If thy work shall endure.
To anxious, prying thought,
And weary, fretting care,
The Highest yieldeth nought-
He giveth all to prayer.

'Father! Thy faithful love,

Thy mercy, wise and mild,
Sees what will blessing prove,
Or what will hurt Thy child.
And what Thy wise foreseeing
Doth for Thy children choose,
Thou bringest into being,

Nor sufferest them to lose.

'All means always possessing,
Invincible in might,
Thy doings are all blessing,
Thy goings are all light.
Nothing Thy work suspending,

No foe can make Thee pause,
When Thou, Thine own defending,
Dost undertake their cause.