Then in a nobler, sweeter song I'll sing thy power to save; When this poor lisping, stammering tongue Lies silent in the grave. Lord, I believe Thou hast prepared, For me a blood-bought free reward, Tis strung, and tuned for endless years, JOY AND PEACE IN BELIEVING. Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings; With healing in his wings: In holy contemplation, It can bring with it nothing, JOHN NEWTON was born in London, July 24th, 1725. From the year 1736 to 1754, he followed a seafaring life. In 1764 he was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln to the curacy of Olney, where he continued for nearly sixteen years, and was then appointed to the rectory of St. Mary Woolnoth, London. He died on the 21st December, 1807, and was interred in his own church on the last day of that year. He wrote, jointly with Cowper, the Olney Hymns, and from those contributed by him, the two following, graphically experimental and analytic of the Christian life, are taken. LOVEST THOU ME? 'Tis a point I long to know, If I love, why am I thus ? Could my heart so hard remain, When I turn my eyes within, If I pray, or hear, or read, Yet I mourn my stubborn will, Could I joy his saints to meet, Lord, decide the doubtful case ! Let me love Thee more and more, THE INWARD WARFARE. Strange and mysterious is my life, Yet daily triumph in my Head. I prize the privilege of prayer, I seek his will in all I do, Yet find my own is working too. I call the promises my own And prize them more than mines of gold; I love the holy day of rest, When Jesus meets his gathered saints; While on my Saviour I rely, Thus different powers within me strive, ROBERT BURNS was born near Ayr, in the year 1759. To follow circumstantially a life in which passion and religion, circumstance and genius, wrestled continually together, would give no great number of facts in keeping with the natural idea of a writer of sacred verse. But indeed the productions of Burns in this kind are few; and the works of his biographers, critics, and eulogizers, are at every man's right hand. Burns died at Dumfries in 1796, "in disease, and in utter poverty, but without one farthing of debt." Hazlitt says, "In naiveté, in spirit, in characteristic humour, in vivid description of natural objects, and of the natural feelings of the heart, he has left behind him no superior." The second extract, from "The Cotter's Saturday Night," is a beautifully touching picture of "the saint, the father, and the husband," in the act of conducting the domestic devotions of humble life. The wintry West extends his blast, |