The swell of the closing appeal was thrilling. The men's voices were not to be surpassed. Their bass tones were distinctive of their class. It might be supposed that the inimitable deep round fulness, the organ-like tone of a Cornish miner's bass voice had some subtle relation to the peculiar atmospheric influences to which his lungs are subject; so that the music of his voice would seem like an unearthly remembrancer of the fact that a great proportion of Cornwall's subterranean workmen are doomed to an early death. Among the singers at that funeral there was one young man who appeared to be rapt while he sang. It seemed as if his music were that of pure spirit. How he kindled as he poured forth some of the last notes! There was something in his voice, something in his expression, something in the flow of light from his eye, which might be thought to mark him as the next to whom a summons from above would come. "Yes," thought one who looked at him that evening under the calm light of the setting sun, "you are singing your own requiem, young man !" And so it was. The one who noted the unmistakable token of his nearness to the land of his fathers, shortly found him on his deathbed. But he had not lost the spirit of that triumphant hymn. "I am going!" said he, "I am going! going early; but God has brightened my short life into a full one! Oh, those hymns! they have taught me to live in the light of the future! They have been 'my songs in the house of my pilgrimage'! How often while I have sung them down deep in the mine has the darkness been light about me! Never, since I learnt to praise God from my heart, have I begun to work in the rock for blasting, without stopping a moment to ask myself, 'Now, if the hole should go off about me, am I ready for heaven?' Sometimes, sir, there has been a little shrinking and some doubt, and then I have dropped on my knees, and asked God to bless me before I gave one stroke; and never did I pray in vain; my prayer has always passed into praise. And those blessed hymns have come bursting from my heart and lips as I have toiled at the point of death! Oh, sir! do you remember our singing at the last funeral ?" "Yes," it was replied, "and some thought then, that you would never sing again!" "Never sing again, sir! why, I Oh that glorious hymn, let us shall sing for ever! Oh! that we now might grasp our Guide! And land us... land... me. . . now in "Heaven!" he would have sung, but he was gone! He had joined another choir! Such uses and such fruits of funeral psalmody might have suggested the lines which a grandson of good Dr. Hawker of Plymouth, Wesley's contemporary, inscribed on the grave-stone of one of his young parishioners in the quiet burial place of Morwenstow, on the Cornish coast. The memorial verses are not unworthy of their author, nor of their title, "A Cornish Death-Song": Sing! from the chamber to the grave, A sound of melody I crave Upon my burial day! Bring forth some tuneful instrument, My spirit listen'd as it went Sing sweetly as you travel on, And keep the funeral show: The angels sing where I am gone, And you should sing below! Sing from the threshold to the porch, And sing you loudly in the church Then bear me gently to the grave; So earth to earth-and dust to dust- Until the judgment day! hapter XXIII. JUDGMENT HYMNS. "And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluiah; salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: for true and righteous are his judgments." ROM age to age the Christian Church has been listening in solemn awe to her Divine Master's utterance, When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He set upon the throne of his glory; and before Him shall be gathered all nations." Nor at any period since the time when the glory of the descending Judge filled the visions of apostles, has the Church entirely lost her sense of the Bridegroom's approach, there have been seasons of slumber, and many have fallen asleep; but watchful virgins have always kept their lamps trimmed and burning, with oil in their vessels, while their watchful hours have been kept vocal with successive songs of holy confidence and patient joyful hope. Scarcely have the tones of one hymn died away before another has been grandly swelling upon the ear of Christendom. In the fourteenth century the music of the Church was becoming faint. Truth was sending out its messages but in undertones. Spiritual religion was keeping up its struggling existence within narrow retreats. But even then, as in every crisis of Christian. history, there came awakening voices, such as those of Francis of Assissi, and his friend and biographer, Thomas of Celano; one, the great father of itinerant preaching friars; the other, that hymnist whose one judgment hymn roused the slumbering choirs of Europe, and still sends forth its deep and solemn music, making sinners' ears tingle, and thrilling the heart of every Christian generation. The hymn is the natural voice of the times which gave it birth. It is the voice of bondage rather than of freedom, of fearfulness rather than of joy. It is the language of a prodigal deprecating his Father's wrath rather than the utterance of a son jubilant in anticipation of his inheritance. Its tone is one of deeper humiliation than that of apostolic days; it is not equal to that "full assurance of hope" which the hymns of later times express. But it has doubtless helped many a heart to prepare for judgment, and brought timely comfort to many departing souls by its solemn and unearthly music. It has gathered deeper interest in the affections of many from its association with the last moments of Sir Walter Scott. He requested, as he neared the end, that a dear relative would read to him. "What book shall I read ?" it was asked, "What book?" said he, "there is but one!" Blessed book! that alone could show him his way; but after hearing God's voice, his soul fell back upon ancient songs. Some of the magnificent old hymns in which he had delighted were now murmured by the dying poet. Those who were gathered around "We have often heard distinctly the cadence him say, |