The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive and he shall be blessed upon the earth and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies."

Blest is the man whose softening heart

Feels all another's pain;

To whom the supplicating eye

Was never raised in vain.

Whose breast expands with generous warmth

A stranger's woes to feel;

And bleeds in pity o'er the wound
He wants the power to heal.

He spreads his kind supporting arms
To every child of grief;

His secret bounty largely flows,

And brings unasked relief.

To gentle offices of love

His feet are never slow;

He views, through mercy's melting eye,
A brother in a foe.

Peace from the bosom of his God,

The Saviour's grace shall give;

And, when he kneels before the throne,
His trembling soul shall live.

This essential feature of Christianity, human sympathy, is not magnified in our hymns at all commensurately with its importance, as emphasized in scripture.

The fact is that neither in its hymnology nor in its practice has the church, ever since the time of the apostles, meas

ured up to the specific requirements of the scripture in this respect; and this is the great reason why so many benevolent societies outside of the church, and sometimes in antagonism to it, have been organized and taken such a firm root in the hearts of men-Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias and hundreds of others. The Lord had expressly laid this duty and privilege upon His Church. We have not lived up to our blue china and these great benevolent societies have stepped in and appropriated the laurels which the church should have won and worn. While the church has been fighting over points of doctrine other organizations, though including many Christian individuals, have taken up and carried on the great work of practical human sympathy. All honor to the great good that these societies have done and are doing.

In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, 32 to 40, the Lord himself develops this vital feature of practical Christianity by telling us that a time will come when he will gather "all nations" of the human family into two great classes, without regard to their shades of belief, making the fulfillment of the law of Christian charity the dividing point, and will place them on the right and left, according to this rule, then to those on the right, say: "I was an hungered and ye gave me meat, thirsty and ye gave me drink, sick and imprisoned and ye visited me. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you." Then to those on the left, "Depart from me into everlasting punishment." Not because they had not believed in a sense a thousand great and good things, but because they had neither fed the hungry nor clothed the naked nor visited the suffering, nor considered the poor in any just sense.

Dean Swift once delivered a charity sermon in a few words, but drawing a mighty collection. He took for his text, "He that hath pity on the poor lendeth to the Lord," and the ser

mon was: "If you like the security down with your dust. The deacons now will kindly take up the collection.'

Charles H. Spurgeon tells a story of a good man who was laid up with a broken limb. His family depended upon his labor. The church appointed the weekly prayer meeting to be held at his house. They had a member who seemed a bit off color in his theological beliefs and who was neither asked nor expected at this meeting. He knew, however, that bread and butter did not grow spontaneously, especially with two feet of snow on the ground, and when the meeting was in full swing a scuffling was heard at the door, which a lady opened, saying, "Boys, don't make so much noise; there's a prayer meeting here." "Yessum, I know; father couldn't come, so he sent us. Johnny, pull the sled up close to the door. Mr. Harvey, here are some sugar and tea and apples and a sack of flour and some other things. Father will send a load of wood in the morning and Johnny and I will come and cut it up. night."

Good

Much righteous indignation was expressed at this worldly interruption, but a poor sister suggested the singing of an old hymn, beginning:

Deluded souls that dream of heaven

And make your empty boast;

This broke up the meeting.

A wonderful commentary upon this hymn and scripture referred to, though probably unintentional, is found in an incident related by Joe Mitchell Chapple in his great "Heart Throbs," credited to the Chicago Advance. A farmer's son had opened a doctor's office in a large city. Before people began to ring his bell intentionally he had a discouraging time of it, and about all his practice consisted of gratuitously walking the hospital. His father came to visit him. "Well, how are you getting on, my son?" "I'm not getting on at all; I'm not doing

anything," was the downhearted reply. The old gentleman sought to encourage and cheer him. After a bit the time came for the young doctor to make his unsalaried visit to the free dispensary. The father went with him and watched intently while some twentyfive patients received aid at the hands of the young practitioner. The door had hardly closed on the last patient before the old gentleman burst forth, “I thought you told me that you are doing nothing. If I had helped twentyfive people in six months as much as you have in one morning I would thank God that my life counted for something."

"But there's no money in it," said the somewhat abashed doctor. "Money," shouted the old man; "money!" What is money compared with being useful to your fellowmen? Never mind about the money; go right on at this work every day. I'll go back to the farm and gladly earn money enough to support you as long as I live-yes, and sleep soundly every night with the thought that I have helped you to help your fellows."

THE line of demarcation between a hymn and song seems to be rather shadowy. Webster's first definition of a hymn is "an ode or song of religious adoration." Johnson's is "a song of adoration to some superior being."

But these would exclude that splendid French national air always known as the "Marseilles hymn" and Lowell's hymnMen whose boast it is that ye

Come of fathers brave and free.

***

They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three.

And Sankey's great hymn

Sowing the seed by the daylight fair.

And Linnaeus Banks' hymn

I live for those who love me,
For those who know me true,
For the heaven that smiles above me
And awaits my spirit, too;

For the cause that wants assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance

And the good that I can do.

So, too, Bowring's masterful hymn, "Watchman, tell us of the night," would appear to be shut out.

The first verse of this hymn seems to remind one of Josephus' account of the watchman on the walls of Jerusalem. He tells of an unknown watchman who walked the walls of the sacred city seven years and five months, night and day, crying, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem," and who was killed by a stone from a Roman catapult.

Watchman, tell us of the night,

What its signs of promise are;
Traveler o'er yon mountain height,
See that glory beaming star.

And then the last glorious stanza calls up that royal word picture by Dr. Van Dyke, "The Other Wise Man.”

Watchman, let thy wanderings cease,

Hie thee to thy quiet home;
Traveler, lo, the prince of peace,

Lo, the son of God is come.

Nor would these dictionary definitions allow the following