"I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAY"

I would not live alway; I ask not to stay

Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way;
The few lurid mornings that dawn on us here
Are enough for life's woes, full enough for its cheer.

I would not live alway, thus fettered by sin;
Temptations without, and corruption within;
E'en the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears,
And the cup of thanksgiving with penitent tears.

I would not live alway; no, welcome the tomb;
Since Jesus hath lain there, I dread not its gloom;
There sweet be my rest, till He bid me arise,
To hail Him in triumph descending the skies.

Who, who would live alway, away from his God,
Away from yon heaven, that blissful abode,

Where the rivers of pleasure flow o'er the bright plains, And the noontide of glory eternally reigns.

Where the saints of all ages in harmony meet,
Their Saviour and brethren, transported, to greet;
While the anthems of rapture unceasingly roll,
And the smile of the Lord is the feast of the soul?

This hymn had rather an unusual origin. A young lady asked Dr. Muhlenberg to write a verse in her autograph album. This was in 1824. He sat down and dashed off six eight-line verses, beginning, "I would not live alway." The hymn as we now have it is the same in sentiment, although he rewrote it a few years later, and gave it its present perfect form when he was asked to contribute a hymn for publication in the Episcopal Recorder, where it was first published, June 3, 1826. No credit was given to the author with the original publication. It, however,

soon became known who wrote it, and the hymn itself found its way quickly into a number of the standard American hymnals.

The words of this hymn have become inseparably linked with the tune "Frederick," which was composed and published by Mr. George Kingsley in 1833. Attempts have been made to give the hymn another tune, but words and melody so harmonize that the two are likely to continue to be used together.

The author, a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was a great-grandson of the Patriarch of the Lutheran Church, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. He was a grandson of the First Speaker of the United States. House of Representatives, Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg. He was lost to the Lutheran Church through the failure to provide English services when he was a boy. He thus attended an Episcopal Sunday school, and eventually became an Episcopal clergyman. He is known chiefly as an eduactor and philanthropist. He wrote a number of hymns. In addition to the above, perhaps his best-known hymns are "Like Noah's weary dove" and "Saviour, like a Shepherd lead us."

HYMNS CONCERNING DEATH AND BURIAL

USIC soothes; the message of the hymn comforts and reaches the soul. Facing eternity, with the grave opening, many have found in the words of some appropriate hymn the thoughts which have directed the mind, and in the melody the soothing of the soul. The true Christian often will, as death approaches, relive some of the happiest of his Christian experiences and find in them exactly that which he needs to carry him over the breakers on the bar into the depths of the joys of the eternal, to which his soul is translated. For this very reason messages which are found in many of the hymns of the living are the stay of the soul when dying. An incident will illustrate. The writer quoted in a Reformation address, some years ago, the words of that hymn of the Church:

"My Church! my Church! my dear old Church!

My fathers' and my own!

A lady in the audience impressed by it, secured the book containing it, learned it and frequently sang it. When English was introduced into her home church, she saw to it that the book to be used contained this hymn. Later, in a long illness which ended in her death, it was the means of bringing comfort and staying the faith of a patient sufferer who entered into life while those at her bedside, at her request, were repeating the words from this hymn: