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 312 OUR HYMNS :

This is his 40th hymn. It has a fourth stanza which has been omitted.

&quot; To Thee, in ages past.&quot; No. 778.

If a hymn ought to be simple so that a congregation can at once understand it, yet full of thought in contrast with a succession of platitudes ; and if it ought to be perfect in form and yet easy and natural in manner ; and if it ought to have remembrances that touch the heart, and humble aspirations that lift it to heaven, then this piece, without pretending to be a poem, is good as a hymn. It is the first in the above-mentioned collection.

Mr. Bulmer was the author of &quot; Hymns and Evangelical Songs for the use of Sunday Schools&quot; this reached a sixth edition : and of &quot; Beauties of the Vicar of Llandovery ; Light from the Welshman s Candle.&quot; These are poems by Rees Prichard, who died 1644 they are translated from the Welsh. Also of &quot; The Christian Catechist,&quot; and of &quot;A Concise Statement of the Nature, Design, &c., of a Christian Church.&quot; Haverfordwest, 1813.

��SAMUEL FLETCHEE.

17851863.

&quot; Father of life and light.&quot; No. 980. &quot; Lord, as a family we meet.&quot; No. 982.

THESE family hymns were given to the Rev. Henry Allon for the &quot; New Congregational Hymn Book,&quot; (1855) by Samuel Fletcher, Esq., of Broornfield, near Manchester, a &quot; merchant prince&quot; of cultivated mind, who occasionally wrote in verse, and who about that time was improving the leisure supplied by an attack of ill ness, in preparing a collection of hymns for the use of his family. His collection was called &quot; Family Praise.&quot; It was published in 1850, and contained a small number of hymns by himself, includ ing the two above.

Samuel Fletcher was born at Compton, near Wolverhampton,

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