Page:Our Hymns.djvu/379

 THEIE AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 359

in his fourteenth year, but having good natural abilities and great perseverance, he made amends for his early disadvantages by subsequent study.

His parents were originally Episcopalians, but being unable to obtain sittings at St. James s Church, which was near to their place of business, they went to Orange Street Chapel, where the Liturgy was read and the Gospel preached. Edward Swaine s pious mother, to whom he was much attached, exercised a most salutary influence over her only son ; so that he attended the preaching of the Gospel with the advantage of home preparation. In the course of his attendance at Orange Street Chapel, he heard a preacher who was only a temporary supply, and whose name even is now forgotten. Casting the seed without knowledge of the soil, this sower was honoured to sow one germ that &quot; lived and abode for ever,&quot; and, at the age of twenty, Mr. Swaine became a communicant in Orange Street Chapel. He had pre viously been a teacher in the Sunday-school ; and when, in 1823, the Christian Church was formed for which Craven Chapel was erected, Mr. Swaine was one of its first members, and elected one of its first deacons an office he filled with honour for about forty years, including the period of the long and successful pastorate of Dr. Leifchild, from 1831 to 1854, and a por tion of the pastorate of the Rev. John Graham, who attended him in his dying moments and preached his funeral sermon.

Mr. Swaine was a man of clear and strong intellect, decided in his own views and zealous in maintaining them, and he used his talents diligently in the Master s service, giving time and thought and money to those benevolent and Christian objects that enlisted his generous sympathies. He was also a man of public spirit, and not backward in wielding his pen against any manifest national or social wrongs. As a deacon of one of the largest and most active Churches in London, his official duties were very onerous, and, in addition, he was one of the directors of the London Missionary Society, and the founder and chairman of the &quot;Pastors Insurance Aid Society;&quot; and what-

�� �