Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/146

 134 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED

powerful reinforcement to my projected hymn-book. A few more such, and I shall neither need nor wait for the aid of Scott and Southey. Most sincerely, I have not seen any hymns of the kind which more completely correspond to my ideas of what such compositions ought to be, or to the plan, the outline of which it has been my wish to fill up.

Hymn 148. O help us, Lord I each hour of need.

HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D. (147).

First published in Heber s Hymns, 1827. Based on the Gospel for the Second Sunday in Lent, Matt. xv. 25.

Hymn 149. There were ninety and nine that safely lay.

ELIZABETH CECILIA CLEPHANE.

The writer was the third daughter of Andrew Clephane, Sheriff of Fife, and was born in Edinburgh in 1830. Her hymns appeared in the Family Treasury under the title, Breathings on the Border. The editor, the Rev. W. Arnot, said in introducing the first hymn, Beneath the Cross of Jesus, These lines express the experiences, the hopes, and the long ings of a young Christian lately released. Written on the very edge of this life, with the better land fully in the view of faith, they seem to us footsteps printed on the sands of Time, where these sands touch the ocean of Eternity. These footprints of one whom the Good Shepherd led through the wilderness into rest, may, with God s blessing, contribute to comfort and direct succeeding pilgrims. She died in 1869. This hymn appeared in the Children s Hour in 1868, and afterwards in the Family Treasury, 1 874, p. 595. Mrs. Pitman says (Lady Hymn- Writers, p. 262) she remembers hearing it sung in a little upper room at Weston- super-Mare, by an evangelist, some years before it became popular. Miss Clephane, by this hymn, has set in motion a sermon on the love of Christ which will never die as long as the English tongue is spoken. Only in the last great day will it be known how many wandering sheep have been brought to Jesus by its means. Mr. Sankey saw it in the Christian Age during his first mission in Scotland. The idea of the tune came to him during a Conference on The Good

�� �