Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/198

 1 86 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED

A little memorandum-book is preserved of Mr. T. R. Allan s founder of the Allan Library. It is crowded with Bible promises of mercy to the penitent, interspersed with verses from the Wesleyan hymn-book. Every line reveals the yearn ing for God, and the humble faith which wins acceptance in His sight. Among the last entries in red ink is the third verse of this hymn, &quot;Assure my conscience of its part.&quot; The verse came from his soul. Opposite is written, &quot; What is wanted is not so much a general declaration of God s readiness to pardon sinners, but a sense of pardon actually bestowed and received, communicated and assured to the conscience by God s Holy Spirit, which Mr. Wesley described as a loving and obedient sight of a loving and present God. This he spoke of as a habit of the soul which constituted Faith. (I quote from some one whose name I forget).&quot;

��Hymn 249. Holy Spirit! pity me.

WILLIAM MACLARDIE BUNTING.

The Rev. W. M. Bunting (1805-66) was the eldest son of Rev. Jabez Bunting, D.D. His meditation on the words, Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out, as he crossed old London Bridge, is said to have led to his conversion in his seventeenth year. He entered the Wesleyan ministry in 1824. He was a preacher full of thought and tenderness, the soul of reverence and lofty aspiration. In his early days it is said that he became unboundedly popular, even with the multitude. From the first his sermons abounded in a certain tender poetry of thought and phrase. Not that he was profusely, still less affectedly, dramatically, illustrative ; but that, now and then, a light and a colour were thrown upon the composition, which not only beautified the places where they fell, but lit up and harmonized the whole landscape.

This hymn, headed Spiritual Sin, is based on Eph. iv. 30. It appeared in Dr. Leifchild s Original Hymns, 1842. It is profoundly touching and heart-searching. Some of his hymns were printed in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine with the signature Alec.

Little as he is known outside his own Church, his hymns are among the best loved and best used in Wesleyan Methodism. I cannot but think that some day he will be recognized as one

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