Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/317

 THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 305

Mr. Spurgeon used for some years to have the first or second verses, or both of them, chanted every Sunday in his public service just before the prayer.

Hymn 507. Prayer is the soul s sincere desire.

JAMES MONTGOMERY (94).

Written in 1818, at the request of Rev. E. Bickersteth, for his Treatise on Prayer, and printed on a broadsheet the same year for use in the Nonconformist Sunday schools of Sheffield. In the broadsheet ver. 6 begins, In prayer on earth the saints are one. When included in The Christian Fsalmisi, it was headed What is prayer ?

Montgomery says that he received more testimonies to the benefit derived from this hymn than about any other that he wrote. It represented his own daily spirit. On the last night of his life he conducted family prayer with special fervour. He retired at once, and in the morning was found unconscious on the floor of his bedroom. He lingered till the afternoon, but never spoke again. Prayer was his last voice.

Hymn 508. O Lord, how happy should we be.

JOSEPH AXSTICE.

Mr. Anstice was the son of William Anstice, of Madcley, Shropshire ; educated at Westminster and Christ Church, and gained two English prizes and a double-first at Oxford. He became Professor of Classics at King s College, London. He died of consumption at Torquay, February 26, 1836, at the age of twenty-eight. Fifty-two of his hymns were printed a few months after his death by his widow, as a memorial of the manner in which some of his leisure hours were employed, and of the subjects which chiefly occupied his thoughts during the last few months of his life. The hymns were dictated to his wife during the last few weeks of his life, and were composed just at the period of the day (the afternoon) when he felt the oppression of his illness all his brighter morning hours being given to his pupils up to the very day of his death.

Mr. Morley says in his Life of Gladstone (i. 55-8), that the friend who influenced Gladstone most at Oxford in the deepest things was Anstice, whom he describes to his father, June 4, 1830, as &quot;a very clever man, and more than a clever man, a

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