Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/359

 THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 347

1833, he sat down on his bed at Castro-Giovanni and began to sob violently. He told his servant, I have a work to do in England.&quot; He was aching to get home, but had to wait three weeks at Palermo for a vessel. At last I got off in an orange- boat, bound for Marseilles. Then it was that I wrote the lines, &quot; Lead, kindly Light,&quot; which have since become well known. We were becalmed a whole week in the Straits of Bonifacio. I was writing verses the whole time of my passage. He got home to his mother s house on Tuesday, and on the following Sunday, July 14, 1833, Keble preached the sermon in the university pulpit which Newman ever regarded as the beginning of the Oxford Movement.

Various explanations have been given of the line, And with the morn those angel faces smile, which Mrs. Tail put in the Deanery at Carlisle beneath the picture of the five children whom she lost there in March and April, 1856. In 1879, when Newman was appealed to as interpreter, he pleaded that he was not bound to remember his own meaning at the end of almost fifty years. Anyhow, there must be a statute of limita tion for writers of verse, or it would be quite tyranny if in an art, which is the expression, not of truth, but of imagination and sentiment, one were obliged to be ready for examination on the transient states of mind which came upon one when home sick, or sea-sick, or in any other way sensitive, or excited. The meaning which one naturally puts upon it of reunion of friends in heaven seems much the best. The hymn was largely used and greatly blessed in the Welsh Revival of 1905.

Mr. Gladstone was once asked to name his favourite hymns. He replied that he scarcely knew whether he had a favourite or not. On the impulse of the moment, he mentioned Lead, kindly Light and Rock of Ages. Newman said to a friend who congratulated him on the hymn, It is not the hymn that has gained the popularity, but the tune. The tune is by Dykes, and Dr. Dykes was a great master. Bishop Bickersteth added a verse in the Hymnal Companion, but it has not won any hold on public favour

Meantime, along the narrow rugged path

Thyself hast trod, Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,

Home to my God, To rest for ever after earthly strife In the calm light of everlasting life.

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