Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/442

 43 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED

This settles the question of locality ; but the illustration is Prior s (Solomon, iii. 613) :

Amid two seas on one small point of land,

Wearied, uncertain, and amazed we stand ;

On either side our thoughts incessant turn,

Forward we dread ; and looking back we mourn ;

Losing the present in this dubious haste ;

And lost ourselves betwixt the future and the past.

Addison, in the Spectator, No. 590, has a similar thought : Many witty authors compare the present time to an isthmus, or narrow neck of land, that rises in the midst of an ocean, immeasurably diffused on either side of it.

On July 30, 1743, Charles Wesley rode with Mr. Shepherd to the Land s End, and sang, on the extremest point of the rocks

Come, divine Immanuel, come, Take possession of Thy home ; Now Thy mercy s wings expand, Stretch throughout the happy land.

That hymn is given in his Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1749 ( Works, v. 133), headed Written at the Land s End.

Montgomery says, &quot; Thou God of glorious majesty &quot; is a sublime contemplation in another vein ; solemn, collected, unimpassioned thought, but thought occupied with that which is of everlasting import to a dying man, standing on the lapse of a moment between &quot; two eternities.&quot;

Death stands between Eternity and Time, With open jaws on such a narrow bridge, That none can pass, but must become his prey.

Hymn 843. This is the field, the world below. JOSEPH HINCHSLIFFE.

Mr. Hinchsliffe was born in Sheffield, 1760 ; died in Dumfries, 1807. He was a Sheffield silversmith and cutler ; a member of the Society at Norfolk Street, Sheffield, and of the choir. The hymn has been traced to a tract, Favourite Hymns, Odes, and Anthems, as sung at the Methodist Chapels in Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, and Nottingham Circuits, 5th edition, 1797, where J. Hinchsliffe appears under the title of No. 25. Mr. Hinchsliffe removed to Dumfries, where he

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