ritten for the Fourth of July
celebration, in Park Street Church, Boston, in 1832, and has become our
national hymn. When I met the genial old man in Sweden, and travelled
with him for several days, he was on his way home from a missionary tour
in India and Burmah. He told me that he had heard the Burmese and
Telugus sing in their native tongue his grand missionary hymn, "The
Morning Light is Breaking." He was a native Bostonian, and was born a
few days before Ray Palmer. He was a Baptist pastor, editor, college
professor, and spent the tranquil summer evening of his life at Newton,
Mass.; and at a railway station in Boston, by sudden heart failure, he
was translated to his heavenly home. He illustrated his own sweet
evening hymn, "Softly Fades the Twilight Ray."

Among the elect-ladies who have produced great uplifting hymns that
"were not born to die" was Mrs. Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, the daughter
of the saintly Dr. Edward Payson, of Portland, Maine. Her prose works
were very popular, and "Stepping Heavenward" had found its way into
thousands of hearts. But one day she--in a few hours--won her
immortality by writing a hymn, beginning with the lines,

"More love to Thee, O Christ,
More love to Thee"

It was printed on a fly-sheet, for a few friends, then found its way
into a hymn-book, edited by my well-beloved friend, Dr. Edwin F.
Hatfield, and then it took wing and flew over the world into many
foreign languages. I often met Mrs. Prentiss at the home of her husband,
Dr. George L. Prentiss, an eminent professor in the Union Theological
Seminary. She was a very bright-eyed little woman, with a keen sense of
humor, who cared more to shine in her own happy household than in a wide
circle of society. Her absolutely perfect hymn--for such it truly
is--was born of her own deep longings for a fuller inflow of that love
that casteth out all fear. This has been the genesis of all the
soul-songs that devout disciples of our Lord chant into the ears of
their Master in their hours of sweetest and closest fellowship. Mrs.
Prentiss has put a new song into the mouths of a multitude of those who
are "stepping heavenward."

CHAPTER V

THE TEMPERANCE REFORM AND MY CO-WORKERS

As stated in the first chapter of this book, I became a teetotaler when
I was a child, and I also stated that the first public address I ever
delivered was in behalf of temperance. When I made my first visit to
Edinburgh in 1842 I learned t