JOHN BOWRING.

"In the Cross of Christ I Glory."

In this hymn we see, sitting humbly at the feet of the great author of
our religion, a man who impressed himself perhaps more than any other
save Napoleon Bonaparte upon his own generation, and who was the wonder
of Europe for his immense attainments and the versatility of his powers.
Statesman, philanthropist, biographer, publicist, linguist, historian,
financier, naturalist, poet, political economist--there is hardly a
branch of knowledge or a field of research from which he did not enrich
himself and others, or a human condition that he did not study and
influence.

Sir John Bowring was born in 1792. When a youth he was Jeremy Bentham's
political pupil, but gained his first fame by his vast knowledge of
European literature, becoming acquainted with no less than thirteen[9]
continental languages and dialects. He served in consular appointments
at seven different capitals, carried important reform measures in
Parliament, was Minister Plenipotentiary to China and Governor of Hong
Kong, and concluded a commercial treaty with Siam, where every previous
commissioner had failed. But in all his crowded years the pen of this
tireless and successful man was busy. Besides his political, economic
and religious essays, which made him a member of nearly every learned
society in Europe, his translations were countless, and poems and hymns
of his own composing found their way to the public, among them the
tender spiritual song,--

How sweetly flowed the Gospel sound
From lips of gentleness and grace
When listening thousands gathered round,
And joy and gladness filled the place,

--and the more famous hymn indicated at the head of this sketch.
Knowledge of all religions only qualified him to worship the Crucified
with both faith and reason. Though nominally a Unitarian, to him, as to
Channing and Martineau and Edmund Sears, Christ was "all we know of
God."

[Footnote 9: Exaggerated in some accounts to _forty_.]

Bowring died Nov. 23, 1872. But his hymn to the Cross will never die:

In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.

When the woes of life o'ertake me
Hopes deceive, and fears annoy,
Never shall the cross forsake me;
Lo! it glows with peace and joy.

When the sun of bliss is beaming
Light and love upon my way