ppily in a haven of peace.

People of the living God
I have sought the world around,
Paths of sin and sorrow trod,
Peace and comfort nowhere found:

Now to you my spirit turns--
Turns a fugitive unblest;
Brethren, where your altar burns,
Oh, receive me into rest.

James Montgomery, son of Rev. John Montgomery, was born at Irvine,
Ayrshire, Scotland, Nov. 4, 1771, and educated at the Moravian Seminary
at Fulneck, Yorkshire, Eng. He became the editor of the _Sheffield
Iris_, and his pen was busy in non-professional as well as professional
work until old age. He died in Sheffield, April 30, 1854.

His literary career was singularly successful; and a glance through any
complete edition of his poems will tell us why. His hymns were all
published during his lifetime, and all, as well as his longer pieces,
have the purity and polished beauty, if not the strength, of Addison's
work. Like Addison, too, he could say that he had written no line which,
dying, he would wish to blot.

The best of Montgomery was in his hymns. These were too many to
enumerate here, and the more enduring ones too familiar to need
enumeration. The church and the world will not soon forget "The Home in
Heaven,"--

Forever with the Lord,
Amen, so let it be.
Life from the dead is in that word;
'Tis immortality.

Nor--

O where shall rest be found,

--with its impressive couplet--

'Tis not the whole of life to live
Nor all of death to die.

Nor the haunting sweetness of--

There is a calm for those who weep.

Nor, indeed, the hymn of Christian love just now before us.

_THE TUNE._

The melody exactly suited to the gentle trochaic step of the home-song,
"People of the living God," is "Whitman," composed for it by Lowell
Mason. Few Christians, in America, we venture to say, could hear an
instrument play "Whitman" without mentally repeating Montgomery's words.

"TO LEAVE MY DEAR FRIENDS."

This hymn, called "The Bower of Prayer," was dear to Christian hearts in
many homes and especially in rural chapel worship half a century ago and
earlier, and its sweet legato melody still lingers in the memories of
aged men and women.

Elder John Osborne, a New Hampshire preacher of the "Christian"
(_Christ-ian_) denomination, is said to have composed the tune (and
possibly the words) about 1815--though apparently the music was arranged
from a flute interlude in one of Ha