music for Sunday schools, gospel meetings, etc.;
also a _Methodist Hymn and Tune Book_, 1866. He composed a great number
of tunes, but wrote no hymns. Some of his books were published in
London, for he was a cosmopolitan singer, and traveled through Europe
and Australia as well as America. Died in Delaware, O., June 25, 1875.

"NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE."

Mr. William Stead, fond of noting what is often believed to be the
"providential chain of causes" in everything that happens, recalls the
fact that Benjamin Flower, editor of the _Cambridge Intelligencer_,
while in jail (1798) at the instigation of Bp. Watson for an article
defending the French Revolution, and criticising the Bishop's political
course, was visited by several sympathizing ladies, one of whom was Miss
Eliza Gould. The young lady's first acquaintance with him there in his
cell led to an attachment which eventuated in marriage. Of that marriage
Sarah Flower was born. By the theory of providential sequences Mr. Stead
makes it appear that the forgotten vindictiveness of a British prelate
"was the _causa causans_ of one of the most spiritual and aspiring hymns
in the Christian Hymnary."

"Nearer, My God, to Thee" was on the lips of President McKinley as he
lay dying by a murderer's wicked shot. It is dear to President Roosevelt
for its memories of the battle of Las Quasimas, where the Rough Riders
sang it at the burial of their slain comrades. Bishop Marvin was saved
by it from hopeless dejection, while practically an exile during the
Civil War, by hearing it sung in the wilds of Arkansas, by an old woman
in a log hut.

A letter from Pittsburg, Pa., to a leading Boston paper relates the name
and experience of a forger who had left the latter city and wandered
eight years a fugitive from justice. On the 5th of November, (Sunday,)
1905, he found himself in Pittsburg, and ventured into the Dixon
Theatre, where a religious service was being held, to hear the music.
The hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee" so overcame him that he went out
weeping bitterly. He walked the floor of his room all night, and in the
morning telephoned for the police, confessed his name and crime, and
surrendered himself to be taken back to the Boston authorities.

Mrs. Sarah Flower Adams, author of the noble hymn (supposed to have been
written in 1840), was born at Harlow, Eng., Feb. 22, 1805, and died
there in 1848. At her funeral another of her hymns was sung, ending--

When falls