hymnology as this Tersanctus
of Bishop Heber.

The Rt. Rev. Reginald Heber, son of a clergyman of the same name, was
born in Malpas, Cheshire, Eng., April 21st, 1783, and educated at
Oxford. He served the church in Hodnet, Shropshire, for about twenty
years, and was then appointed Bishop of Calcutta, E.I. His labors there
were cut short in the prime of his life, his death occurring in 1826, at
Trichinopoly on the 3d of April, his natal month.

His hymns, numbering fifty-seven, were collected by his widow, and
published with his poetical works in 1842.

Holy! holy! holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee.
Holy! holy! holy! merciful and mighty,
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.

Holy! holy! holy! all the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim, falling down before Thee,
Which wert, and art, and evermore shall be.

_THE TUNE._

Grand as the hymn is, it did not come to its full grandeur of sentiment
and sound in song-worship till the remarkable music of Dr. John B. Dykes
was joined to it. None was ever written that in performance illustrates
more admirably the solemn beauty of congregational praise. The name
"Nicaea" attached to the tune means nothing to the popular ear and mind,
and it is known everywhere by the initial words of the first line.

Rev. John Bacchus Dykes, Doctor of Music, was born at
Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1823; and graduated at Cambridge, in 1847. He
became a master of tone and choral harmony, and did much to reform and
elevate congregational psalmody in England. He was perhaps the first to
demonstrate that hymn-tune making can be reduced to a science without
impairing its spiritual purpose. Died Jan. 22, 1876.

"LORD OF ALL BEING, THRONED AFAR."

This noble hymn was composed by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, born in
Cambridge, Mass., 1809, and graduated at Harvard University. A physician
by profession, he was known as a practitioner chiefly in literature,
being a brilliant writer and long the leading poetical wit of America.
He was, however, a man of deep religious feeling, and a devout attendant
at King's Chapel, Unitarian, in Boston where he spent his life. He held
the Harvard Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology more than fifty
years, but his enduring work is in his poems, and his charming volume,
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. Died Jan. 22, 1896.