the reader with the transcendent love and value of Christ's atonement. With these thoughts glowing like a vision in his mind, he then added:

Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee;

Let the water and the blood,
From thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,

Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfil thy law's demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears for ever flow,
All for sin could not atone,
Thou must save, and thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress,
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

Whilst I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eyestrings break in death;
When I soar through tracts unknown,
See thee on thy judgment throne,
Rock of ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in thee.

The above is the original version, from which it will be seen that the hymn in common use has been greatly transposed and altered.

It was composed in Toplady's last years, when he already felt that he was beginning to lose his hold on

lite, and that his feet were already standing on celestial altitudes. Some two years afterwards, when he was yet but thirty-eight years of age, the full time of his departure came, and he found the prayer in the last stanza of his hymn fully and sweetly answered in the revelation of Divine love to his soul. He seemed to walk in Beulah, to breathe immortal airs and to hear the tuning of unseen harps, and by faith to discover what the Protomartyr saw and the Revelator described.

"Your pulse," said the doctor, "is becoming weaker." "That is a good sign," said Toplady, "that my death is fast approaching, and I can add that my heart beats every day stronger and stronger for glory."

As his end drew immediately near, tears of joy filled his eyes, before which already seemed to pass visions of Paradise, and he exclaimed: "It will not be long before God takes me, for no mortal can live after the glories God has manifested to my soul."

The following hymn, which furnishes a picture of his religious consolations, confidence and hope, was written during one of these periods of illness, that gradually wasted his strength, and brought him constantly in face with death and the eternal world:

When languor and disease invade

This trembling house of clay,
'Tis sweet to look beyond my pains,
And long to fly away;

Sweet to look inward, and attend

The whispers of his love;

Sweet to look upward, to the place

Where Jesus pleads above;

Sweet to look back, and see my name
In life's fair book set down;
Sweet to look forward, and behold
Eternal joys my own;

Sweet to reflect how grace divine
My sins on Jesus laid;

Sweet to remember that his blood
My debt of suffering paid;

Sweet to rejoice in lively hope,

That, when my change shall come,
Angels shall hover round my bed,
And waft my spirit home.

If such the sweetness of the stream,

What must the fountain be,

Where saints and angels draw their bliss
Directly, Lord, from thee.

The following Latin version of Rock of Ages, is by Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone:

JESUS, pro me perforatus,
Condar intra tuum latus;
Tu per lympham profluentem,
Tu per sanguinem tepentem,
In peccata mî redunda,
Tolle culpam, sordes munda!

Coram Te nec justus forem
Quamvis totâ vi laborem,
Nec si fide nunquam cesso,
Fletu stillans indefesso;
Tibi soli tantum munus-

Salva me, SALVATOR Unus!

Nil in manu mecum fero,

Sed me versus crucem gero:
Vestimenta nudus oro,

Opem debilis imploro,

Fontem CHRISTI quæro immundus,

Nisi laves, moribundus.

Dum hos artus vita regit,
Quando nox sepulcro tegit;
Mortuos quum stare jubes,
Sedens Judex inter nubes;-
JESUS, pro me perforatus,

Condar intra tuum latus!

The following hymn, by Toplady, is not found in many of the standard hymn-books:

FULL ASSURANCE.

A DEBTOR to mercy alone,

Of covenant mercy I sing,

Nor fear, with thy righteousness on,
My person and offering to bring.

The terrors of law and of God

With me can have nothing to do,
My Saviour's obedience and blood
Hide all my transgressions from view.

The work which his goodness began,
The arm of his strength will complete;

His promise is yea and amen,

And never was forfeited yet.

Things future, nor things that are now,
Nor all things below nor above,

Can make him his purpose forego,
Or sever my soul from his love.

My name from the palms of his hands
Eternity cannot erase,

Impressed on his heart it remains,
In marks of indelible grace.

Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given;
More happy, but not more secure,
The glorified spirits in heaven.

"GUIDE ME, O THOU GREAT JEHOVAH." THE much-used hymn, beginning,

"Guide me, O thou great Jehovah !"

is attributed to Olivers in nearly all American collections of hymns. We find it so credited in some of the more careful compilations, among them, "Hymns for the Church Militant." It was written by William Williams, a Welsh preacher in the Welsh Calvinist-Methodist connection, in the times of Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon. Olivers, who was a musician as well as a poet, and himself a Welshman, supplied the music, and so his name became accidentally associated with the authorship of the hymn.

William Williams, or Williams of Pantycelyn, who has been called the Watts of Wales, was born in 1717, in the parish of Llanfair-ar-y-bryn, in Carmarthenshire.

His conversion forms an interesting part of his student-history. He was awakened to the importance of personal religion while listening to the words of the once famous preacher, Howel Harris, in Talgarth churchyard.