“This hymn by Charles Wesley ... has long been accepted as the best English Easter Hymn” was the positive statement made by W. T. Stead. Unquestionably it is also sung more frequently than any other selection in our American churches on Easter Sunday. The author once went through the published Easter Sunday morning programs of twenty-nine churches of various denominations of a city near his home at that time. This hymn appeared in all but three of the programs, and mostly it was the opening selection. Poetic language asks the question: “Where’s thy victory, boasting grave?” Then it gives the assuring reply: “Love’s redeeming work is done Alleluia! Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!” Friday, July 23, 1742, John Wesley was with his beloved mother. “Her look was calm and serene,” said he, “and her eyes fixed upward, while we commended her soul to God. Soon the soul was set at liberty. There was no struggle. Those present then stood round the bed, and fulfilled her last request, uttered a little while before she lost her speech, ‘Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.’” The passion-tide and an Easter message is summed up in the undying words of one of the singing sons of that honored mother which the family and friends of Grace Beaven sang on that Easter Monday soon after, being released from suffering, she joined the great multitude of the singing company in the celestial city. What other hymn has such a triumphant climax? “Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia! Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!” Mother’s Hymn at Eventide A little girl would clutch her mother’s hand and the two would go through the tall grass of an English meadow to a stile. There they both loved to stand to watch the sunset. Just when the last crimson streak was dying in the west, the mother would sing, in her rich Welsh voice: “Forever with the Lord! Amen, so let it be; Life from the dead is in that word, ’Tis immortality.” The manner in which the woman greeted the passing of the day left a memory with the young daughter which the latter carried with her through the years, and brought with her when she came to America. “Sing, kitten,” the mother would sometimes exclaim. Then, with faces still set westward, the daughter would chirp with her little voice, and the two would sing: “Here in the body pent, Absent from Him I roam, Yet nightly pitch my moving tent A day’s march nearer home.” The girl was still young when her mother reached “The bright inheritance of saints, Jerusalem above;” but she carried with her the memory of being led into a room where she saw her father kneeling by the bed, with his face hidden in his hands. The clergyman was there administering Holy Communion; also present was the family physician. An older sister was sobbing.