“A little while ago I was in a service where a minister of no little eminence was suddenly called on to pray. His response was simply the repeating of the entire hymn, whose first stanza reads: ‘My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary, Saviour Divine! Now hear me while I pray, Take all my guilt away, Oh, let me from this day Be wholly Thine!’ If one man’s experience was typical, that individual hymn with its ‘I’ and ‘My’ brought scores of people into a spiritual aggregate and made a ‘common supplication.’ “Much of the same thing happened in the bishops’ meeting not so long ago. We were having a prayer service, only that, and it must have continued for two and a half hours. One bishop’s prayer that night was simply a repeating of Whittier’s hymn: ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our feverish ways; Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise.’ As we were all on our knees we were led to treat that hymn as a public prayer; and it was at once an inspiring and exalting thing. Our services would be enriched beyond measure if only this spirit of prayer could be more definitely attached to the songs of our corporate worship.” Here is a personal testimony from Fanny Crosby concerning The Constant Companion of the Pilgrim Journey “Toward the close of a day in the year 1874, I was sitting in my room thinking of the nearness of God through Christ as the constant companion of the pilgrim journey, when my heart burst out with the words: ‘Thou my everlasting portion, More than friend or life to me, All along my pilgrim journey, Saviour, let me walk with Thee.’” How prayer is the inevitable opening for guidance is finely illustrated in the circumstances which resulted in the writing of “Lead, Kindly Light” This well-known hymn was written by John Henry Newman when, as a young clergyman of the Anglican Church, he lay sick and troubled in a vessel which was becalmed in the Gulf of Palermo. He was restless to return to England and perplexed concerning the future. His feelings were expressed on the afternoon of June 16, 1833, in this prayer for guidance. The well-known tune, “Lux Benigna,” to which it is usually sung, was composed in 1865 by Dr. J. B. Dykes as he walked through the crowded Strand in London. It was done in ten minutes in what might seem to have been an unfavorable place, and yet faith shows its power in overcoming distractions and difficulties, as was done by this musician.