Chief of all the auxiliary circumstances which aided the Great Revival, beyond a question, was this: that it taught the people of England, for the first time, the real power of sacred song. That man in the north of England who, when taken, by a companion who had been converted, to a great Methodist preaching, and being asked at the close of the service how he had enjoyed it, replied, “Weel, I didna care sae mich aboot the preaching, but, eh, man! yon ballants were grand,” was no doubt a representative character. And the great and subduing power of large bodies of people, moved as with one heart and one voice, must have greatly aided to produce those effects which we are attempting to realise. All great national movements have acknowledged and used the power of song. For man is a born singer, and if he cannot sing himself he likes to feel the power of those who can. It has been so in political movements: there were the songs of the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. And the greatest religious movements through all the Christian ages have acknowledged the power of sacred song, even from the days of the apostles, and from the time of St. Ambrose in Milan. Luther soon found that he must teach the people to sing. That is a pleasant little story, how once, as he was sitting at his window, he heard a blind beggar sing. It was something about the grace of God, and Luther says the strain brought tears into his eyes. Then, he says, the thought suddenly flashed into his mind, “If I could only make gospel songs which people could sing, and which would spread themselves up and down the cities!” He directly set to work upon this inspiration, and let fly song after song, each like a lark mounting towards heaven’s gate, full of New Testament music. “He took care,” says one writer, in mentioning the incident, “that each song should have some rememberable word or refrain; such as ‘Jesus,’ ‘Believe and be saved,’ ‘Come unto Me,’ ‘Gospel,’ ‘Grace,’ ‘Worthy is the Lamb,’ and so on.”