“Come, ye saints, and raise an anthem, Cleave the skies with shouts of praise, Sing to Him who found a ransom, Ancient of eternal days. Bring your harps, and bring your odours, Sweep the string and pour the lay; View His works! behold His wonders! Let hosannas crown the day!” The hymn is far too long for quotation. Job Hupton was a Baptist minister in the neighbourhood of Beccles, where he died in 1849, in the eighty-eighth year of his age, and the sixty-fifth of his ministry. Thus there was set free throughout the country a spirit of sacred song which was new to the experience of the nation: it was boldly evangelical; it was devoted, not to the eulogy of Church forms and days; there was not a syllable of Mariolatry; but praise to Christ, earnest meditation upon the state of man without His work, and the blessedness of the soul which had risen to the saving apprehension of it. This forms the whole substance of the Divine melody. It has seemed to some that the most perfect hymn in the English language is, “Jesus! lover of my soul.” Sentiments may differ, arising from modifications of experience, but that hymn undoubtedly is the very essence of all the hymns which were sung in the days of the Great Revival. For the first time there was given to Christian experience that which met it at every turn. Watts found such a choir, and such an audience for his devotions, as he had never known in his life; and “Charles Wesley,” says Isaac Taylor, “has been drawing thousands in his wake and onward, from earth to heaven.” The hymns met and united all companies and all societies. The bridal party returned from church, singing, “We kindly help each other, Till all shall wear the starry crown.” If they gathered round the grave, they sang;—and what a variety of glorious funereal hymns they had! But that was a great favourite: “There all the ship’s company meet, Who sailed with their Saviour beneath; With shoutings each other they greet, And triumph o’er sorrow and death.” Few separations took place without that song, “Blest be the dear uniting love, That will not let us part.” While others became such favourites that even almost every service had to be hallowed by them; such as, “Jesus! the name high over all, In hell, or earth, or sky;” while an equal favourite almost, was, “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer’s praise!”