The 23rd Psalm is also very beautiful, and is worthy to take its place amongst the many lovely renderings of this sweetest of the praises of Israel. I venture to quote the whole, as it is little known outside Wesleyan Methodism, and not too well known in our own Church. It is the 23rd Psalm read in the light of the tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Jesus the good Shepherd is; Jesus died the sheep to save; He is mine, and I am His; All I want in Him I have, Life, and health, and rest, and food, All the plenitude of God. Jesus loves and guards His own; Me in verdant pastures feeds; Makes me quietly lie down, By the streams of comfort leads: Following Him where’er He goes, Silent joy my heart o’erflows. He in sickness makes me whole, Guides into the paths of peace; He revives my fainting soul, Stablishes in righteousness; Who for me vouchsafed to die, Loves me still,—I know not why! Unappalled by guilty fear, Through the mortal vale I go; My eternal Life is near; Thee my Life, in death I know; Bless Thy chastening, cheering rod Die into the arms of God! Till that welcome hour I see, Thou before my foes dost feed; Bidd’st me sit and feast with Thee, Pour’st Thy oil upon my head; Giv’st me all I ask, and more, Mak’st my cup of joy run o’er. Love divine shall still embrace, Love shall keep me to the end; Surely all my happy days I shall in Thy temple spend, Till I to Thy house remove, Thy eternal house above! Dr. Watts’s ‘grand design’ in his version of the Psalter was ‘to teach’ the ‘author to speak like a Christian.’ Charles Wesley took St. Augustine’s view, that we ought to hear the voice of Christ in all the psalms. His version of Ps. xlv. is typical of his attitude toward the Psalter as a whole. My heart is full of Christ, and longs Its glorious matter to declare! Of Him I make my loftier songs, I cannot from His praise forbear; My ready tongue makes haste to sing The beauties of my heavenly King. In 1762 Charles Wesley took advantage of a time of physical weakness to write a large number of verses, forming a kind of running commentary on the Holy Scriptures. They are, for the most part, purely devotional; but the events of the time and, perhaps, of the day on which a poem was written are mirrored in some of the verses. In the preface he says— Many of the thoughts are borrowed from Mr. Henry’s _Commentary_, Dr. Gell on the _Pentateuch_, and Bengelius on the _New Testament_. Several of the hymns are intended to prove, and several to guard, the doctrine of Christian Perfection. I durst not publish one without the other. In the latter sort I use some severity. On this point the brothers differed, and especially as to the method of treating those who discredited the doctrine by extravagance in teaching or by inconsistency of life.