Newton’s hymns are, even more than those of Watts or Doddridge, pastoral hymns. Other men wrote for the congregation, he wrote for his own particular congregation, and very often with a special reference to one member of it. We know that his sermons were suggested in this way. If ‘Sir Cowper’ had a bad fit, or the Vicarage maid, Molly, was ‘perplexed and tempted on the point of election,’ the kind-hearted pastor had a sermon and a hymn, suited to their ‘state,’ ready on Sunday. Many of Newton’s pieces express much more of Cowper’s experience than of his own. In such lines as the following is not his eye upon the sad figure in ‘the poet’s corner’ in the Great House? Sure the Lord thus far has brought me By His watchful tender care, Sure ’tis He Himself has taught me How to seek His face by prayer: After so much mercy past, Will He give me up at last? In my Saviour’s intercession Therefore I will still confide! Lord, accept my free confession, I have sinned, but Thou hast died: This is all I have to plead, This is all the plea I need. That is what he has to say of ‘Confidence’ from Cowper’s point of view. When he speaks for himself he adopts a different tone. Oh! I tremble still to think How secure I lived in sin; Sporting on destruction’s brink, Yet preserved from falling in. Come, my fellow-sinners, try, Jesu’s heart is full of love! Oh that you, as well as I, May His wondrous mercy prove. He has sent me to declare, All is ready, all is free: Why should any soul despair When He saved a wretch like me? Perhaps it was with Cowper in his mind he wrote that beautiful and touching hymn for private devotion, which has been often most unjustly censured—‘’Tis a point I long to know.’ Newton, like Bunyan, knew how sincere a pilgrim Mr. Little Faith was, and each in his own way sought to comfort him. There is good robust common sense in the prayer of the last two verses. In strength and beauty it does not compare with Cowper’s hymn on the same text, ‘Lovest thou Me?’ which Mr. Gladstone reckoned one of the three greatest English hymns; but it belongs to the Christian treasury, and has brought help to many. Lord, decide the doubtful case, Thou who art Thy people’s sun, Shine upon the work of grace, If it be indeed begun. Let me love Thee more and more, If I love at all, I pray; If I have not loved before, Help me to begin to-day. The tenderness of ‘the old African blasphemer’s’ heart is nowhere more touchingly illustrated than in his version of Isa. liv. 5-11, which must surely have been written for Cowper, since it quotes and emphasizes the words of his own great hymn. It has five eight-line verses, and is headed ‘To the Afflicted, Tossed with Tempest, and not Comforted.’