By this time the thanksgiving for the harvest was at hand: on the morning of that first of all would I summon the folk to their prayers with the sound of the full peal. And I wrote a little hymn of praise to the God of the harvest, modelling it to one of the oldest tunes in that part of the country, and I had it printed on slips of paper and laid plentifully on the benches. What with the calling of the bells, like voices in the highway, and the solemn meditation of the organ within to bear aloft the thoughts of those who heard, and came to the prayer and thanksgiving in common, and the message which God had given me to utter to them, I hoped that we should indeed keep holiday. Wynnie summoned the parish with the hundredth psalm pealed from aloft, dropping from the airy regions of the tower on village and hamlet and cottage, calling aloud--for who could dissociate the words from the music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?--written none the less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with laughing at their quaintness--calling aloud, "All people that on earth do dwell Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice; Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell-- Come ye before him and rejoice." Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the name of the Lord to serve him with _mirth_ as in the old version, and not with the _fear_ with which some editor, weak in faith, has presumed to alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had prepared--a proceeding justifiable by many an example in the history of the church while she was not only able to number singers amongst her clergy, but those singers were capable of influencing the whole heart and judgment of the nation with their songs. Ethelwyn played the organ. The song I had prepared was this: "We praise the Life of All; From buried seeds so small Who makes the ordered ranks of autumn stand; Who stores the corn In rick and barn To feed the winter of the land. We praise the Life of Light! Who from the brooding night Draws out the morning holy, calm, and grand; Veils up the moon, Sends out the sun, To glad the face of all the land. We praise the Life of Work, Who from sleep's lonely dark Leads forth his children to arise and stand, Then go their way, The live-long day, To trust and labour in the land. We praise the Life of Good, Who breaks sin's lazy mood, Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand. The furrowed waste They leave, and haste Home, home, to till their Father's land. We praise the Life of Life, Who in this soil of strife Casts us at birth, like seed from sower's hand; To die and so Like corn to grow A golden harvest in his land."