Another writer of high merit is the butcher’s son, Henry Kirke White (1785-1806), whose death at the early age of twenty-one years, after writing at the age of seventeen some poems of such merit as to arrest the attention of the literary world, was a distinct loss to English hymnody. How great that loss can be judged from the high quality of his “The Lord our God is clothed with might,” “Oft in danger, oft in woe,” and his Christmas hymn, “When marshaled on the nightly plain.” His struggles with poverty in seeking an education, with skepticism in finding peace of soul, with dread disease to which he had to succumb, invest his story with a poignant pathos. Another hymnist deserving attention was Bernard Barton (1784-1849), a Quaker banker, twenty of whose hymns came into general use. Two of them seem to have won a permanent place in our hymnody, “Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace” and “Walk in the light! so shalt thou know”—not great hymns, but extremely useful. Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847) entered the church as a profession, but presently was led into a deep religious experience by attending the dying bed of a neighboring clergyman who, too, had looked upon his work as a means of livelihood. The fruit of this experience was the hymns that have been so loved and appreciated on both sides of the ocean. The favorites among them are “Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide,” “Jesus, I my cross have taken,” “As pants the hart for cooling streams,” and “Praise, my soul, the King of heaven.” The pathetic story of his last days has touched the hearts of God’s people as they have sung his swan song, “Abide with me”—the finest evening hymn of the Christian church—if it is accepted as an evening hymn. That a Unitarian, Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), should have written so noble a hymn about the cross of Christ as “In the cross of Christ I glory,” expressing all its spiritual implications, can be explained only by his orthodoxy of heart. His superficial reasonings were the outgrowth of his early educational and social environment, and were not in co-ordination with his deeper convictions. He was a voluminous writer. His extraordinary genius for languages is revealed in his series of “Specimens” from the poetry of no less than five European languages. Politically he was even more conspicuous than Sir Robert Grant, but, like him, his name will be ever revered for a single great hymn, “In the cross of Christ I glory.” Other hymns in common use are “Watchman, tell us of the night” and “God is love; his mercy brightens.” Josiah Conder (1789-1855), the compiler of the _Congregational Hymn Book_, wrote fifty-six hymns for it, one of which is very impressive and worshipful, “The Lord is King! lift up thy voice,” which will undoubtedly live through coming generations. His other hymns are uniformly good and of a high literary standard, but with less appeal. VII. THE HYMNS OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT