The little hymn of four stanzas was peculiarly fortunate in meeting the eye of Mr. William B. Bradbury, (1863) and winning his musical sympathy and alliance. Few composers have so exactly caught the tone and spirit of their text as Bradbury did when he vocalized the gliding measures of "He leadeth me." CHAPTER VI. CHRISTIAN BALLADS. Echoes of Hebrew thought, if not Hebrew psalmody, may have made their way into the more serious pagan literature. At least in the more enlightened pagans there has ever revealed itself more or less the instinct of the human soul that "feels after" God. St. Paul in his address to the Athenians made a tactful as well as scholarly point to preface a missionary sermon when he cited a line from a poem of Aratus (B.C. 272) familiar, doubtless, to the majority of his hearers. Dr. Lyman Abbot has thus translated the passage in which the line occurs: Let us begin from God. Let every mortal raise The grateful voice to tune God's endless praise, God fills the heaven, the earth, the sea, the air; We feel His spirit moving everywhere, And we His offspring are.[17] He, ever good, Daily provides for man his daily food. To Him, the First, the Last, all homage yield,-- Our Father wonderful, our help, our shield. [Footnote 17: [Greek: Tou gar kai genos esmen.]] "RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT." Alexander Pope, a Roman Catholic poet, born in London 1688, died at Twickenham 1744, was not a hymnist, but passages in his most serious and exalted flights deserve a tuneful accompaniment. His translations of Homer made him famous, but his ethical poems, especially his "Essay on Man," are inexhaustible mines of quotation, many of the lines and couplets being common as proverbs. His "Messiah," written about 1711, is a religious anthem in which the prophecies of Holy Writ kindle all the splendor of his verse. _THE TUNE._ The closing strain, indicated by the above line, has been divided into stanzas of four lines suitable to a church hymn-tune. The melody selected by the compilers of the _Plymouth Hymnal_, and of the _Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book_ is "Savannah," an American sounding name for what is really one of Pleyel's chorals. The music is worthy of Pope's triumphal song. The seas shall waste, the skies to smoke decay, Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away, But fixed His Word; His saving power remains: Thy realm shall last; thy own Messiah reigns. "OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT?"