The hymn has been sometimes sung to "Pisgah," an old revival piece by J.C. Lowry (1820) once much heard in camp-meetings, but it is a pedestrian tune with too many quavers, and a headlong tempo. Bradbury's "Jazer," in three-four time, is a melody with modulations, though more sympathetic, but it is hard to divorce the hymn from its long-time consort, old "Arlington." It has the accent of its sincerity, and the breath of its devotion. "LO, ON A NARROW NECK OF LAND." This hymn of Charles Wesley is always designated now by the above line, the first of the _second_ stanza as originally written. It is said to have been composed at Land's End, in Cornwall, with the British Channel and the broad Atlantic in view and surging on both sides around a "narrow neck of land." Lo! on a narrow neck of land, Twixt two unbounded seas, I stand, Secure, insensible: A point of time, a moment's space, Removes me to that heavenly place, Or shuts me up in hell. O God, mine inmost soul convert, And deeply on my thoughtful heart Eternal things impress: Give me to feel their solemn weight, And tremble on the brink of fate, And wake to righteousness. The preachers and poets of the great spiritual movement of the eighteenth century in England abated nothing in the candor of their words. The terrible earnestness of conviction tipped their tongues and pens with fire. _THE TUNE._ Lady Huntingdon would have lent "Meribah" gladly to this hymn, but Mason was not yet born. Many times it has been borrowed for Wesley's words since it came to its own, and the spirit of the pious Countess has doubtless approved the loan. It is rich enough to furnish forth her own lyric and more than one other of like matter and metre. The muscular music of "Ganges" has sometimes carried the hymn, and there are those who think its thunder is not a whit more Hebraic than the words require. "COME YE SINNERS POOR AND NEEDY." Few hymns have been more frequently sung in prayer-meetings and religious assemblies during the last hundred and fifty years. Its author, Joseph Hart, spoke what he knew and testified what he felt. Born in London, 1712, and liberally educated, he was in his young manhood very religious, but he went so far astray as to indulge in evil practices, and even published writings, both original and translated, against Christianity and religion of any kind. But he could not drink at the Dead Sea and live. The apples of Sodom sickened him. Conscience asserted itself, and the pangs of remorse nearly drove him to despair till he turned back to the source he had forsaken. He alludes to this experience in the lines-- Let not conscience make you linger, Nor of fitness fondly dream; All the fitness He requireth Is to feel your need of Him. During Passion Week, 1767, he had an amazing view of the sufferings of Christ, under the stress of which his heart was changed. In the joy of this experience he wrote--