O could I speak the matchless worth, O could I sound the glories forth Which in my Saviour shine, I'd soar and touch the heavenly strings And vie with Gabriel while he sings, In notes almost divine! _THE TUNE._ "Colebrook," a plain choral; but with a noble movement, by Henry Smart, is the English music to this fine lyric, but Dr. Mason's "Ariel" is the American favorite. It justifies its name, for it has wings--in both full harmony and duet--and its melody feels the glory of the hymn at every bar. "ROCK OF AGES CLEFT FOR ME." Augustus Montagu Toplady, author of this almost universal hymn, was born at Farnham, Surrey, Eng., Nov. 4, 1740. Educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Dublin, he took orders in the Established Church. In his doctrinal debates with the Wesleys he was a harsh controversialist; but his piety was sincere, and marked late in life by exalted moods. Physically he was frail, and his fiery zeal wore out his body. Transferred from his vicarage at Broad Hembury, Devonshire, to Knightsbridge, London, at twenty-eight years of age, his health began to fail before he was thirty-five, and in one of his periods of illness he wrote-- When languor and disease invade This trembling house of clay, 'Tis sweet to look beyond my pains And long to fly away. And the same homesickness for heaven appears under a different figure in another hymn-- At anchor laid remote from home, Toiling I cry, "Sweet Spirit, come! Celestial breeze, no longer stay, But swell my sails, and speed my way!" Possessed of an ardent religious nature, his spiritual frames exemplified in a notable degree the emotional side of Calvinistic piety. Edward Payson himself, was not more enraptured in immediate view of death than was this young London priest and poet. Unquestioning faith became perfect certainty. As in the bold metaphor of "Rock of Ages," the faith finds voice in-- A debtor to mercy alone, --and other hymns in his collection of 1776, two years before the end came. Most of this devout writing was done in his last days, and he continued it as long as strength was left, until, on the 11th of August, 1778, he joyfully passed away. Somehow there was always something peculiarly heartsome and "filling" to pious minds in the lines of Toplady in days when his minor hymns were more in vogue than now, and they were often quoted, without any idea whose making they were. "At anchor laid" was crooned by good old ladies at their spinning-wheels, and godly invalids found "When languor and disease invade" a comfort next to their Bibles. "Rock of Ages" is said to have been written after the author, during a suburban walk, had been forced to shelter himself from a thunder shower, under a cliff. This is, however, but one of several stories about the birth-occasion of the hymn.