Ne'er think the vict'ry won Nor lay thine armor down: Thy arduous work will not be done Till thou hast gained thy crown. Fight on, my soul till death Shall bring thee to thy God; He'll take thee at thy parting breath To His divine abode. "PEOPLE OF THE LIVING GOD." Montgomery _felt_ every line of this hymn as he committed it to paper. He wrote it when, after years in the "swim" of social excitements and ambitions, where his young independence swept him on, he came back to the little church of his boyhood. His father and mother had gone to the West Indies as missionaries, and died there. He was forty-three years old when, led by divine light, he sought readmission to the Moravian "meeting" at Fulneck, and anchored happily in a haven of peace. People of the living God I have sought the world around, Paths of sin and sorrow trod, Peace and comfort nowhere found: Now to you my spirit turns-- Turns a fugitive unblest; Brethren, where your altar burns, Oh, receive me into rest. James Montgomery, son of Rev. John Montgomery, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, Nov. 4, 1771, and educated at the Moravian Seminary at Fulneck, Yorkshire, Eng. He became the editor of the _Sheffield Iris_, and his pen was busy in non-professional as well as professional work until old age. He died in Sheffield, April 30, 1854. His literary career was singularly successful; and a glance through any complete edition of his poems will tell us why. His hymns were all published during his lifetime, and all, as well as his longer pieces, have the purity and polished beauty, if not the strength, of Addison's work. Like Addison, too, he could say that he had written no line which, dying, he would wish to blot. The best of Montgomery was in his hymns. These were too many to enumerate here, and the more enduring ones too familiar to need enumeration. The church and the world will not soon forget "The Home in Heaven,"-- Forever with the Lord, Amen, so let it be. Life from the dead is in that word; 'Tis immortality. Nor-- O where shall rest be found, --with its impressive couplet-- 'Tis not the whole of life to live Nor all of death to die. Nor the haunting sweetness of-- There is a calm for those who weep. Nor, indeed, the hymn of Christian love just now before us. _THE TUNE._ The melody exactly suited to the gentle trochaic step of the home-song, "People of the living God," is "Whitman," composed for it by Lowell Mason. Few Christians, in America, we venture to say, could hear an instrument play "Whitman" without mentally repeating Montgomery's words. "TO LEAVE MY DEAR FRIENDS." This hymn, called "The Bower of Prayer," was dear to Christian hearts in many homes and especially in rural chapel worship half a century ago and earlier, and its sweet legato melody still lingers in the memories of aged men and women.