How Sweet The Covenant To Remember.

Bydd melus gofio y cyfammod.

This, entitled "Mysteries of Grace," is also from the pen of Ann Griffiths. It has the literalness noticeable in much of the Welsh religious poetry, and there is a note of pietism in it. The two last stanzas are these:

He is the great Propitiation Who with the thieves that anguish bare; He nerved the arms of His tormentors To drive the nails that fixed Him there. While He discharged the sinner's ransom, And made the Law in honor be, Righteousness shone undimmed, resplendent, And me the Covenant set free.

My soul, behold Him laid so lowly, Of peace the Fount, of Kings the Head, The vast creation in Him moving And He low-lying with the dead! The Life and portion of lost sinners, The marvel of heaven's seraphim, To sea and land the God Incarnate The choir of heaven cries, "Unto Him!"

Ann Griffiths' earliest hymn will be called her sweetest. Fortunately, too, it is more poetically translated. It was before the vivid consciousness and intensity of her religious experience had given her spiritual writings a more involved and mystical expression.

My soul, behold the fitness Of this great Son of God, Trust Him for life eternal And cast on Him thy load, A man--touched with the pity Of every human woe, A God--to claim the kingdom And vanquish every foe.

This stanza, the last of her little poem on the "Eternal Fitness of Jesus," came to her when, returning from an exciting service, filled with thoughts of her unworthiness and of the glorious beauty of her Saviour, she had turned down a sheltered lane to pray alone. There on her knees in communion with God her soul felt the spirit of the sacred song. By the time she reached home she had formed it into words.

The first and second stanzas, written later, are these:

Great Author of salvation And providence for man, Thou rulest earth and heaven With Thy far-reaching plan. Today or on the morrow, Whatever woe betide, Grant us Thy strong assistance, Within Thy hand to hide.

What though the winds be angry, What though the waves be high While wisdom is the Ruler, The Lord of earth and sky? What though the flood of evil Rise stormily and dark? No soul can sink within it; God is Himself the ark.

Mrs. Ann Griffiths, of Dolwar Fechan, Montgomeryshire, was born in 1776, and died in 1805. "She remains," says Dr. Parry, her fellow-countryman, "a romantic figure in the religious history of Wales. Her hymns leave upon the reader an undefinable impression both of sublimity and mysticism. Her brief life-history is most worthy of study both from a literary and a religious point of view."

A suggestive chapter of her short earthly career is compressed in a sentence by the author of "Sweet Singers of Wales:"

"She had a Christian life of eight years and a married life of ten months."

She died at the age of twenty-nine. In 1904, near the centennial of her death, amid the echoes of her own hymns, and the rising waves of the great Refreshing over her native land, the people of Dolwar Fechan dedicated the new "Ann Griffiths Memorial Chapel" to her name and to the glory of God.

Although the Welsh were not slow to adopt the revival tones of other lands, it was the native, and what might be called the national, lyrics of that emotional race that were sung with the richest unction and hwyl (as the Cymric word is) during the recent reformation, and that evinced the strongest hold on the common heart. Needless to say that with them was the world-famous song of William Williams,--

Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah;

Arglwydd ar wain truy'r anialoch;

--and that of Dr. Heber Evans,--

Keep me very near to Jesus, Though beneath His Cross it be, In this world of evil-doing 'Tis the Cross that cleanseth me;

--and also that native hymn of expectation, high and sweet, whose writer we have been unable to identify--

The glory is coming! God said it on high, When light in the evening will break from the sky; The North and South and the East and the West, With joy of salvation and peace will be bless'd.

* * * * *

O summer of holiness, hasten along! The purpose of glory is constant and strong; The winter will vanish, the clouds pass away; O South wind of Heaven, breath softly today!

Of the almost countless hymns that voiced the spirit of the great revival, the nine following are selected because they are representative, and all favorites--and because there is no room for a larger number. The first line of each is given in the original Welsh: