312 OUR HYMNS :
This is his 40th hymn. It has a fourth stanza which has been omitted.
" To Thee, in ages past." No. 778.
If a hymn ought to be simple so that a congregation can at once understand it, yet full of thought in contrast with a succession of platitudes ; and if it ought to be perfect in form and yet easy and natural in manner ; and if it ought to have remembrances that touch the heart, and humble aspirations that lift it to heaven, then this piece, without pretending to be a poem, is good as a hymn. It is the first in the above-mentioned collection.
Mr. Bulmer was the author of " Hymns and Evangelical Songs for the use of Sunday Schools" this reached a sixth edition : and of " Beauties of the Vicar of Llandovery ; Light from the Welshman s Candle." These are poems by Rees Prichard, who died 1644 they are translated from the Welsh. Also of " The Christian Catechist," and of "A Concise Statement of the Nature, Design, &c., of a Christian Church." Haverfordwest, 1813.
��SAMUEL FLETCHEE.
17851863.
" Father of life and light." No. 980. " Lord, as a family we meet." No. 982.
THESE family hymns were given to the Rev. Henry Allon for the " New Congregational Hymn Book," (1855) by Samuel Fletcher, Esq., of Broornfield, near Manchester, a " merchant prince" of cultivated mind, who occasionally wrote in verse, and who about that time was improving the leisure supplied by an attack of ill ness, in preparing a collection of hymns for the use of his family. His collection was called " Family Praise." It was published in 1850, and contained a small number of hymns by himself, includ ing the two above.
Samuel Fletcher was born at Compton, near Wolverhampton,
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