102 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
preface to his Christian Psalmist, where he says he would rather be the anonymous author of a few hymns which should thus become an imperishable inheritance to the people of God, than bequeath another epic poem to the world which should rank my name with Homer, Virgil, and "our greater Milton."
Dr. Julian says that his hymns rank in popularity with those of Wesley, Watts, Doddridge, Newton, and Cowper. His ear for rhythm was exceedingly accurate and refined. With the faith of a strong man he united the beauty and simplicity of a child. Richly poetic without exuberance, dogmatic without uncharitableness, tender without sentimentality, elaborate with out diffusiveness, richly musical without apparent effort, he has bequeathed to the Church of Christ wealth which could only have come from a true genius and a sanctified heart.
Canon Ellerton regards Montgomery as our first hymno- logist ; the first Englishman who collected and criticized hymns, and who made people that had lost all recollection of ancient models understand something of what a hymn meant, and what it ought to be.
William Howitt gives him almost higher praise. Perhaps there are no lyrics in the language which are so truly Christian. We find that he has caught the genuine spirit of Christ.
Montgomery never married. Hugh Miller, who saw him when he visited Edinburgh at the age of seventy, says, It is a thin, clear, speaking countenance ; the features are high, the com plexion fresh, though not ruddy, and age has failed to pucker either cheek or forehead with a single wrinkle. To a plain suit of black Mr. Montgomery adds the voluminous breast-ruffles of the last age, exactly such things as, in Scotland at least, the fathers of the present generation wore on their wedding-days.
Hymn 95. O God of Bethel, by whose hand. PHILIP DODDRIDGE, D.D. (1702-51).
Doddridge was the grandson of a minister ejected in 1662, and the twentieth child of a London tradesman. His mother, the daughter of a Protestant refugee from Bohemia, taught him the Bible stories by some Dutch tiles in their sitting-room. He declined an offer from the Duchess of Bedford to send him to the University in preparation for Orders, and went to a Nonconformist seminary at Kibworth, in Leicestershire, where he became pastor in 1723. In 1729 he took a pastorate at
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