THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 67
They have not the scriptural strength of our best early hymns, nor the dogmatic force of the best Latin ones. But as pure and graceful devotional poetry, always true and reverent, they are an unfailing pleasure. It is a unique thing to find all an author s hymns in common use and unaltered.
At Hodnet Heber proved himself a model clergyman, and was the friend of Milman, Gifford, Southey, and others. He wrote for the Quarterly Review, edited Jeremy Taylor s works, was Bampton Lecturer in 1815, Preacher at Lincoln s Inn, 1822. He had always felt drawn to India ; and though he twice refused the bishopric of Calcutta, he felt so strongly that he had missed the path of duty that he wrote saying that he would accept the post, and hoped he was not enthusiastic in thinking that a clergyman is like a soldier or sailor, bound to go on any service, however remote or undesirable, where the course of his duty leads him. His three years of episcopacy were crowded with toil. He ordained the first native minister. On April 2, 1826, he preached at Trichinopoly, and held a con firmation that evening. The next morning he confirmed eleven Tamil converts. He retired to his room in the house of Mr. Bird, Circuit Judge, wrote the date at the back of his confirma tion address, and went into a large cold bath, where he had bathed the two preceding mornings. Half an hour later his servant, alarmed at his long absence, entered the room and found him dead.
Thackeray describes Heber, in his George the Fourth, as one of the good knights of the time ; one of the best of English gentlemen. The charming poet, the happy possessor of all sorts of gifts and accomplishments birth, wit, fame, high character, competence he was the beloved parish priest in his own home of Hodnet, counselling his people in their troubles, advising them in their difficulties, comforting them in distress, kneeling often at their sick-beds at the hazard of his own life ; exhorting, encouraging where there was need ; where there was strife, the peacemaker ; where there was want, the free giver. He delighted to care for the invalid soldiers who were on the transport ship by which he sailed to Madras, and when a woman lost her little child, he was heard weeping and praying for her in his cabin. A friend said, I have never seen such tenderness, never such humble exercise of Christian love. Alas ! how his spirit shames us all ! I thank God that I have seen his tears, that I heard his prayers, his conversation with the afflicted
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