“Land Me Safe on Canaan’s Side”
The most remarkable feature of the singing of the Board of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, wrote Bishop Francis J. McConnell, when reporting one of their meetings in Boston in May, 1930, consisted in their skill in fitting almost any song to the “only tune which I have heard them sing with any conspicuous success.” Reference was then made to a dramatic moment “when that one tune was sung with marvelous power.” Bishop Earl Cranston, at the age of eighty-nine, “had just made a farewell speech in which he had said that he did not see how he could again attend the Bishops’ Meeting. At the conclusion of the address the bishops sang, adapting their favorite tune, the stanza: ‘When I tread the verge of Jordan.’”
One can easily imagine that scene, and how deeply affected the others were after listening to the words of the veteran leader. It is difficult to conceive anything which would have been more appropriate for such a time than the words in which the company blended their voices:
“When I tread the verge of Jordan,
Bid my anxious fears subside;
Bear me through the swelling current,
Land me safe on Canaan’s side:
Songs of praises
I will ever give to Thee.”
This confidence of immortality is also shared by others as seen on a memorable occasion when