The Influence of the Sunday School
“I forget many of the hymns we sang at the Band of Hope, but such favorites as ‘Shall We Gather at the River?’, ‘Throw Out the Life Line,’ and similar haunting airs stand out in my memory. I loved every note of them and yelled them out most lustily. The old Scottish psalm tunes we occasionally sang at the Band of Hope, and also at the Sunday School I attended, likewise made an extraordinary appeal to me. ‘All People That On Earth Do Dwell,’ to the tune of the ‘Old Hundred;’ ‘O, God of Bethel by Whose Hand’ to the tune of ‘St. Kilda,’ were among my favorites. The last mentioned melody is in a most unusual minor key. It was written by a young Scottish musician named Bloomfield, who died early in life and whose body, I have been told, is lying in an ancient cemetery in Aberdeen.”[25]
These words recall an experience of Captain John Lauder in France, which led him to declare he was