We may see our names at last
Written in the Book of Life.
But the Anglican hymn-writers of the nineteenth century are too many for detailed comment in my fast-failing space. It is a glorious choir, including Joseph Anstice, who had so powerful an influence over Mr. Gladstone in his Oxford days;[179] Dean Alford, Dr. Monsell, Sir H. W. Baker, Dean Stanley, Bishops Mant, How, and Bickersteth, Canon Bright, Godfrey Thring, Canon Ellerton, S. J. Stone, Canon Twells, Laurence Tuttiett, S. Baring-Gould, among the clergy; Mrs. Alexander, Charlotte Elliott, Frances Ridley Havergal, Sir R. Grant, W. Chatterton Dix, among the laity.
Sir Henry Williams Baker (1821-77) wrote the lovely sacramental version of Ps. xxiii.: ‘The King of love my Shepherd is.’ One verse he repeated with his dying breath—
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love He sought me,
And on His shoulder gently laid,
And home, rejoicing, brought me.
He is one of the simplest and most attractive of hymn-writers, and the inclusion of his hymns in Nonconformist hymnals is a great gain. His greatest service to Anglican hymnody was the editing of Hymns Ancient and Modern—a truly epoch-making (or perhaps epoch-marking) book.
While Baker was at work in his Herefordshire vicarage, John Ellerton (1826-93) was writing hymns and essays on hymns in his rural or semi-rural parsonages. Ellerton had a rare gift in writing for special occasions. His great funeral hymn, ‘Now the labourer’s task is o’er,’ has a sombre strength which is full of comfort and trust. ‘Behold us, Lord, a little space’ is an ideal hymn for a week-day service, and ‘In the Name which earth and heaven’ is the grandest of all hymns for the laying of the foundation-stone of a church.[180] Without being a High-Churchman, Ellerton was a thorough-going Anglican, and his poetry has the restraint, the good taste, and the dignity which beseem a great Church.