and a solemn meditation on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection, rising at the last into actual prayer—
Early hasten to the tomb
Where they laid His breathless clay:
All is solitude and gloom;
Who hath taken Him away?
Christ is risen! He seeks the skies:
Saviour, teach us so to rise.
In Montgomery, as in all great hymn-writers, the word of Christ dwelt richly, and his songs are full of the thoughts and phrases of the Psalter and the New Testament. Some of his sacred poems, though unsuitable for congregational singing, are good devotional reading. I quote one such, which seems to me to deserve something better than the place he gave it in the Appendix to his Poetical Works.
CHRIST THE PURIFIER
(Mal. iii. 2, 3.)