And calms the roaring seas.”
He might have gone further and obviated the break of the sentence occurring between the third and fourth stanzas. Some hymnal editors meet the difficulty by omitting both.
Rev. Martin Madan wrote no hymns; his only claim to immortality rests on his emendations of the hymns of greater men. But he well deserves to be remembered for some of his happy improvements of important hymns. His revision of Watts’ hymn “He dies! the Heavenly Lover dies!” has already been referred to.
Madan very fortunately changed Charles Wesley’s
“Hark how all the welkin rings,
Glory to the King of Kings,”
into the much more poetical lines:
“Hark! the herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the newborn King.’”