God in Christ, is all in all!
Although “Jerusalem, my happy home!” ranks highest among the hymns of Montgomery, judged by the standard of popular favor, his hymn on prayer and “Forever with the Lord” have aroused the most enthusiasm on the part of literary critics. Julian says of the latter that “it is full of lyric fire and deep feeling,” and Dr. Theodore Cuyler declares that it contains four lines that are as fine as anything in hymnody. This beautiful verse reads:
Here, in the body pent,
Absent from Thee I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day’s march nearer home.
Montgomery’s last words were words of prayer. After his usual evening devotion on April 30, 1854, he went to sleep, a sleep from which he never woke on earth. And so was fulfilled in his own experience the beautiful thought contained in his glorious hymn on prayer:
Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,
The Christian’s native air,
His watchword at the gates of death—