—sung to Lowell Mason's liquid tune of “Ward,” and the priceless stanza,—
Jesus can make a dying bed
Feel soft as downy pillows are,
doubly prove the claim of the Southampton bard to a foremost place with the song-preachers of Christian trust.
The psalm (Amsterdam version), “God is the refuge,” etc., is said to have been sung by John Howland in the shallop of the Mayflower when an attempt was made to effect a landing in spite of tempestuous weather. A tradition of this had doubtless reached Mrs. Hemans when she wrote—
Amid the storm they sang, etc.
“FATHER, WHATE'ER OF EARTHLY BLISS.”
This hymn had originally ten stanzas, of which the three usually sung are the three last. The above line is the first of the eighth stanza, altered from—
And O, whate'er of earthly bliss.
Probably for more than a century the familiar surname “Steele” attached to this and many other hymns in the hymn-books conveyed to the general public no hint of a mind and hand more feminine than Cowper's or Montgomery's. Even intelligent people, who had chanced upon sundry copies of The Spectator, somehow fell into the habit of putting “Steele” and “Addison” in the same category of hymn names, and Sir Richard Steele got a credit he never sought. But since stories of the hymns began to be published—and made the subject of evening talks in church conference rooms—many have learned what “Steele” in the hymn-book means. It introduces us now to a very retiring English lady, Miss Anna Steele, a Baptist minister's daughter. She was born in 1706, at Broughton, Hampshire, in her father's parsonage, and in her father's parsonage she spent her life, dying there Nov. 1778.