Christians, if your hearts are warm,
Ice and cold can do no harm;
If by Jesus you are prized
Rise, believe and be baptized.
He found use for the hymn, too, in rallying church-members who staid away from his meetings in bad weather. The “poetry” expressed what he wanted to say—which, in his view, was sufficient apology for it. It was sung in revival meetings like others that he wrote, and a few hymnbooks now long obsolete contained it; but of Leland's hymns only one survives. Gray-headed men and women remember being sung to sleep by their mothers with that old-fashioned evening song to Amzi Chapin's* tune—
The day is past and gone,
The evening shades appear,
O may we all remember well
The night of death draws near;
—and with all its solemnity and other-worldness it is dear to recollection, and its five stanzas are lovingly hunted up in the few hymnals where it is found. Bradbury's “Braden,” (Baptist Praise Book, 1873,) is one of its tunes.