acknowledged Christ as my Saviour. I have always considered that it was through the influence of that hymn that my soul was awakened. Many times have I thanked God for the song, as well as for the courage he gave to his disciples to sing it in that public way."

Many years ago an English evangelist sent me this incident: "We were holding evangelistic meetings," he said, “in a town in Perthshire, and there was one who helped us more effectually than we were at first aware of. I hardly know how we became acquainted with 'Blind Aggie;' for, besides being old and blind, she was a great sufferer and could seldom creep beyond her doorstep. We were

strangers in the place and no one told us of her; yet in the providence of God one of our party was led to visit her little room, discovering what a saint she was and how deeply interested in all she had heard about our intended meetings. She helped us mightily by prayer, and as far as she could by individual work. Lodging in the same flat with blind Aggie was a seamstress a poor, giddy, foolish girl-in whom she took a deep interest. With great difficulty she persuaded this girl to attend one of our meetings. While the girl was at the meeting Aggie was praying for a blessing upon her; and when she returned Aggie asked many questions, but to her sorrow could not find that any impression had been made on the young woman's heart. The good old woman induced the thoughtless girl to go again, and when she returned the second time it was late, and blind Aggie had already gone to bed.

But the girl burst into the old woman's room

crying: 'Oh, Aggie, where are you? I must tell you!' 'Well, dear, what is it? Come and tell me.' 'Oh, but I want a light first, I canna tell ye in the dark.' Though Aggie never had use for a candle, she told the girl where to find one. After it was lighted the girl burst forth from a full heart: 'Oh, Aggie, woman, I didna laugh this time! They sang a hymn, and it kept saying, 'Ye must be born again,' and it just laid hold on me, Aggie, and oh! I'm born again! Jesus has taken me, Aggie!''

"On a Sunday evening," relates a young lady of Dunfermline, Scotland, "I went with a companion to take a walk in the public park, when our attention was drawn to an open-air meeting. While we were standing there listening, the hymn 'Ye Must be Born Again' was given out and sung. Two lines of the last verse, 'A dear one in heaven thy heart yearns to see

At the beautiful gate may be watching for thee,' took a firm hold on me, and I felt that I must be born again, for I never could get there of myself. That night I went to the meeting and decided for Christ, and ever since that hymn has been very dear to me."

Yet There is Room

Words by Horatius Bonar

Music by Ira D. Sankey

"Yet there is room!' The Lamb's bright hall of song, With its fair glory, beckons thee along."

Dr. Bonar wrote this hymn at my request. I had been singing Tennyson's great poem, "Late, late, so late, and dark the night and chill," at our meetings in

Great Britain, in 1873-74, and, on asking permission of the owners of the copyright to use it in my collection of songs, was refused. I then requested Dr. Bonar to write a hymn that should cover much the same ground. "Yet there is room was the result. It was one of the first hymns for which I wrote music. It always had a very solemnizing effect on the meetings, especially when the last lines were sung: "No room, no room-oh, woful cry, 'No room.'

Yield Not to Temptation

Words by H. R. Palmer

Music by H. R. Palmer

"Yield not to temptation,

For yielding is sin;"

Mr. Palmer says: "This song was an inspiration. I was at work on the dry subject of "Theory' when the complete idea flashed upon me, and I laid aside the theoretical work and hurriedly penned both words and music as fast as I could write them. I submitted them to the criticism of a friend afterward, and some changes were made in the third stanza, but the first two are exactly as they came to me. The music was first written in A flat; but I soon saw that B flat was better, and for many years it has appeared in that key. I am reverently thankful it has been a power for good."

A friend contributes this incident: "Twenty years ago, when the State prison at Sing Sing, New York, had women as well as men within its walls, a lady used to visit the women's department. Every Sunday afternoon the inmates were permitted to come out and sit in the corridor to hear her talk, and to sing

hymns with her. One day some of the women rebelled against an order of the matron, and a terrible scene followed. Screams, threats, ribaldry and profanity filled the air. It was said, by those who knew, that an uprising among the women prisoners was worse and more difficult to quell than one among the men. The matron hastily sent to the men's department for help. Suddenly a voice rose clear and strong above the tumult, singing a favorite song of the pris

oners,

'Yield not to temptation,

For yielding is sin;

Each victory will help you

Some other to win.
Fight manfully onward,

Dark passions subdue;

Look ever to Jesus,

He'll carry you through.'

There was a lull; then one after another joined in the sacred song; and presently, with one accord, all formed into line and marched quietly to their cells."

A minister who at the time was laboring there, writes me that when Dr. Somerville, of Scotland, and Mr. Varley, of England, were in New Zealand, in the seventies, in connection with Young Men's Christian Association work, many young men found strength for life's temptations in the first lines of this hymn, which was sung at every meeting for months.

"Some twenty-four years ago," writes James A. Watson, of Blackburn, England, "the Presbyterian church of England was preparing to issue a new book

of praise, 'The Church Praise,' now in use. I was asked to send in a suitable list of hymns for the young. Among the number I sent 'Yield not to temptation,' but to my regret, when I got a draft copy of the proposed hymn-book, that hymn was not in it. Three or four Sundays afterward I was requested by the teacher of the infant class in the St. George's School, where I have been superintendent for over forty years, to visit a dying boy. I found him unconscious. All that his widowed mother could tell me about him was that he had kept saying: 'He'll carry me through.' When I asked her if she knew what he meant, she told me that she did not. She did not attend church or school. I told her that it was the chorus of a hymn, and pointed out how the good Shepherd was carrying her little boy through the valley; how he was gathering her lamb in his loving arms. I also told her that the Saviour would carry her through her trouble, would comfort, strengthen and keep her, and at last bring her to the happy land where death-divided ones will meet to part no more. I was so much impressed by the incident that I wrote to the convener of the hymn-book committee, and pleaded for the insertion of the hymn in the new book. The committee put it in, and for twenty-three years the young people of our Presbyterian church have been able to sing it when wanted, all through the comfort it had been to a little dying boy, the only son of a widow, on a back street of Blackburn."