THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 121
We have not seen Thy footsteps tread
This wild and sinful earth of ours, Nor heard Thy voice restore the dead
Again to life s reviving powers : But we believe for all things are The gifts of Thine Almighty care.
Hymn 118. Immortal Love, for ever full. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
From Our Master, dated 1866. Appeared in The Panorama, and other Poems, 1856.
The Quaker poet of America was born at Haverhill, Mas sachusetts, in 1807. He worked on his father s farm till he was twenty. A copy of Robert Burns s poems, bought from a pedlar, first turned his mind to poetry. His earliest piece was printed in the Newburyport Free Press, 1824. The editor persuaded Whittier s father to send him to the Academy at Haverhill, where he worked as a teacher and slipper-maker to support himself. He became editor in Boston in 1828, and in 1836 Secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, in which offices he did noble service to the cause of freedom. He moved to Amesbury, Mass., in 1840. His last years were spent at Oak Knoll, Danvers. He died in 1892.
His Poems, in seven volumes, were published in 1889. Lowell says
There was ne er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing.
Hymn 119. O Lord and Master of us all. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (118).
From Our Master, beginning with ver. 16. The line reads, Our Lord and Master of us all.
Hymn 120. We know, by faith we surely know. CHARLES WESLEY (i).
Short Hymns on Select Passages of Scripture (left in MS.) ; Works, xiii. 210. i John v. 20.
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