The late Rev. Ray Palmer, D.D., born at Little Compton, R. I., Nov. 12, 1808, was a graduate of Yale in 1830, and a pastor successively of the Congregational churches at Bath, Me., Albany, N. Y., and at Newark, N. J., where he died March 29th, 1887. He was also for twelve years, beginning in 1866, Secretary of the American Congregational Union in New York.

Dr. Palmer was a distinguished prose writer, the list of his works being quite numerous. But it is as a writer of hymns, and especially as the author of the popular hymn, "My Faith Looks up to Thee," that he will be known and remembered in coming ages. Many of his hymns have found a place in devotional books. Among others may be cited the following:

"Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts;"

"Fount of Everlasting Love;"

asked him if he had ever written any hymns, as he was about publishing a

"Jesus, these eyes have never seen;" "Away from earth my spirit turns."

His most popular hymn is, "My Faith Looks up to Thee;" which has been translated into almost every language. It was written in 1830 in the building in New York where the author was teaching soon after leaving college. He carried the hymn for two years in his pocket book. One day Dr. Lowell Mason met him and

My faith looks up to thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Saviour divine!

Now hear me while I pray :
Take all my guilt away;
Oh, let me from this day
Be wholly thine.

May thy rich grace impart
Strength to my fainting heart,
My zeal inspire;

As thou hast died for me,
Oh, may my love to thee
Pure, warm and changeless be,
A living fire.

While life's dark maze I tread,
And griefs around me spread,
Be thou my Guide;
Bid darkness turn to-day,
Wipe sorrow's tears away,
Nor let me ever stray

From thee aside.

When ends life's transient dream, When death's cold, sullen stream Shall o'er me roll,

Blest Saviour, then in love

Fear and distrust remove;

Oh, bear me safe above,

A ransomed soul.

his. Mr. Palmer at first said that he had not, but, suddenly remembering the hymn in his pocketbook, he handed it over to Dr. Mason, who read it and said: "You may achieve great things during your lifetime, but you will be best known by this hymn."

For the benefit of many of our readers who may not be familiar with the hymn, we insert it in full in the CAMBRIAN, with an excellent Welsh translation by Ap Daniel, in parallel columns.

PREACHING.

I do not think I should be going beyond the fact by saying that all our prominent theologians have been ef

fective preachers. They studied theology in order to preach, not so much, perhaps, because of an intellectual craving for logical consistency

and completeness. The people of Wales would find it difficult to form a conception of a learned divine who has no power to move the heart and touch the conscience of a congregation. They have never set eyes on the species. On the other hand, they know very little about the jelly-fish kind of sermons which have no backbone of theological truth. Moreover, this theological preaching has always been of a very definite description. It starts with the fact of sin, and does not consider that it has attained its purpose until it arrives at the fact of conversion and faith in Christ. In its effort to represent sin as exceeding sinful it spares not till it has broken through the hard incrustation of worldliness and self-righteousness, but summons the mightiest forces of the spiritual world to its help, and wields them at times with terrific power. It proclaims the holiness of the law in order to convict men of their guilt. With bated breath it tells them that the flames of hell have not died out. It speaks of the love of the Heavenly Father, the Infinite Atonement of Jesus Christ, the powerful and direct inworking of the Holy Spirit. All this is true concerning the best preaching of the Welsh pulpit. It is on this we rely most of all in fighting agnosticism among our young men. We hope to convert their intellect through their conscience. An English writer recently observed that the word "conscience" has ceased to be used among thoughtful men. If the remark is true, perhaps the fact will in some measure account for the spread of agnosticism. We in Wales, at least, have not learned the art of preaching without the help of the judge within. It is not difficult to see the danger. The maggot is concealed at the core of the apple. Such preaching repeated and reiterated loses at last its fine edge. The great

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preachers wield the sword to good purpose; but the futile attempts of lesser men to imitate their manner, without possessing their power, is apt to turn a tragedy into a farce. There is too often an air of unreality about Welsh preaching. When you read in the papers about Welsh revivals, I must honestly warn you not to jump too hastily to the conclusion that the great deep of men's religious life has been stirred, or even reached at all. Much is written about the Welsh Hwyl. Believe me, it is, in too many cases, a mere mannerism, and not true unction. The greatest danger that besets religion in Wales to-day is plain. The sense of sin is not keen. To make the matter more serious, the conscience of the people is too often blunted by repeated application of some of the most potent spiritual forces. "The people," remarked one of our old preachers, "are becoming Gospel-proof and sermon-hardened." Do I speak thus in the spirit of despondency? Far from it. I frankly admit that the controversies of past days degenerated into a mere logomachy. The road ended at a dead wall. But they kept intact for us one truth that had not become on their lips a mere badge. They firmly grasped and held aloft the infinitude of Jesus Christ. What the older Presbyterians of Wales at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century utterly failed to maintain, the later Welsh Presbyterians, in the middle and towards the end of the last century, established safely and permanently as the fountain of our present and our future theology. The cause of the difference is not far to seek. The older school addressed themselves to the task of forming their theology from the side of intellect; their successors were, properly speaking, not a school at all, but evangelists who

came to their work from the side of conscience, and found their message only in the doctrines of grace. Even when the hyper-Calvinism of a later day thought to span the atonement of the Cross with the measuring line of their poor and shallow quid pro quo theory, God blessed Wales with men who were nothing if not great preachers; and great preaching demands a great truth, no less than a great truth demands a great preacher. They discovered a theme great enough to draw out into full and powerful action their highest gifts of preaching in the doctrine of an infinite Christ. So powerful is the truth concerning the person of Christ, that it has over and over again in the history of the Church lent its own omnipotence to half-truths and narrow theories, and made them strong as if they were the round globe of truth. No one here will say that the Arminian doctrine is, at best, more than half a truth. But Arminianism, when linked to the doctrine of the infinite greatness of Jesus Christ, has been preached with power to the salvation of many thousands. Similarly, on the other side, the hyperCalvinism of our fathers in WalesChristmas Evans, for example-was powerful to save men in virtue of its contact with the doctrine of an infinite Christ. By to-day these controversies have perished.

THE TRUTH WHICH REMAINS.

But the truth concerning the Infinite Christ remains. This is just what has been saved from the wreck. The volcanoes have long ago ceased to belch out fire and smoke. The truth concerning Christ is the living verdure that grows and blossoms on the very lips of the hardened crater. May I crave your kind indulgence, brethren, if I avow my profound conviction that this is the truth for our time. I speak not of other lands, far

or near.

But in the present condition of things in Wales, you have a people actually weary of contending systems, keenly alive, at the same time, to the fascination of new ideas, political and scientific, and, for this reason, in danger of drifting away from theological truth altogether. The physicians have prescribed excellent decoctions, made of all manner of healthful herbs. But their potions have lost their effect, at least in this instance and for a time. Suppose the patient changes his method, and causes himself to be carried out of his sick chamber into the balmy air and gazes at the same herbage in the dewy fields and on the sunny steeps. Our fathers preached Christ-unquestionably they didbut He was to them a postulate required for the solution of an intellectual problem; and in our age agnosticism is come to the front as a conscious phase of the human intellect, and teaches our young men, not that this or that solution of the problem is fallacious, or lame, or obscure, but that the problem itself need not be solved either way. I meet our young men of thoughtful intelligence, and honest desire to be morally good and noble, with this statement: "Very well, for the present we will lay aside the problems and look straight away at Jesus Christ as He actually was." These young men are still alive to the infinite beauty and majesty of Jesus Christ. Let them gaze at the vision awhile, even if we abstain for the moment from explaining to them its meaning. Theology will come afterwards, and it will come with greater force. Instead of requiring Christ for the sake of a system, we will be. gin with Christ, if need be, without a system. But when we have asked and answered the question, What was Jesus Christ? another question will inevitably come in its wake, Who was Jesus Christ? I have no fear of the