nal. The Rev. Dr. Dewitt C. Huntington said: "We read from the same Bible, we are soon to sing from the same book of hymns, and teach our children the same Catechism. We agree in many things. We differ in few. It would seem that the joint heirs to an inheritance so sacred, fellow workers under the same system of Christian doctrine, striving for the same goal-a regenerated world-should be drawn into an ever-deepening fellowship of labor and love." Lieutenant-Governor John L. Bates, afterward governor of Massachusetts, echoed this sentiment in saying that "when steps are taken to prepare a common hymn book and a common order of public worship," and since other significant events have occurred within the quadrennium just closed, "then the day of the benefits of a practical union, whether one in name or not, is near at hand."

On May 22, the fourteenth day of the General Conference, the Rev. Peter H. Whisner, of the Baltimore Conference, moved to suspend the rules and to adopt Report No. 1 of the Committee on Federation. This report breathes the spirit of fraternal regard for the Methodist Episcopal Church, reciprocating the cordial sentiments of its fraternal delegates, and resolves among other things: "That the bishops of our Church are authorized to act in concert with the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the work of preparing a common Hymnal for public worship, a common Catechism, and a common order of worship, and to proceed as soon as practicable to appoint the committees for the same as agreed upon by the joint com

mission." This report was signed by the Rev. P. H. Whisner, chairman, and the Rev. J. P. McFerrin.

The conflict of legislation in the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was referred to the Board of Bishops, and they nullified the appointment of the old commission of nine, at once reappointing the same nine members to the new joint commission, and increasing the representation of the Methodist Episcopal Church to eleven by adding Bishop Daniel A. Goodsell and the Rev. H. G. Jackson. Subsequently, upon the resignation of M. V. Simpson, J. M. Black was appointed in his place.

Bishop Goodsell (1840-1909), as pastor in the New York East Conference from 1859 to 1887, editor of two religious weeklies, and secretary of the Board of Education, achieved the distinction of being one of the most scholarly and brilliant men ever elected to the episcopacy.

The Rev. H. G. Jackson has for years been a prominent Chicago pastor.

Mr. J. M. Black is well known as an editor and composer of gospel songs.

Like their brothers from the North, the Southern commissioners were chosen for special qualifications for the work in hand. Bishop Elijah Embree Hoss, D.D., LL.D., formerly president of Martha Washington College, and later of Emory and Henry College, professor in Vanderbilt University, and editor of the Nashville Christian Advocate, was elected Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1902.

The Rev. Dr. George B. Winton has achieved a

versatile record as pastor in California, missionary in Mexico, professor of Latin in Santa Rosa, and author of Spanish and American works. In 1902 he was elected editor of the Christian Advocate (Nashville, Tenn.).

The Rev. Dr. Horace M. DuBose, pastor of several churches successively in California, Texas, and Mississippi, and once editor of the Pacific Methodist Advocate, was in 1898 elected secretary of the Epworth League and editor of its organ, the Epworth Era.

The Rev. Dr. Wilbur Fisk Tillett, the hymnologist of his Church, and author of many denominational and theological works, has been associated with Vanderbilt University, of which he became in 1886 vice-chancellor and dean of the theological faculty.

The Rev. Dr. Paul Whitehead, now deceased, was a presiding elder in the Virginia Conference.

The Rev. Dr. John Monroe Moore, pastor of various churches in Texas and Missouri, has been managing editor of the Christian Advocate (Nashville) since 1906.

Edwin Mims, Ph.D., author of works on literature, and editor since 1905 of the South Atlantic Quarterly, is professor of English Literature in Trinity College, N. C.

Henry Nelson Snyder, Lit.D., LL.D., after teaching in Vanderbilt University and Wofford College, became president of the latter institution in 1902.

The Rev. Dr. F. S. Parker, a member of the Louisiana Conference, is secretary of the Epworth League of his Church, elected in 1908.

The Rev. Dr. James Campbell, of the North

Texas Conference, was presiding elder of the Corsicana District.

The Rev. Dr. Robert Thomas Kerlin served as professor in Missouri Valley College, Southwestern University, and the State Normal School, Warrensburg, Missouri, and is now instructor in English at Yale University.

The two Churches were fortunate in being represented by such a remarkable group of men, who combined an alert scholarship and insight into the needs of the Church with a devout sense of the deep spiritual importance of their work. Their proceedings recall the spirit in which Professor Calvin S. Harrington entered upon the work of the Hymnal Commission of 1876-78. In the words of his biography, as related by his wife: "He received the appointment as the greatest honor the Church had ever conferred upon him. Not until after days of prayer and questioning of his fitness did he enter tremblingly, but joyfully, upon the important work. As the days went on, and the labors increased, his enthusiasm grew intense, and absorbed every hour that could be spared from his regular college duties."

Work of such far-reaching influence is not "to be entered into unadvisedly, but reverently, discreetly, and in the fear of God"; and the commission felt with deep earnestness the burden of its responsibility. That they must prepare a Hymnal to be acceptable to the largest Protestant body in America, to serve the Church possibly for three decades, like its predecessors,

"Calvin Sears Harrington," by his Wife, Middletown, Connecticut, 1885.

to meet the needs of two separate Churches, to satisfy the varied tastes of every section and almost every class of people in our land, to give expression to the larger vision of truth and the more tender conception of God and his ways with men, which the Church had gained within a generation, to utter this expression without offense to those who still cling to the older ideas-this seems to have been the symphony, as Channing would have styled it, which the commission purposed to construct, composing a harmonious whole out of the themes of three hundred saintly singers of the Christian ages, and the melodies of nearly as many composers.

With this purpose in view the committee assembled for its first meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, in the spring of 1903.

The second meeting was held at Plymouth, Massachusetts, during the first week in July, 1903. In all these sessions a devout spirit of industry pervaded the work of the commission, whose brotherly harmony was never once broken, and whose final meeting (in Washington, D. C., January 14, 1904) was a Pentecost, as Bishop Goodsell reminds us in the Preface.

This meeting practically completed the work of choosing the hymns, though there were still a few minor changes to be made. Many of the tunes had been selected at the final meeting in Washington. Those still not chosen were left to the musical editors and the committee on tunes. The minor changes in phraseology were left with the Hymnal editors, the Rev. Dr. Charles M. Stuart for the North, and the