Thy gardens and thy pleasant fruit So sweet a sight by human eye If heaven be thus glorious, Lord, Reach down, reach down thine arm of grace, And sabbaths have no end. When wilt Thou come to me, O Lord? My dear Redeemer is above, Him will I go to see; And all my friends in Christ below Jerusalem! my happy home! It does not appear from what immediate source the expositor got the hymn. Some of the lines are sufficiently homely to suggest the idea that they were furnished by himself. But the keynote, with the first three verses and the last, can be traced to a composition of much older date, to which reference will be made. At the time when this hymn was current in England, in the above form, a very sweet and soothing kindred strain was going forth among the hills and glens of Scotland, not inserted in any hymn-book or collection of sacred poetry, but printed in three columns upon halfpenny "broadsides." Two or three copies have survived to the present day, well thumbed, and of course somewhat tattered and torn. The northern peasantry had it by heart, and the opening verse yet lingers in the recollections of the people. It is far too When shall I come to thee? In thee no sickness is at all, No dimmish clouds o'ershadow thee, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Would God I were in thee! O my sweet home, Jerusalem! And thy felicity? Thy vineyards and thy orchards, So wonderful and fair; And furnished with trees and fruits Most beautiful and rare." Thus the ballad-hymn goes on, now plaintive, now triumphant, through thirty-one eight-line stanzas. About a quarter of a century ago, it was reprinted in one of the northern periodicals, and has since been issued in a small separate volume, with an introduction and notes.1 The 1 "The New Jerusalem: a Hymn of the Olden Time." Nisbet and Co. London: editor aptly describes it as a hymn of mingled sadness and triumph, but with more of the latter than the former. "It is the song of a prisoner," he beautifully remarks, "yet of one who, through his prison bars, sees afar off the bright slopes of his native hills. It is a solemn chant, nay, at times almost melancholy, were it not for the bursts of joy pervading it, like fragrance scattered o'er the lone moorland, or like sunshine streaming in through the shaken foliage on some martyr's forest-grave. It offers us neither polish nor It is old and plain, and of it we may say not ornament. only that "The spinsters and the knitters in the sun Did use to chant it," but the ploughman at his plough, the weaver at his loom, the traveller on his journey, the schoolboy loitering along, the children round the hearth, the hunted martyr in his hiding-place, have all chanted the rude old melody, and found utterance through it to the home-sick longings of their souls." The impassioned appeal, "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! would God I were in thee," revives the memory of Bunyan's closing words respecting the Celestial City and its inhabitants: “Now, just as the gates were open to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold the city shone like the sun. And after that they shut up the gates, which when I had seen, I wished myself among them." The Scotch ballad was long ascribed to David Dickson, upon the authority of Wodrow, the writer of his life, who mentions among his works a poem with the title of "The New Jerusalem." He was parish minister of Irvine, in Ayrshire, towards the middle of the seventeenth century. An English traveller of that day, who went to hear him preach, describes him as a well-favoured, proper old man, with a long beard, who showed me all my heart." Cast upon troublous times, it is very well known that he solaced himself in leisure hours with song. Trying circumstances naturally and forcibly suggested to the man of God trains of thought, and elicited feelings corresponding to those expressed in the poem, which the psalmists, familiar with evil days, have also left on record. An American writer, Dr. Belcher, the biographer of Whitefield, records an interesting incident which indicates the traditional popularity of the old Scottish version of the hymn. A Presbyterian minister in New Orleans, attending the death-bed of a young Scotchman, had in vain endeavoured to obtain any response to his spiritual admonitions. The poor man seemed utterly callous and indifferent. After one visit, the minister, as he turned away, half-unconsciously, began to sing, "Jerusalem, my happy home," when the patient called him back, and bursting into tears said, "My dear mother used to sing that hymn." From that moment his heart seemed to be softened, and having acknowledged his sinfulness, he gave good hope, before he departed, of his having found peace through the Saviour. Twenty-six verses occur in a manuscript collection of miscellaneous poetry in the British Museum, of the time of James I., which agree substantially, as far as they go, with the composition edited by the minister of Irvine. Three stanzas will sufficiently illustrate their identity :— "Hierusalem, my happy home, When shall I come to thee? O happie harbour of the saints! Ah! my sweete home, Hierusalem, This piece has the unattractive and baffling title of "A Song made by F. B. P., to the tune of Diana." It has an unmistakeable tinge of Romanism, for the line occurs, "Our Lady sings magnificat," for which Dickson substituted, "There Mary sings magnificat." It is very likely that the copyist in the manuscript book, and the Scotch divine, had the same original before them in print, which is at present unknown, but may turn up in some rare volume of the Elizabethan period. The manuscript referred to contains another piece entitled "A Prisoner's Song," remarkably similar in tone and style. It begins with the verse, the orthography of which is modernized, "Jerusalem! thy joys divine, No joys may be compared to them; No city like Jerusalem." There is yet a third piece in the volume, without any title, corresponding to the two preceding : "Jerusalem the place is called, The place with precious stones is walled, The gates with precious pearls are framed; The precious pearls that can be named Amidst the streams the well of life So it goes on through fifty-one more stanzas. The similarity of these compositions suggested the idea to Dr. Bonar that they must have had a common origin; and there are Latin medieval hymns, free from all taint of Romanism, from which they seem to have been immediately derived by the English versifiers, who engrafted upon them Romanist ideas. There is one by Hildebert, about the beginning of the twelfth century; a second, at the same period, by Bernard, of Cluny; and a third, much farther back, by Damiani. But these Latin hymns, equally with |