I told him that in all our churches his hymns were great favorites.  I unfortunately happened to mention that when lately in Glasgow I had gone to hear the Rev. Robert Montgomery, the author of “Satan,” and other poems.  It was this “Satan Montgomery” whom Macaulay had scalped with merciless criticism in the Edinburgh Review.  The mention of his name aroused the old poet’s ire.  “Would you believe it?” he exclaimed, indignantly, “they attribute some of that fellow’s performances to me, and lately a lady wrote to me in reference to one of his most pompous poems, and said “it was the best that I had ever written!” I do not wonder at my venerable friend’s vexation, for there was a world-wide contrast between his own chaste simplicity and the stilted pomposity of his Glasgow namesake.  Montgomery, though born a Moravian and educated at a Moravian school, was a constant worshipper at St. George’s Episcopal Church, in Sheffield.  The people of the town were very proud of their celebrated townsman, and after his death gave him a public funeral, and erected a bronze statue to his memory.  While he was the author of several volumes of poetry, his enduring fame rests on his hymns, some of which will be sung in all lands through coming generations.  Four hundred own his parentage and one hundred at least are in common use throughout Christendom.  He produced a single verse that has hardly been surpassed in all hymnology: 

   “Here in the body pent
     Absent from Him I roam. 
   Yet nightly pitch my moving-tent,
     A day’s march nearer home.”

Hymnology has known no denominational barriers.  While Toplady was an Episcopalian, Wesley a Methodist.  Newman and Faber Roman Catholics, Montgomery a Moravian, and Bonar a Presbyterian, the magnificent hymn,

   “In the cross of Christ I glory,”

was written by a Unitarian.  I had the great satisfaction of meeting its author, Sir John Bowring, at a public dinner in London during the summer of 1872.  A fresh, handsome veteran he was, too—­tall and straight as a ramrod, and exceedingly winsome in his manners.  He had been famous as the editor of the Westminster Review and quite famous in civil life, for he was a member of the British Parliament and once had been the Governor of Hong Kong.  He produced several volumes, but will owe his immortality to half a dozen superb hymns.  Of these the best is “In the cross of Christ I glory”; but we also owe to him that fine missionary hymn,

   “Watchman, tell us of the night”

He told my Presbyterian friend, Dr. Harper, in China, that the first time he ever heard it sung was at a prayer meeting of American missionaries in Turkey.  Sir John died about four months after I had met him, at the ripe age of eighty, and on his monument is inscribed only this single appropriate line, “In the cross of Christ I glory.”