" We are His folk, He doth us feed,
And for His sheep He doth us take,"
because the prose version runs : "We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture." And it may well be, as Canon Hutton suggests, that " flock " was originally a misprint for " folck."
But why did the misprint commend itself ? The reason undoubtedly was that the introduction of the clause "He doth us feed" into the first line of the couplet brought the notion of " pasture " too close to the word "folk." It is not to us as "folk," but as "a flock," that the metaphor of
feeding is applied in the Psalm. The resulting tautology is not greater than we are accustomed to in many pdasages of the Psalter ; and " flock " is the better word to sing. The first couplet of the Christmas hymn we should all acknow-
ledge to be finer in Wesley's original-
" Hark how all the welkin rings Glory to the King of Kings," than in Whitefield's familiar version. In idea and expression it is glorious. But then in imagination and vocabulary it made too great demands on the ordinary congregation ; so that alteration was imperative if the rest of the hymn was to be saved for popular use. Whitefield's version got rid not only of the antiquated word, but of the less tangible idea. Taking a hint from Milton's poem on the Circumcision, he transformed the chorus in heaven, praising God, into a body of heralds sent to earth to proclaim the new King and the new policy. And Madan completed the change by substituting at the end of the stanza— "With th' angelic host proclaim Christ is born in Bethlehem,"
for Wesley's too abstract- " Universal Nature say,
Christ the Lord is born to-day."
The revisers will, perhaps, think to clinch the matter by pleading that in going back to Wesley's text they are also going back to the text of St. Luke, from which Whitefield departed. They will point out that the multitude of the heavenly host were praising God and saying : "Glory to God in the highest," not "Glory to the new-born King." The answer must be that Whitefield's departure from the sacred text belongs to the same category as that of all the great pictures of the Nativity, which represent the angels as
worshipping.—I am, Sir, &c., H. C. BEECHING. Little Cloisters, Westminster Abbey.