But the question is a rhetorical one, and the poet's free
expression--here as in hundreds of other cases--has never disturbed the
general confidence in his orthodoxy.

Montgomery called Watts "the inventor of hymns in our language," and the
credit stands practically undisputed, for Watts made a hymn style that
no human master taught him, and his model has been the ideal one for
song worship ever since; and we can pardon the climax when Professor
Charles M. Stuart speaks of him as "writer, scholar, thinker and saint,"
for in addition to all the rest he was a very good man.


_THE TUNE._

Old "Ames" was for many years the choir favorite, and the words of the
hymn printed with it in the note-book made the association familiar. It
was, and _is_, an appropriate selection, though in later manuals George
Kingsley's "Ware" is evidently thought to be better suited to the
high-toned verse. Good old tunes never "wear out," but they do go out of
fashion.

The composer of "Ames," Sigismund Neukomm, Chevalier, was born in
Salzburg, Austria, July 10, 1778, and was a pupil of Haydn. Though not a
great genius, his talents procured him access and even intimacy in the
courts of Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and England, and for thirty
years he composed church anthems and oratorios with prodigious industry.
Neukomm's musical productions, numbering no less than one thousand, and
popular in their day, are, however, mostly forgotten, excepting his
oratorio of "David" and one or two hymn-tunes.