Each member of the Ma­son­ic Quar­tet of Pitts­burgh [Penn­syl­van­ia] re­cent­ly re­ceived a check and a note of thanks for sing­ing at the fun­er­al of Cap­tain S. S. Brown. An un­u­su­al sto­ry was al­so made pub­lic there­by. “In the last hours of the turf king’s life,” one of the dai­ly pa­pers says, “he had an in­ter­val in which his mind was clear. He called his daugh­ter-in-law and asked if she would take on her­self the task of see­ing that ‘The Christ­ian’s Good-night’ was sung at his fun­er­al; and he told her, in a dis­joint­ed way, of a dream from which he had just awak­ened. He had thought him­self dead, and there were four min­is­ters tak­ing part in his fun­er­al. He named the min­is­ters and said that one of them had brok­en down while mak­ing an ad­dress, and that ano­ther, nam­ing this min­is­ter al­so, had tak­en up the ad­dress. Cap­tain Brown said that he awoke as all were sing­ing ‘The Christ­ian’s Good-night,’ and that he had joined with them in the sing­ing. The dy­ing man smiled faint­ly at the pic­ture he drew, but begged his daugh­ter-in-law to re­mem­ber her prom­ise.”

The words of this hymn were oc­ca­sioned by the death of a friend. They were hand­ed to me at Bris­tol, Eng­land. I wrote the mu­sic soon af­ter­ward, and sang it at the fun­er­al of Charles H. Spur­geon, the great Lon­don preach­er. It has since be­come ve­ry use­ful on two con­ti­nents as a fun­er­al hymn.