" It is brass-band music, has a march movement, and for that reason has become popular ; though, for myself, I do not think much of it. Yet on several occasions I have been deeply moved by the singing of this very hymn. Going from Harrisburg to Lewisburg once, I got into a car filled with halfdrunken lumber-men. Suddenly one of them struck up, ' Shall we gather at the river ? ' and they sang it over and over again, repeating the chorus in a wild, boisterous way. I did not think so much of the music then, as I listened to those singers ; but I did think that perhaps the spirit of the hymn, the words so flippantly uttered, might somehow survive and be carried forward into the lives of those careless men, and ultimately lift them upward to the realization of the hope expressed in the hymn. << less