Hymn Story of the Month

In 1998—1999 I had a series of articles published in The Preacher’s Magazine that provided one hymn story per month for the entire year.  The setting for each story includes the month or season in some way.

January: “All for Jesus” ***

From a very young age, Mary James was “all for Jesus.” She was saved at age 10 and sanctified at age 12.  The Sunday school superintendent of her home church asked her to teach a class of six little girls when Mary was only 13 years old.  At first Mary refused because she felt she was too young for such a responsibility.  Yet the superintendent, the pastor, and other adults, recognizing Mary’s spiritual maturity, urged her to reconsider.  Decades of Christian service started when Mary became the teacher of that class of six- to nine-year-old girls.

Mary’s 60^th birthday was filled with spiritual victory.  In a New Year’s letter to friends at the beginning of 1871, Mary wrote: “I praise Him for the grace given me to do more than in any former year of my life.  I have written more, talked more, prayed more, and thought more for Jesus than in any previous year, and had more peace of mind, resulting from a stronger and more simple faith in Him.  My realization of His presence and guidance has been deeper, fuller, and sweeter than ever before.  In working for Jesus, I have felt less burden, more perfect self-abandonment, more reliance on the blessed Spirit, and more conscious help from above, so I must call the year 1870 the best year of my life” (Joseph H. James, The Life of Mrs. Mary D. James, 199).

As Mary reflect on the year just past, she recognized that the fulfillment she felt was a result of her total consecration to God.  In that context she wrote “All for Jesus” as a personal resolution for the New Year.

All for Jesus, all for Jesus!
All my being’s ransomed powers:
All my thoughts and words and doings,
All my days and all my hours.

February: “God of Grace and God of Glory” ***

Henry Emerson Fosdick looked out over the Atlantic Ocean.  He was vacationing at his home on Mouse Island off the Maine coast near Boothbay, but his mind was back in New York City.  Construction of a new church building would be completed in a few weeks, a facility financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., a member of the congregation.  As the pastor of the congregation, the Riverside Church, Fosdick recognized that the church at its best cannot be contained within a building.

One of Fosdick’s favorite hymn tunes was REGENT SQUARE, the tune usually used with “Angels, from the Realms of Glory.”  While thinking about his congregation, and humming REGENT SQUARE, Fosdick wrote, “God of Grace and God of Glory” while at his vacation home the summer of 1930.  Fosdick’s hymn was sung at the February 9, 1931, dedication of the Riverside Church as a prayer that the congregation that called the building home would be one filled with God’s power.

March: “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” ****

Tragedy struck swiftly.  Dudley Tyng reached to pat the back of a mule as it provided power for a corn threshing machine.  The sleeve of his jacket caught in one of the cogs of the gear, and Tyng’s arm was torn off.  The loss of blood was great, and everyone knew that his situation was grave.

Tyng followed in his father’s footsteps as an Episcopal pastor.  He was courageous, preaching the gospel fervently without concern for modifying his message to be politically correct.  On one occasion, he was dismissed from a congregation for preaching against slavery.  When revival swept through Philadelphia in 1858, Tyng stood on the front lines.  On March 30, 1858, he preached to 5,000 men at a noonday meeting sponsored by the YMCA, and 1,000 responded to the invitation.

Only days after that meeting, doctors were forced to amputate what remained of Tyng’s arm in an attempt to save his life.  But gangrene set in.  As his friends gathered around his bed, someone asked him if he had a message of the men of the YMCA.  Tyng replied, “Tell the, ‘Let us all stand up for Jesus.’”  Tyng died a short time later.

George Duffield, a Presbyterian pastor, one of the persons at Tyng’s bedside, heard the words of encouragement from his dying friend.  On the following Sunday, Duffield preached a sermon as a tribute to his friend, Dudley Tyng.  Duffield used the text, “Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness” (Eph. 6:14, KJV).  The sermon closed with a poem Duffield had written, a poem later set to music.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, stand in His strength alone;
The arm of flesh will fail you, ye dare not trust your own.
Put on the Gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer;
Where duty calls or danger, be never wanting there.

April: “Jesus Paid it All” ****

On a spring Sunday morning in 1865, Elvina Hall took her usual place with the choir of the Monument Street Methodist Church in Baltimore.  As the worship service progressed, a poetic response to the truth proclaimed began to form in her mind.  Not wanting to be a distraction, Elvina waited until the congregation had bowed their heads before she wrote down the poem.  The only thing on which she had to write was the flyleaf of the hymnal she held in her hand.  She later showed the poem to her pastor and told him how it had been composed.

The pastor of the Monument Street Methodist Church gave the poem to John Grape, the church organist.  Grape, an amateur musician and coal merchant, had written a tune for another hymn titled “All to Christ,” but friends and family did not like that combination of text and tune.  Grape was thrilled when he discovered that his tune fit the meter of Hall’s text.

Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

May: “A Name I Highly Treasure” ****

Norma Eliason had been asked to sing a solo at the 1946 Memorial Day service held at a cemetery in northern Minnesota.  A local judge spoke, but his address made no mention of spiritual truth.  His words were without hope.  Shallow.  Empty.  Then Norma sang a song about Jesus.  The character of the service changed.  As he surveyed the gathering, Norma’s husband, Oscar, noticed the dramatic shift.  He said that the people “just seemed to melt under the power of Jesus’ name.”

As was their custom, Norma and their boys took a walk after the Memorial Day service, looking for signs of spring.  When they returned home 45 minutes later, they found Oscar sitting at the family piano, playing and singing a song he has just completed, “A Name I Highly Treasure.”  Tears of love filled Oscar’s eyes as he sang his song of testimony.

June: “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” *

George Matheson sat alone on the evening of June 6, 1882.  He was accustomed to the darkness, since he was blind; but this night was different.  Isolated except for his thoughts, the moments were filled with the “most severe mental suffering.”

His sister had married that day.  She had been a faithful helper, but now things were changing.  For years she wrote down Matheson’s sermons as he dictated them to her.  Later she would read the sermon to George a couple of times, and then he would preach the sermon to his congregation on Sunday.  This weekly ritual would change.

He also remembered what may have been his own wedding plans.  According to some hymnologists, more than 20 years before, his fiancé had broken their engagement when she learned he was losing his eyesight.  She didn’t want to be married to a blind preacher.

Perhaps as George relived the pain of rejection that June evening, suddenly a poem came to his mind.  The poem reminded him of God’s faithfulness.  He wrote: “It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life.  I had the impression rather of having it dictated to me by some inward voice than of working it out myself.  I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes.”

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

July: “All Creatures of Our God and King” *

Francis of Assisi was known as a man of simplicity and service.  Named Francesco Bernardone when born in 1182, he was the son of a wealthy cloth salesman.  Following a serious illness when a young adult, Francis relinquished all rights to the family fortune so he might be free to minister the love of God to needy people.  Soon others joined Francis in his itinerant ministry, and they became known as the Franciscan Order of Friars.  Their mission aimed simply to “follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in His footsteps.”  Francis described this lifestyle in the poem “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.”  Whether holding a sick child, comforting a grief-stricken woman, or caring for the animals (which he called his “brothers and sisters”), Francis of Assisi was a man whose own contentment in all circumstances became a source of serenity for others.

A year before his death, Francis lay in a straw shanty, blind and ill.  The hut provided not only shade from the hot summer sun but also companions, since Francis shared the space with field mice.  Always one to praise the Lord in all circumstances and one who love God’s creation, he wrote “All Creatures of Our God and King” on that hot summer day as the field mice romped around him.

Let all things their Creator bless,
And worship Him in humbleness,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son,
And praise the Spirit, Three in One!
O praise Him! O praise Him!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

August: “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” *

In August 1938, Thomas Dorsey was helping with music for revival meetings in St. Louis.  While the congregation was still singing during the first service, Dorsey received a telegram on the platform.  The message was devastating.  A telephone call confirmed the news.  Dorsey’s wife died during the delivery of their first child.

A friend drove Thomas back to Chicago that night.  He arrived in time to see his infant son, just hours before the baby died.  Both mother and child were buried in the same casket.

Thomas felt depressed and despondent in the days that followed.  The weight of his grief suffocated him.  Seeking relief, he went to visit his friend, Theodore Frye, a music professor at Madame Malone’s College.  They walked around the campus as they talked about life and death.  Stopping in one of the music rooms, Thomas sat down at the piano and began playing a melody he had not played before.  As he played, Thomas began to say, “Blessed Lord, blessed Lord.”  Theodore suggested that he use the words “Precious Lord” with the first notes of the melody.  Thomas tried it, and the remainder of the text quickly followed.

The next Sunday Theodore Frye used the new song with his church choir as Thomas Dorsey played the piano.  “It tore up the church.”  So many people wanted a copy of the song that they hurried to get the song published.

September: “Joy Unspeakable” **

Camp meetings and revival services were nothing new to Barney Warren.  From the time he was 18, he had traveled as a singer and preacher with an evangelistic team.  Since he was always with other members of the team or folks from the communities in which they ministered, Barney knew there were times he needed to be alone.

Such was the case when Barney served as one of the workers at a camp meeting in northwestern Ohio.  So he left the campgrounds in search of a quiet place where he could be alone for prayer and meditation.  As he walked through the woods, he came upon a pipe that had been installed in an artesian spring.  “The water was flowing with great force in a stream the full size of the pipe.  I threw a chip into the pipe, but the force of the water was so great that it carried the chip away. I then picked up a large stick of wood about a foot in length and forced it down the pipe, but the powerful stream quickly brought it up and carried it away.”

Barney thought about Jesus’ words concerning “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14, KJV). As Barney watched the water bubble out of that pipe, the song “Joy Unspeakable” began to flow from his soul.

I have found the joy no tongue can tell,
How its waves of glory roll!
It is like a great o’erflowing well,
Springing up within my soul.

It is joy unspeakable and full of glory,
Full of glory, full of glory,
It is joy unspeakable and full of glory,
Oh, the half has never yet been told.

October: “All the Way My Savior Leads Me” **

Fanny Crosby was wildly successful as a gospel songwriter.  Some publishers were a bit sheepish to acknowledge Fanny as the author of most of the songs in their books, so they started using pseudonyms as a curtain.  Hymnology scholars suspect that over 200 pseudonymns were used.  Fanny was typically paid about $3 for each song, and she never received royalty payments beyond that.  A few of her closest friends felt that Fanny should be more highly compensated, but it never became an issue for her.

Fanny Crosby did not see herself as primarily a gospel songwriter.  In a newspaper interview on her 88^th birthday, Fanny identified herself as a city mission worker.  Many evenings each week, Fanny attended the services at the missions in New York City.  Sometimes she would be asked to speak.  Most of the time she would search for someone with whom to talk about faith in Christ and godly living.  If she were not at a mission, Fanny often invited neighbors into her tenement apartment for fellowship and singing.  When she discovered someone with a financial need, Fanny often shared her resources with her friend. If she had been paid more for her songs, some have speculated, she probably would have given it away.

One day in the fall of 1874, Fanny needed money to pay her rent.  As her custom, she began to pray about the need, asking God to supply exactly what she lacked.  Soon after she prayed this prayer, a man visited with her in her apartment.  As he prepared to leave, he shook hands with Fanny, leaving a five dollar bill in her hand.  Fanny responded to the gift by saying: “In what a wonderful way the Lord helps me! All the way my Savior leads me!” she wrote the hymn that day.

All the way my Savior leads me;
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt His tender mercy,
Who through life has been my Guide?
Heav’nly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in Him to dwell!
For I know, whate’er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well.

November: “It is Well with My Soul” **

For many years Horatio Spafford knew only success.  As a prominent attorney and businessman in Chicago, he and his family enjoyed may material blessings.  A fervent supporter of Christian causes, Horatio was a personal friend of Dwight Moody and other leading evangelists of the 19^th century.

Then a series of disasters ravaged the Spafford family.  A son died suddenly of scarlet fever.  The great Chicago fire of 1871 wiped out Spafford’s extensive real estate holdings.  A few Christian “friends” assumed Spaffords’ misfortune was a sign of God’s judgment, so they forced the Spaffords out of their church for unconfessed sin.

Hoping to provide a much-needed time of rest and to assist Moody with evangelistic meetings in Great Britain, Horatio made arrangements for his family to travel across the Atlantic.  Urgent business matters arose at the last minute, so Horatio sent his family ahead of him. He was to follow in a few days. Partway across the Atlantic the Ville du Havre, the ship on which his wife and four daughters were sailing, was struck by another ship, the Lochearn.  The Ville du Havre sank in 12 minutes claiming 226 lives, including Horatio’s four daughters. He learned of the tragedy in a terse cable: “Saved alone. Your wife.”

Horatio immediately set out to join his wife who, by now, was in Wales.  For hours he stood at the ship’s rail watching the waves and thinking about his daughters. At one point, the captain of the ship interrupted Horatio’s preoccupation to tell that they were in the vicinity where the Ville du Havre had gone down.  Somewhere on this journey, in the midst of sorrow that “like sea billows roll,” Horatio penned the words of “It Is Well with My Soul.”

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

December: “His Name is Wonderful” ***

Audrey Meier sat in the sanctuary of the church where her brother-in-law was the pastor. She anticipated that morning of the children’s Christmas program. A teenage girl played the part of Mary. Several young boys portrayed the angels. A doll represented the Christ child.

As Audrey looked around the congregation, she saw little children enthralled with the holiday enchantment.  She noticed senior adults lovingly watching the children.

Then the moment of inspiration came. “The pastor stood up and slowly lifted his hands toward heaven and said, ‘His name is Wonderful!’ Those words electrified me. I immediately began writing in the back of my Bible.” That evening Audrey taught her new song, “His Name Is Wonderful,” to the teenagers of the church. Since that time, Christians around the world have sung this song in dozens of languages.

* “Hymn Story of the Month—Part One,” Preacher’s Magazine (June 1998), pp. 46-47.

** “Hymn Story of the Month—Part Two,” Preacher’s Magazine (September 1998), pp. 18-19.

*** “Hymn Story of the Month—Part Three,” Preacher’s Magazine (December 1998), pp. 22-23.

**** “Hymn Story of the Month—Part Four,” Preacher’s Magazine (March 1999), pp. 8-9.