The minister related the fact that Mr. Roosevelt loved growing things, especially; and called attention to the extraordinary coincidence that the church envelopes for that day carried a “Garden Prayer”: “Help us, O Lord, to grasp the meaning of happy, growing things, that we may weave it into the tissue of our faith in life eternal.... We thank Thee, O Lord, for gardens and their message.”

A soloist now sang, “O Rest in the Lord.”

Howard Graves moved to the corner beside the altar and bore a large American flag forward in the chancel. The ushers took their places beside him. The choir, the organ and the congregation merged in fervent chorus with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A prayer, and the service closed.

“He was a good friend. He was a good neighbor,” said a parishioner as she left the sanctuary with tear-dimmed eyes.

Hymns were sung by an all-high-school chorus at City Hall Park, New York City, on Saturday afternoon, following the one minute of silence, and these included “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Fifty thousand people were present and many joined in the singing. A memorial service was held in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and seven thousand people were gathered an hour before the service began on Saturday afternoon at four o’clock. The hymns there sung were “Nearer, My God, to Thee”; “Rock of Ages,” and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Communities all over the nation also held services at the hour when the funeral was held in the White House and in thousands of churches, public squares and parks, after the moment of silence in which traffic was hushed, and men and women stood with bowed heads, some of the hymns already mentioned were sung. “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” was sometimes included. Many of these programs also included “America the Beautiful,” and, of course, our beloved national hymn, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”

Those who could not leave their homes were still enabled to listen to these services (and perhaps join in the singing of the hymns). “The networks,” said an editor, “gave an impressive picture of the tribute being paid to a departed leader from one end of the country to another. One joined the solemn throng in front of the City Hall in New York, or sat in a great cathedral in Boston. Swiftly from the Eastern seaboard to the Far West, the radio gave us glimpses of memorial services in Chicago, in Kansas City, in Dallas and in Seattle.”

An appreciative letter to an editor by a woman said of those days from the death to the burial of Mr. Roosevelt, “Along with our grief and tears we were given an uplift such as the broadcasting companies have never given us before for a period of time like that.”

CHAPTER VI
OCCASIONS TO REMEMBER

“Once I remember taking a service while the shells screamed over us into Ypres. And as the men were singing:

“‘Cover my defenseless head

With the shadow of Thy wing,’

one that fell short came hurtling, landing not two yards away—a dud.”—Dr. A. J. Gossip in “The British Weekly.”

“What was the greatest moment of all?” That was the question put to General Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army when she was 81 (Christmas Day, 1946), by Dorothy Walworth, who narrated the interview in The Christian Herald.

Retired, yet in good health and still working hard, this magnetic speaker, whom I once heard as she thrilled a mighty audience with her fervent oratory, paused a moment. As daughter of the founder, and later his honored successor in its leadership, there had been many high moments. Then came her answer with conviction as she related that her finest experience came on a day which she spent in the Leper Colony in Poethenkuruz, in southern India, where a chorus of little leper girls had been trained to sing one of the hymns she wrote for the Army. They stood before her in their dainty white dresses. Faces and hands were badly scarred, “but their voices were clear and true. As they reached the words in the hymn:

They put their tiny scarred hands over their hearts, and I was overcome,” said Miss Booth.

Princess Elizabeth (prospective Queen of England) was married to Prince Philip on November 20, 1947. This was the centennial of the death of Henry F. Lyte. The Princess, therefore, arranged for the rendering of his hymn:

when the bridal party entered Westminster Abbey. “This same hymn,” said The Diapason, “was also sung at the wedding of King George and Queen Elizabeth.”

“Abide with Me” in a Submarine

Fiction has rarely given us anything more arrestingly strange than the following narration of a few minutes of life with their bewildering experience. The story was related in The Methodist Recorder, London, in its issue of December 19, 1946, and is here reproduced in the exact words of the writer, Campbell Marr of Kirkaldy:

“In the early days of the war (World War II) a British submarine was trapped at the bottom of the Heligoland Bight through an unlocated defect in the machinery. In frantic despair the engineers endeavored to find the fault, but without success.

“When the oxygen supply was almost exhausted the lieutenant in charge assembled the crew and told them that the situation was beyond all hope. He gave each man an opiate so that death might be made easier. Someone started to sing that very popular hymn:

“‘Abide with me,’

and they all joined in. Suddenly one man swooned, and fell into the machinery and immediately the lights went on and the engine commenced to buzz. The man in his fall had operated a lever which in the light of the hand torches had been overlooked.

“In a few minutes they had surfaced, and were thanking God for their miraculous deliverance. Many of these men are now back in civilian life, and not one of them is ever likely to forget that grand old hymn.”

Wheel Chair Singers

We looked long at the unusual picture which stood out prominently on the front page of our morning newspaper (an AP Wirephoto). The item carried the heading which we are using. A group of twenty-five singers was shown, and they all sat in wheel chairs. They were all polio patients, and among them were several naval officers. A special article in The New York Times supplied additional details.

The courageous singers were seated in the little white chapel in Warm Springs, Georgia, where President F. D. Roosevelt last attended a service of worship. Now, two years after his sudden passing, a memorial service was being conducted for him. This was on April 12, 1947, and three hundred polio victims and villagers were present—the patients also occupied wheel chairs. An overflow company of two hundred were outside on the greensward in front of the chapel, and listened to the service which was conveyed to them by loudspeakers.

The pew in which President Roosevelt always sat when he was at Warm Springs was reserved. Warm Springs was the place to which he often went when making his heroic fight with his affliction. The health-giving sources which he there found were greatly helpful. It was there that death came suddenly to him; there the Little White House stands; and there State Guards have maintained constant vigil since his translation. The American flag was on that day at half staff at the unpretentious cottage where he spent restful, though busy, days.

The leader of the Wheel Chair Choir, Mr. Fred Botts, also occupied a wheel chair as he directed his group of plucky singers—young people who were there for treatment. For the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation is the largest center in the world for the treatment of poliomyelitis. Thither go patients from every state in the union.

One newspaper supplied the thing I wanted to know, for I wondered what hymns would be sung by such an exceptional choir—young people fighting with determination for their health and their future. First came:

The second hymn which the Wheel Chair Singers led the congregation in singing on that pleasant April day was one which is peculiarly impressive:

This hymn by Katharina von Schlegel appeared in 1752, and very little is known of the writer. It was “adequately translated” by Jane Laurie Bothwick (1813-1897) of Edinburgh. While visiting Switzerland, a friend suggested that she translate some German hymns in which she was interested. Therefore she and her sister, Sarah Bothwick Findlater, worked together in translating Hymns From the Land of Luther.

Comforting and challenging must have been the appeal to the hearts of the crippled patients as there came to their lips the words of the second verse:

Times there are in life when not only the occupants of wheel chairs, but also the rest of us, may serenade our souls by singing or quoting that bravely suggestive line:

Sang the Hymn from Memory

When Theodore Roosevelt was running for the presidency in 1912, he spent a weekend with William Allen White in Emporia, Kansas. The plan was to take him to the Congregational Church on Sunday morning for worship, but the guest asked if there were not a German Lutheran Church in town.

“There was, and I took him there,” said White.

A feature that impressed the host is related in The Autobiography of William Allen White. Both building and congregation were small. Naturally everybody stared at Roosevelt in amazement. But the preacher lined out the hymns, and White was delighted to note that Roosevelt stood with the congregation and sang three stanzas of

without taking up the hymnal. He showed no hesitation concerning the words.

Perhaps, however, White did not know that the hymn was one of Roosevelt’s favorites. Both Andrew Jackson and Robert E. Lee were fond of it; and it was used at the funerals of both Lee and Roosevelt.

Its frequent use in services of worship in the United States is indicated by the fact that it is placed second in the Inter-Church Hymnal by Morgan and Ward (1930).

An early memory of the writer is that of an old man at a large religious gathering. During the evening this hymn was sung. He stood erect and with face aglow as he joined in the singing. He had seen much of life and doubtless realized from personal experience the reality of the words he was singing. Possibly he was recalling some specific hours in life; for when the third verse was reached, he lifted his face and continued to sing with others:

The tears now began to flow down his cheeks; but he sang clear to the closing lines as he continued to wipe away the tears:

This is a good memory hymn, for its assurances are fitted to many situations and emergencies of life.

Hymn Expressed the Hearer’s Feelings

“That hymn expresses exactly what I have felt for years. How often I have wanted ‘A little shrine of quietness, all sacred to myself.’ How often have I wanted ‘a little shelter from life’s stress.’”

That was what a hearer said to a New Jersey minister, the Rev. Daniel Lyman Ridout, at the close of worship during which the clergyman read the words of John Oxenham, while his daughter accompanied him on the piano “with reverent insight”:

Oxenham’s hymn expresses the desire of the soul in life’s supreme moments. This hymn was written during World War I, when the “sorrow of the human race was most acute.”

Writing under the name of John Oxenham, the author’s real name is William Arthur Dunkerley. Following his education in Victoria University, Manchester, he followed a business career. He spent some time in the United States, and also traveled extensively in Europe and Canada. “He began writing as a relief from business,” we are told. Finding that he enjoyed writing more, he “dropped business and stuck to writing.”

A most unusual note is sounded in this hymn. The heart of the mystic calls for:

In a little private chapel down in the south of England he found the little “shrine of quietness” which he coveted. Thence he would go to “sit and think,” and realize his desire for:

Hymn of the Homesick American

Leading representatives of every department of English public life assembled to do honor to one “who had labored, during the six years he had been ambassador, to promote good-will between the sister nations.” This was on May 6, 1905, when Joseph Hodges Choate was entertained at a farewell banquet in London. He had attained high distinction as a lawyer and achieved great prominence in public life in the United States when, in 1899, President McKinley appointed him ambassador to Great Britain. There he became a “messenger of good-will” in a very marked degree.

The scholarly orator, arising to speak, confessed that he was resigning because he was homesick. Then he explained: “My friends on this side of the water are multiplying every day in numbers and increasing in the ardor of their affection. I am sorry to say that the great host of my friends on the other side are as rapidly diminishing and dwindling away:

and I have a great desire to be with the waning number.”

This was an effective use of words from a great hymn which Mr. Choate, a Harvard graduate, evidently well knew. The incident has been preserved for us by the Rev. John Telford. They came from the hymn of Charles Wesley, which begins:

This was the hymn that John Wesley and his congregation in Staffordshire were singing at the hour when Charles Wesley, its author, joined the company in heaven. Once, when in Dublin, John Wesley announced this hymn, and making some comments on the same affirmed that it was “the sweetest hymn” his brother ever wrote. That lover and critic of hymns, W. T. Stead, reports that the Bishop of Hereford wrote him that he thought that the fourth verse “was one of the finest in the whole realm of hymnology.” This runs:

Students in the classes of the beloved Samuel F. Upham, professor in Drew Theological Seminary, will readily recall how he, in advancing age, with characteristic fervor and deep emotion, occasionally quoted the third and fourth lines of this cherished verse. Stevenson, in his informing discussion of the Wesley hymns, has given us a great variety of incidents associated with this song, and refers to it as “that great and impassioned hymn.”

His Ordination Hymn

The day of his ordination is a sacred one in the life of a minister. It marks the time when he is definitely set apart for a very sacred task for the balance of his life. Therefore the events of that day are deeply embedded in the life of the individual who is henceforth to proclaim the gospel.

Reference was made by Dr. William Pierson Merrill, then pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, on October 26, 1930, when the fortieth anniversary of his own ordination was observed, to the special hymn which was sung on that occasion. Written by the scholarly Dr. Timothy Dwight, it has held a secure place in the hymnology of the Christian Church. The words deeply impressed him as a young man when they sang:

Speaking of what the hymn had meant to him through the years of his pulpit and pastoral experience, he said: “I believed then, I am far surer now, that this is the attitude for every Christian, and everyone who would do his best for the common good. You cannot afford to neglect the church.” Then once more the hymn was sung.

Deep in the affections of thousands of Christians there dwells this love for the church of the living Christ. Therefore through the decades since this hymn was written Christians have assembled in their various places of worship, and have meaningly and happily sung:

Soldiers Sang at Their General’s Funeral

The great military leader who had a premonition that he would die in battle came to his death as the result of an accident sustained soon after the close of World War II. Generals and colonels were the pall bearers of General George S. Patton, Jr., when he was laid to rest on Christmas eve, 1945, in the American Military Cemetery near Luxembourg. Six hundred men who had served under General Patton in combat formed an honor guard; and his grave “was no different from six thousand others which marked the resting-place of soldiers from his own beloved Third Army.”

Funeral services were held in Christ Church, Heidelberg, Germany, on December 23rd, and those were extensively reported for the Associated Press. Two army chaplains were in charge. Mrs. Patton, who sat in the front of the church, “turned her head to look at the choir loft when a soldier choir of thirty-six voices” began to sing the first hymn:

“This is one of those Easter hymns which is included in almost every hymnal, but which is actually used much less than it deserves,” remarks Dr. Charles A. Boyd. Tersely he adds: “It is a historic treasure, one of those Latin hymns so old that nobody knows the exact age.”

When the choral group from the Seventh Army began to sing:

the khaki-clad officers and men who filled Christ Church, where the Episcopal service was conducted, joined in singing the familiar hymn. Onward to its concluding lines they sang with mighty voice:

The comment of Dr. Charles S. Robinson concerning this hymn merits consideration: “This is one of Bishop Reginald Heber’s finest lyrics, ranking in the estimation of many with that anthem-like composition, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.’”

The two hymns mentioned were sung at the request of Mrs. Patton, who stated that these were the two hymns which her husband most loved.

The soldiers lifted the flag from the casket, “and held it a few inches” above the lid when the burial service occurred at Luxembourg. The 63rd Psalm (General Patton’s favorite passage of Scripture) was intoned by Chaplain Edwin R. Carter. The military men bared their heads, and the service closed with the Lord’s Prayer. “With the ending of the prayer, the soldiers folded the flag and handed it to Mrs. Patton.... A bugle sounded taps for the fallen leader.... The Russian, British and French generals, their great coats gleaming with medals, held themselves strictly in salute until Mrs. Patton turned to leave.” The body of the American general was now resting beside that of an American private.

Details will gradually be forgotten by those who witnessed them, or followed the reports in the daily newspapers; but Americans will love to recall the favorite hymns of a beloved military leader who participated in a most significant manner in the events of World War II.

CHAPTER VII
HYMNS THAT CHANGED LIVES

Twice it has been my privilege to go to the Fiji Islands, the second time just passing through on the ship. I never forgot the things told me on my first visit. A hundred years ago all over the island of Tonga the people were cannibals, but I saw Christian schools and colleges, in one of which I addressed 400 girls, from 13 to 19 years of age, who worked up to matriculation standard. When I had finished speaking they sang to me a Fijian farewell song. Then I saw these 400 big girls in their blue tunics scampering over the green, skin ebony black, teeth ivory white. Their parents were all slaves; their grandparents cannibals, but these girls burst into spontaneous singing and the words they sang were:

Presiding at a great meeting in City Road Chapel, London, in 1933, when the object was to inform the audience what was being done among the men of the army, the navy, and the air force by the churches, Mr. Joseph Rank opened by giving his own experience. One Sunday evening he went to hear the famous and eloquent Hugh Price Hughes, who long conducted a successful mission in London. Before he began to preach, the company sang:

“While singing it with the rest,” said Mr. Rank, “the question came to me, ‘Can you truthfully say that?’ By the time we came to the chorus again, I had the peace that passeth understanding. I had the same warmed heart that John Wesley got, that Luther got, and that thousands of others got in the same way, through believing in Jesus Christ.”

When Catherine Booth Made the Great Decision

A Salvation Army Band led the singing and a Salvation Army officer delivered the address at one of the three meetings held in connection with the 150th anniversary of Stockwell Green Congregational Church, London, during the summer of 1946. Very special reasons lay back of the recognition of the Salvation Army on that occasion, for in that church the wife of General William Booth made the “great decision”; and in front of the speaker was the pew bearing the number 23 where Catherine Mumford always sat with her family. She was also a teacher in its Sunday School. In that church on one June day she was converted, and on another June day she was married to the Rev. William Booth, a young Methodist minister. The future years led these two young people, one a Congregationalist and the other a Methodist, in paths of Christian service beyond their utmost dreams.

Catherine had a gloriously happy memory in the hymn which led to her conversion, and rejoiced in its emphatic assurance, as expressed by Charles Wesley:

This hymn has always been popular in British Methodism, and in the latest edition of their hymn-book (1933) it is set to the tune of Harwich. Telford characterized it as “a hymn with an extraordinary history of blessing ever since it was written.” One can easily imagine, therefore, with what delight the young convert could henceforth sing the second verse:

His Song and Experience in a Coal Mine

“The greatest English poet of his age,” said Dr. James Moffatt when speaking of William Cowper. But this same writer gave us some of our most cherished hymns. They are greatly beloved in our American churches as well as in his native land. Among those richly cherished and frequently used in worship is the one which deals with Divine Providence:

This hymn “has helped multitudes to bear up under the blows of apparently adverse fortune,” we are told by W. T. Stead. Referring to the verse which reads:

we are told that “It has been much used in times of danger and distress.”

In confirmation of this statement, we have the experience of the Rev. Eric Kinworthy, Rotherham, England. This personal incident won first prize among six hundred hymn stories submitted to The Methodist Recorder, London, in a “Readers’ Christmastide Symposium,” December, 1946. We give the story in the words of Mr. Kinworthy, who indicated the effect it had on his life:

“As a boy in my ’teens my work was that of a pony-driver in the local coal-mine, and being a lover of horses, my work-mate and I were on good terms. Usually we were kept very busy, for two ponies and their drivers were needed to keep the colliers supplied with empty tubs, and to take away the full tubs from the coal-face.

“One afternoon, since but few of the men were at work, Captain, my pony, was well able to do the work by himself. The other pony was allowed to stay in the stables. As we went on our way to the end of the level with a full load, I was singing a hymn.

“Suddenly, there was an awful crash. We were jerked to a standstill. It was impossible to see anything until the dust cleared. In a little while, I found the roof had caved in, and resting on top of the first two tubs was a huge stone weighing about two hundredweights. Other big stones were lying around. I was badly frightened, but realized my life had been wonderfully spared from death or certain injury. If the pony had not increased his pace a moment or two before, nothing could have saved us. I had been singing a moment before—

Immediately I knelt in the dust and dedicated my life to God. He had spared me for some high purpose. Today I am trying to fit in, in that great purpose, as a minister.”

Decision of the “Incorrigible”

One of the great hymns of the twentieth century, and one which attained immediate popularity, the author tells us, was “written for a Consecration Service at Boston University School of Religious Education in 1926.” The opening lines begin with a striking question and a significant answer:

Many interesting stories have gathered around this hymn, written by Professor Earl Marlatt, then of the Boston University School of Theology. Among these stories, which he treasures, was one given to me by Professor Marlatt, with full permission to use the same. Therefore I give it in his own words: “One of my former students, serving as a chaplain in Sherborn Prison for Women, wrote me a letter to say that she had used this hymn in a Sunday vesper service at the prison. Two hours later she was called to the cell of one of the so-called ‘incorrigibles.’ The girl was very quiet now and soft-spoken.

“‘I suppose you were surprised to have me call for you,’ she said to the chaplain, ‘and I don’t wonder. I’ve never done much with religion. If I had I wouldn’t be here, probably. That song we sang tonight made me see what the things you believe can mean to people like me. Please tell your friend, that he’s never seen me, but he wrote that second verse for me.’

“She repeated the second verse from memory:

“Just thank him, please, and tell him I’ll try to remember and be different.”

Few hymns have so captured young people as this one, and they love to sing it. The refrain, especially, makes an appeal to them, and with glowing radiance on their faces they happily sing:

The Hymn That Wrought a Miracle

The Wembley Stadium is known as a great sports center in England. With it, however, there is associated a very remarkable story of the effect of one of our choicest hymns. English periodicals have reported this incident under the headings of “The Miracle at Wembley” and “The Song in the Stadium.” Naturally the story is associated with an individual, who in this case is Mr. T. P. Ratcliffe, “the conductor in tennis flannels,” and dates back to a “memorable day at the Wembley Stadium, in April, 1927, when the crowd numbered 96,000 people.”

Refusing to be discouraged by the statements of his friends, that “singing at Wembley would not be a success,” this leader of community singing had his great audience begin with “Pack Up Your Troubles,” and followed with other popular songs of the day. The people liked it. Said he: “On my right, 48,000 waved their song-sheets and shouted ‘Cheerio’ to a similar number on my left.”

This period of singing was about to close, when, greatly daring, the leader announced that they would, in conclusion, sing the “grand old hymn, ‘Abide With Me.’” He was about to ask all to stand, when, glancing at the Royal box, he saw King George V rise and bare his head.

The hymn created a great depth of religious feeling. Said the leader, as quoted in The British Weekly: “Wembley became for the moment a great open air cathedral.” One who knew the circumstances remarked: “If ever any felt a possible incongruity in the singing of ‘Abide With Me’ by almost 100,000 people on a football ground and in between two exciting parts of a game that awakened an immense sporting enthusiasm they should listen to some of the stories of the influence of that hymn under those conditions.” One of those related was particularly arresting.

This concerned a man who was in a muddled condition because of drink, but the strange experience of “singing a church hymn on a football stand apparently sobered him.” And an usher stated that he pulled off his cap for the final stanza.

Two years later Mr. Ratcliffe, the leader, was singing in a mission hall in the north of England, and a lady who was present asked him to her home to visit her husband. When he reached the house her husband, Bill, with shining eyes, grasped the visitor’s hand, and expressed his happiness. He was the confused Wembley singer, and he thus related what happened to him: “When you sang ‘Abide With Me’ something snapped. I could never explain, but I felt myself a new man. The singing of the first verse recalled my Christian parents, and a godly home, while the second brought before me my unhappy wife and children. I tried to join in the third verse which was a prayer just suited to me.” This is the verse which begins:

Bill’s wife then explained how she was affected as she took the visitor to the window, and told how she was waiting Bill’s return. She expected that when she saw him he would be “in his usual state.” But as he turned the corner he was running and singing, and when he entered the house he kissed her, and, between sobs, told her what had happened.

Later years have found him in the home three times, said this visitor in the latter part of 1945. The three children were taught to call him “Uncle Tom.” Each time he visited the family the little girl got the large Bible and read one of the miracles of Jesus. Then the father would put an arm around the group of children and narrate the “miracle” that happened to him at Wembley “when the football crowd sang ‘Abide With Me.’” “Uncle Tom” would then sing the hymn that caused the miracle.

CHAPTER VIII
SONGS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

“One Sunday evening a farmer was teaching his little girl the hymn, ‘A charge to keep I have.’ When they came to the verse:

“‘To serve the present age,

My calling to fulfill;

Oh, may it all my powers engage

To do my Master’s will!’

the godly father told his daughter that the Creator had brought her into the world that she might fulfill that verse. The child believed it. And because that verse took possession of that little girl and started her on a great career, Frances E. Willard stands in perpetual marble in Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington, the one woman in the nation’s Hall of Fame.”—The Homiletic Review.

A little lad, according to the story related by Bishop William Burt, loved to sing. He had a particular fondness for one hymn, and hence he often sang around the home the hymn which he had learned in Sunday School:

The parents, naturally, were delighted to have their growing boy displaying his gift of song; but he sometimes sang at what appeared to them to be inopportune moments. For instance, one night the family were going to a party, and the little fellow was warned not to sing on that occasion.

During the evening, however, the boy was in a corner of the room, and, being alone, began to sing his beloved hymn in a clear, sweet voice. Those present were delighted at the pleasing incident. When, however, the boy observed his parents look at him, somewhat reprovingly, he said to them, “I didn’t mean to do it, but it sang itself.”

Song of the Child in the Shelter

“Mummie, do you think they would listen if I sang for them?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” was the mother’s reply. “You can’t sing here,” she added.

Mother and her little girl were in an English air raid shelter and the wartime experience was a new one for the perplexed child. England was being terribly bombed in the spring of 1941, and on this occasion more than a hundred people, highly nervous, were trying to meet their fears with loud conversation, shouting, laughter, and some kind of singing. The scene of commotion distressed the little girl, and she wished the people were less noisy. A British writer told us what happened.

The conversation of mother and daughter was overheard by a woman who was sitting near by. Turning to the mother the woman said, “And why should she not sing?” Immediately, therefore, she stood up, called for order, and invited the little girl to sing.

The child, very shyly, advanced to the middle of the shelter, and clasped her hands, as though in prayer. Lifting her sweet childish voice she sang:

Silence immediately prevailed. Hearts which were unmoved by the confusion of the earlier noises were touched by the song of the child. Their spirits became responsive, for a little child had led them in a song which was both a prayer of thanksgiving and reverent petition. Mary Lundie Duncan, who was the daughter of one minister and the wife of another, wrote this hymn, as she did others, for her own children. “In every word it breathes the childlike spirit.” Dr. James Moffatt, speaking perhaps more for his native country than for America (though the hymn is found in the section for children in some of our American hymnals), said that this is “the first evening prayer that thousands of little children learn.”

What the Scouts Sang

Sea Scouts accompanied Boy Scouts to a morning service of worship on a February Sunday, 1947, and thus “gave modern color to the old-world dignity” of a very beautiful Presbyterian Church in an American city. It was also the first Sunday in his new pastorate of a man who had served during World War II with anti-aircraft units in the Southwest Pacific. Thus everything combined to make the occasion memorable. Said the minister to the Scouts: “In my work as chaplain I found it was boys with Scout background who stepped forward and offered to be of service. And a marked proportion of distinguished service medals were awarded to former scouts.”

But the “sermon found its devotional climax,” we were told, “in the hymn of consecration” selected to be sung. This was written by a great lover of youth, the Rev. Charles A. Dickinson, D.D. Born in Vermont, July 4, 1849, he graduated from Harvard University. In the latter part of his life he established his residence in California. The hymn sung was:

“The outstanding characteristic of this hymn is the absolute finality of the solemn dedication to Christ. It is ‘here and now’ that the irrevocable decision is made,” commented Covert and Laufer. But the hymn closes with a prayer for strength to keep the pledge made: