Hymn Stories of the Twentieth CenturyHart, William J. (William John)
Religion
Hymn Stories of the Twentieth Century
Hart, William J. (William John)
Hymns, English -- History and criticism
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:
“I need Thy presence every passing hour:
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?”
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:
“Jesus, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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