COME THOU ALMIGHTY KING
A detachment of British soldiers around 1745 burst in upon
unsuspecting worshippers in a Long Island congregation during the
American Revolution. The commanding officer demanded that the startled
congregation sing "God Save The King."  Instead the congregation
simultaneously sang the right tune but the wrong words when they
echoed the words "Come, Thou Almighty King!" The original tune was
that of our "My Country Tis Of Thee."

THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION
This hymn was written in the midst of great theological controversy
over the inspiration of the Word of God.  The Old Testament was under
attach by liberals who questioned its authorship and inspiration.
Stone wrote the hymn as a defense of the fundamentalist position.
Note the words "midst toil and tribulation and tumult of her war..."
and "by schisms rent asunder by heresies distressed..." words often
omitted in modern publications of the hymn.   Samuel Wesley, grandson
of Charles Wesley, and outstanding organist, wrote the music.  He
was an avid fisherman and was said to have rejected organist positions
based solely on the fishing opportunities.  On one occasion he was to
play at the dedication of a newly installed pipe organ, but on the way
he found a beautiful stream and could not resist the opportunity to
fish.  He sent his assistant ahead with the message that he was
unavoidably detained!

ALL CREATURES OF OUR GOD AND KING
Francis of Assisi renounced all his earthly goods to embrace a life of
poverty in service to God as a friar, a street preacher who owned no
possessions.   During a hot summer of 1225 in Italy Francis became ill
and was stricken with temporary blindness.  He found a straw hut as
shelter from the heat but adding to his discomfort were the field mice
who insisted on sharing his shelter.  In the middle of these
circumstances Francis wrote a poem entitled "Canticle of the Creatures," 
that would later become t his great hymn.

THE CHURCH IN THE WILDWOOD
A young man traveling by stagecoach to Fredricksburg, Iowa on his way
to visit his fiance stopped east of there near Bradford where he saw
such a beautiful valley of lush greenery and trees surrounded by
rolling hills.  In his imagination he could envision this the ideal
setting for a church.  A few days, unable to remove the scene from his
thoughts, he penned a poem about the "Church In The Wildwood." Seven
years later he returned to teach music in Bradford and stopping at
that spot again he was shocked to find a small brown church being
erected exactly where he had envisioned it! Quickly putting music to
his poem his music class sang the dedicatory song "There's A Church In
the Wildwood." Though much has changed in Bradford over the years
there remains, now a tourist attraction, and sought out by several
hundred young couples each year as the ideal place for their weddings,
in the Little Brown Church in the Vale.

BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES
Countless western motion pictures depict the old west with a small
church at the end of town.  If the script were to call for the singing
of a hymn in the chapel without a doubt it will be "Bringing In the
Sheaves" accompanied by the old reed organ.  Knowles Shaw, a traveling
evangelist and musician, wrote the song when he was forty years old
while traveling the old west.  So wide spread was the impact of his
ministry that twenty thousand souls reported being saved under his
preaching! The original tune has long since been forgotten but the
words and tune we know so well are forever embedded in American
tradition.

THE OLD RUGGED CROSS
Bernard was a Methodist evangelist involved in a series of revivals
from Wisconsin to New York State while carrying with him the words of
this poem of the cross.  During the travels he worked on the hymn with
friends.  It is said to have been completed on December 29, 1912,
while in a revival in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.  A well known Gospel
composer helped him touch up the music and harmony while Billy Sunday's
great song leader used it first and made it widely used well known.
The Old Rugged Cross is probably the most beloved of the old hymns of
the 19th century.

AMAZING GRACE
John Newton wrote this song when he was fifty years old.  It reflects
the life of a one time slave ship captain whose profanity shocked even
sailors. His brutish life as an atheist came to an abrupt end when in
a stormy night in a sinking ship in 1748, while facing eminent death,
he met Jesus Christ in a genuine life changing conversion, and was
born again. Returning to land and to the wife and mother who prayed
fervently for his salvation he entered the ministry.  He continued
show brash sailor mannerism even in the pulpit but his love for the
Lord and meekness with men won many to the Lord, and gained him
influential pulpits despite his lack of education.  Near the end of
life he could no longer see and was advised to give up preaching.  His
response characterized his deep recognition of the grace of God,
"What? Shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can still
speak?"  --- "Amazing Grace... that saved a wretch like me."

AT CALVARY
Professor Newell of Chicago's Moody Bible Institute hurried down the
down the hallway stopping quickly to jot down words of a song that
echoed in his mind for weeks.  Having nothing on which to write he
jotted down the words on the back of an envelope.  The words just
flowed from his pen.  Rushing down the corridor he shoved the envelope
in the hand of the passing music director Daniel Towner asking him to
compose a tune for it. Before the class was over the song was written
and the two professors sang it for the first time that morning.

IN THE GARDEN 
C. Austin Miles was from Pitman, N.J.  He had converted a room in his
home to a combined darkroom for photography and a study.  One day as
he studied the Scriptures and thought on the resurrection of Jesus,
and Mary's encounter with the risen Lord, he wrote the words and music
to this beloved hymn.  It expresses well the solitude of a quiet place
where we also can daily meet the Master.  Miles died in Pitman in 1946
at the age of 78. His hymn "In The Garden" has become one of America's
favorite.

NEARER MY GOD TO THEE
This hymn written by Sarah Flower Adams was written in 1840 and has
had several tunes.  It lives on in legend as the last song that band
on the TITANIC played, while the 1513 passengers, doomed without life
boats, courageously sang as the ship slipped into the dark ocean on
April 14, 1912.


SOME DAY THE SILVER CORD WILL BREAK
Fanny Crosby wrote the words to this hymn upon the news of the sudden
death of a Methodist Camp meeting preacher. With new awareness of
heaven Fanny scribed these words in an hour.  She sent the words to a
publisher where it was forgotten.  Years later, Moody's song leader,
Ira Sankey, asked Fanny to speak at a Christian Workers Conference. She
closed her remarks with this poem.  A London reporter picked it up and
published it where it appeared in a newspaper. Sankey sent a copy to 
composer George Stebbins for music to the words.  It was sung for the 
first time in a D.L. Moody evangelistic crusade in Rhode Island.

SWEET BY AND BY
Joseph Webster settled in Elkhorn, Wisconsin just before the Civil War
began.  Webster was a musician of frequent mood swings.  One day he
went into the drug store of his friend Sanford Bennett noticeably
depressed. Bennett wanting to help asked what was wrong and received
the reply, "It's really nothing.  It will be all right by and by."
His friend trying to encourage him to do something worthwhile
suggested that those would be good words to a hymn.  Bennett sat down 
at his drug store desk and scratched out the words as they flowed into 
his mind.  When he finished he showed it to his depressed friend.  
Webster reached for his violin and began to put music to the words.  
Within a half hour the words and music had been written to this epoch 
hymn, and Webster's depression left as he and his friend loudly sang 
it for the first time to two unsuspecting customers.

BRIGHTEN THE CORNER
Ina Ogdon of Toledo, Ohio saw her hopes of being a circuit speaker and
missionary dashed when her father suffered a stroke. Graciously she
put aside her own desires to nurse her invalid father.  It was in the
middle of such adversity that Ina wrote "Brighten The Corner Where You
Are." Contented with her lot of scrubbing floors, dusting, doing
dishes and laundry she brightened the corner where she was.  She sent
the words to a popular evangelistic singer and song leader for Billy
Sunday. Homer Rodeheaver introduced this chorus to the crowds in
WilkesBarre, Pennsylvania in 1913. Theodore Roosevelt used it to
begin each of his political rallies.  The armed forces sang the song
in the trenches during WWI.  In China a baseball team used it as a
theme song before every game. In WWII when the US forces invaded the
islands of the Pacific, natives who had been hiding from the Japanese
came out of the hills and welcomed the soldiers with a song they had
learned from missionaries years before, "Brighten The Corner Where You
Are."

IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL
Horacio Spafford had sent his family ahead of him to Europe in 1873,
while he remained behind a few days to care for business.  A few days
later the ship in which they were travelling collided with another
ship and sank.  His four daughters from 11 to 2 years all drown in the
tragedy, only his wife survived the ordeal.  On his way to France to
meet his wife the captain showed him where the ship sank.  Standing on
the bridge of the ship weeping and contemplating the loss of his 
precious daughters, he was moved with words from deep within.
Returning to his cabin he wrote the poetic words of this heartfelt
song, "When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrow like sea
billows roll, whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say, It is well,
It is well with my soul."    To add to their grief just a few years
before the Chicago fire wiped out Spafford's real estate holdings and
in 1871 their fourteen year old son died of scarlet fever. Christian
friends accused them of some great secret sin that caused these
tragedies to come on them resulting in the family being asked to leave
the church.   P.P. Bliss, the composer of the music, similarly was a man
of suffering when in 1874 while traveling by train in Ohio, a bridge
gave way and the train plunged into the icy river below bursting into
flames.  He escaped through a window but returned to try to rescue his
wife and both died in the fire. This hymn of faith in the midst of
tragedy has ministered to untold millions who have suffered in this
life.


JESUS LOVES ME
This hymn was not originally intended to be a hymn but was part of a
Novel written by two sisters, Anna and Susan Warner, in their book
entitled SAY AND SEAL in 1860.  The story is a love story of faith and
committment.  The hero John Linden and his fiance, Faith Derrick reach
out to a one of John's Sunday School students, a boy with a lingering
illness. In a later part of the story the boy is very ill and fevered.
Linden picks up the boy and paces the floor with him in his arms,
calming and comforting him.  The boy whispers "Sing."  At this point
the writers needed a soothing hymn, and not willing to use any popular
hymn of the time, they wrote their own for the story.  Linden sings
softly "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so..."  In
a few hours the child dies, but the song in all four stanzas live on.


Footnote:
These stories of hymns were revised and taken from the excellent work
of William J. Reynolds, SONGS OF GLORY, published by Zondervan Books,
Grand Rapids, MI.  1990.   His work contains over 300 stories of the
greatest hymns.

============================ END =============================