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:
“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.”
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.”