And O how I long for that glorious time,
The sweetest and brightest and best,
When the dear little children of every clime
Shall crowd to His arms and be blest!
Jemima Luke, 1841.
A HYMN WRITTEN IN A STAGE-COACH
Some one has said, “Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who may write its laws.”
It is a wise saying; for who can estimate the influence of the songs we sing, especially the songs of children? There is no better way to teach Christian truths to children than to have them sing those truths into their hearts and souls.
When Jemima Luke sat in an English stage-coach in 1841 composing the lines of a little poem that had been ringing in her mind, she could scarcely have known she was writing a hymn that would gladden the hearts of thousands of children in many years to come. But that is how she wrote “I think when I read that sweet story of old,” and that is the happy fate that was in store for her labor of love.
Her maiden name was Jemima Thompson. Her father was a missionary enthusiast, and she herself was filled with zeal for mission enterprises. Even as a child, at the age of thirteen, she was an anonymous contributor to “The Juvenile Magazine.” When she was twenty-eight years old she visited a school where the children had been singing a fine old melody as a marching song.