“For lovely morning songs we have:
(1)
‘Come, my soul, thou must be waking;
Now is breaking
O’er the earth another day.’
(2)
‘When morning gilds the skies,
My heart awaking cries,
May Jesus Christ be praised!’
(3)
‘Fairest Lord Jesus,
Ruler of all nature,
O Thou of God and man the Son,
Thee will I cherish
Thee will I honor,
Thee, my soul’s Glory, Joy, and Crown.’
The third of these is something which seems to me a perfect hymn.”—From an address by Dean Howard Chandler Robbins at the Northfield General Conference, 1938.
The Morning Call
Her father was a lay preacher, and she, a school teacher, followed in his steps. She was in the pulpit on that Sunday morning when an American citizen visited the country of his birth, in the summer of 1946 to observe post-war conditions. He was now amid familiar scenes in the far south of England. The morning was full of glorious sunshine, and he went to church as he had done when a boy. Then he wrote an account of the service, and sent it to his home folks.
What, he wondered, would be the hymn which this “spiritually and mentally disciplined woman” might select for the opening of the service. That question was answered when this preacher-daughter of a preacher-father announced the charming lines of Geoffrey A. Studdert Kennedy:
“Awake, awake to love and work,
The lark is in the sky,
The fields are wet with diamond dew,
The worlds awake to cry
Their blessings on the Lord of Life,
As He goes meekly by.”