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.”