Day by day.”
“Hearts have been deeply stirred by the use of this hymn at the monthly consecration service of Christian Endeavor societies, for which it was evidently designed,” we are told. It was a good hymn for the Scouts to sing on that winter morning.
“Jesus Bids Us Shine”
This large family lived about equi-distant from four towns on a quiet inaccessible rented farm along the river. It was while I was visiting the country school that I first got acquainted with some of the children. They told me about their youngest sister, who had had infantile paralysis. After getting rather minute directions from the older brother, I finally found the isolated farm home.
Alice was five years old and as bright and as ardent a little child as I ever knew. She was very easy to make friends with and I soon began to teach her the first verse of the children’s song, “Jesus Bids Us Shine.” When I came to the line, “You in your small corner, and I in mine,” I would point first at her and then at myself. She got a great “kick” out of this and set herself to learn the words and the tune. I visited with the older folks a while, went out to the barn with the farmer to look at his stock, ate dinner with the family, but in between times I kept trying to teach little Alice the first verse of that song. Finally she could sing it with the assistance of her older sister.
About a year later I went out to the Anderson home but found that Alice had been taken for treatment to the children’s hospital at the University. I went back a year later, and this time I found that an ambulance had come after her that very morning. Perhaps six months later, I was again slowly taking the deeply-rutted road. She came limping toward me as fast as she could, which was not very fast. Hobbling down the lane on her one good leg with the aid of a considerably improved other leg, she called out to me with ardent pride, “I can sing that song. I can sing that song!”
And she could:
“Jesus bids us shine, with a clear pure light,
Like a little candle burning in the night;
In this world of darkness, we must shine,