When the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church held their semi-annual meeting in San Francisco, in November, 1929, they were given a reception and a banquet. Eight hundred persons assembled to do them honor, including officials of the city and the state. The bishops contributed a vocal number to the evening’s entertainment. Bishop Francis J. McConnell, with his richly melodious voice, led his colleagues in the episcopal hymn, ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ Those present insisted on an encore, but as the episcopal repertoire is limited to a single number, the bishops could only modestly bow their acknowledgments to the sustained applause.
But these bishops are not really confined to just one hymn, for they also sang on another occasion
“Land Me Safe on Canaan’s Side”
The most remarkable feature of the singing of the Board of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, wrote Bishop Francis J. McConnell, when reporting one of their meetings in Boston in May, 1930, consisted in their skill in fitting almost any song to the “only tune which I have heard them sing with any conspicuous success.” Reference was then made to a dramatic moment “when that one tune was sung with marvelous power.” Bishop Earl Cranston, at the age of eighty-nine, “had just made a farewell speech in which he had said that he did not see how he could again attend the Bishops’ Meeting. At the conclusion of the address the bishops sang, adapting their favorite tune, the stanza: ‘When I tread the verge of Jordan.’”
One can easily imagine that scene, and how deeply affected the others were after listening to the words of the veteran leader. It is difficult to conceive anything which would have been more appropriate for such a time than the words in which the company blended their voices:
“When I tread the verge of Jordan,
Bid my anxious fears subside;
Bear me through the swelling current,
Land me safe on Canaan’s side:
Songs of praises