“The Glory Song” attained a marvelous popularity soon after it was published in 1900. In less than five years it was being sung in many languages all over the world. Several interesting incidents are related of its influence but one that Homer Rodeheaver wrote in Zion’s Herald, Boston, is worthy of note:
“I have heard it in a number of instances sung by over ten thousand people, but the most impressive rendering I ever heard given to it was by a certain audience of over one thousand men. These men were all dressed in steel gray suits, and sat with folded arms; the man who played the organ and the man who held the baton and led the song were dressed in exactly the same way. Down the right side, across the rear and up the left side of the chapel room, on high stools, sat a row of men in blue uniforms, holding heavy canes across their knees, these men seemed never for an instant to take their eyes from certain spots in front of them. Not a man whispered during the service—for it was a state’s prison. Among the congregation of 1077 men, 256 were there for life—there to live and die—and on each of their cell doors, where they would read it every time they left and re-entered, was that startling word ‘Life.’
“How strangely their voices impressed me—these men without a country, without a home, without a name, deprived of every privilege accorded to all men by the Almighty, and known only by a number. As I sat before them, the prison pallor of their faces against its background of gray within that frame of blue, made a picture never to be forgotten. With few exceptions, every man sang. Here sat one with downcast eyes, there another with mute lips, while yonder near the center a large, strong fellow was weeping like a little child—but silently. They told me he had been there but a short time, and I wondered if he had heard the song before, under different circumstances—and where, for he had a kindly face. Softly they sang that last stanza:
‘Friends will be there I have loved long ago;
Joys like a river around me will flow;
Yet, just a smile from my Saviour, I know,
Will through the ages be glory for me.’
The song ended, the chaplain said a brief prayer, and that great crowd of men, at signals from the guards in blue, marched out squad by squad, keeping step to the music of the organ played by the man in gray.”
Their deepest feelings are portrayed in