Today in 1892 – Wendell Loveless Born

Wendell Phillips Loveless was an officer in the Marines during the First World War. Afterward, he toured the United States for six years with a group of entertainers, gaining experience in voice, piano playing, drama and more. He trusted Christ as Saviour as a result of reading and studying the Bible at home. For many years afterward he served as the director of WMBI, the radio station of Moody Bible Institute, in Chicago.

Mr. Loveless also pastored a number of churches, and wrote many gospel songs and choruses. He often provided tunes for texts written by other authors. For instance, he did this for Trust in the Lord, by Thomas Chisholm, and for Precious Hiding Place, by Avis Christiansen.

I was straying when Christ found me
In the night so dark and cold;
Tenderly His arm went round me,
And He bore me to His fold.

Precious hiding place,
Precious hiding place,
In the shelter of His love;
Not a doubt or fear,
Since my Lord is near,
And I’m sheltered in His love.

With His nail-scarred hand He brought me
To the shelter of His love;
Of His grace and will He taught me,
And of heav’nly rest above.

Mr. Loveless also gave us the little chorus, All Because of Calvary.

All my sins are gone,
All because of Calvary;
Life is filled with song,
All because of Calvary;
Christ my Saviour lives,
Lives from sin to set me free;
Some day He’s coming,
O wondrous, blessèd day,
All, yes, all because of Calvary.

(2) Today in 1906 Jemima Luke Died

Jemima Thompson Luke’s father, Thomas Thompson, was known as “a friend of every good cause.” He founded the British and Foreign Sailors’ Society, and was superintendent of a local Sunday School. One day the children there asked to sing a particular song. They did so, and Mr. Thompson inquired where the lovely hymn came from. He was astonished to learn it had been written by his own daughter, Jemima.

Jemima Thompson began writing early on, and was first published in the Juvenile Magazine when she was only 13 years old. At the age of 20, she married Congregational clergyman Samuel Luke, and became editor of The Missionary Repository. Mrs. Luke did not consider herself a poet, and she has given us only one song. (But whatever she may have thought of her poetic gifts, this is excellent work!) Most of it was written during a trip she made by stage coach. She says:

On the back of an old envelope I wrote in pencil the first two of the verses now so well known, in order to teach the tune to the village school supported by my stepmother, and which it was my province to visit. The third verse [which eventually became a later stanza] was added afterward to make it a missionary hymn.

I think, when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here among men,
How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
I should like to have been with them then.

I wish that His hands had been placed on my head,
That His arms had been thrown around me,
And that I might have seen His kind look when He said,
“Let the little ones come unto Me.”

Yet still to His foot stool in prayer I may go;
And ask for a share in His love;
And if I thus earnestly seek Him below,
I shall see Him and hear Him above.

But thousands and thousands who wander and fall,
Never heard of that heavenly home;
I wish they could know there is room for them all,
And that Jesus has bid them to come.