Hear the Sweet Voice -- Charles H. Gabriel

Thirty-five year old Charles Gabriel was most likely on America’s west coast (in the San Francisco area) when he crafted one of his many musical works, probably for use in coaxing individuals to respond to a message. He urges listeners to “Hear the Sweet Voice” (alternately known as “Only a Step”), and the crowd at the church where he worked was most likely the first to hear this persuasive pitch. How would someone go about drawing others to accept what is good for them? Charles had been at this musical profession for some time, so we can guess that he had a pretty well-proven method for how to reach out and touch the emotional strings of hearts he wanted to influence. Was it something he had himself experienced personally?   

Charles Hutchinson Gabriel was a veteran musical professional in 1891 when he wrote “Hear the Sweet Voice”, in the midst of a career that saw him produce perhaps several thousand hymns. He was teaching and writing music as a teenage Iowa farmboy two decades earlier, after apparently teaching himself to play the family’s reed organ as a youngster. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the auspicious incubation chamber for a budding musician we would expect, but some two decades later he’d been launched from that Iowa farm and was the music director at a church in San Francisco. This 1890-92 period was when ‘Hear…’ came to light, though the precise circumstances of its birth are not known. We can imagine, however, that it was one that he wrote for use in that church (Grace Methodist Episcopal Church), in the context of reaching out to individuals who had not yet made a commitment to Christ. Had the church’s speaker-minister asked Charles to craft something to cap a sermon? The poetry Charles used allow one’s imagination to see the reluctant take ‘only a step’, and then hopefully a few more to accept what the Divine One offers with charity. ‘Don’t be left out’, you can hear Gabriel admonish with the last few words of the fourth verse of his poem. No one should want to feel the sting of remorse, Charles indicates with his poignant words. How many people might have heard Charles’ poetry and been coaxed the way he intended? One can speculate that the hymn he wrote was effective, since it has endured for over a century following its premier.

Charles Gabriel went on to traverse other avenues following the composition of “Hear the Sweet Voice”. He moved to Chicago, where he collaborated with the Rodeheaver publishing enterprise, among many other things. Dozens of songbooks and musical compositions have been credited to Charles Gabriel’s account, up until his departure from life in 1932. His legacy lived on in his son Charles Jr., who also followed in his father’s footsteps as a songwriter and music educator. It must have given Charles Sr. satisfaction to know his advice to hear one sweet voice drew his own son, as well as others. Has he drawn you today, too?

See this site for biographic information on the author: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/g/a/b/gabriel_ch.htm
See the following site for all four verses: https://hymnary.org/text/hear_the_sweet_voice_of_jesus_say