School
teacher. Kids. Bible. Christian faith. Those few words could sum up what
Priscilla Jane Owens’ life reflected, including what she composed in “Give Me
the Bible” published in 1883. What was
it she viewed as she mulled over the words she thought children needed to hear
most? Would it have been different for kids of that era versus those in other
times? And, given what Owens had seen as a teacher for many years by that time,
would the source of training and hope that she believed would hearten those she
mentored have been a secret? Did she communicate the same in public schools as
she did in Sunday schools? Did her experience in one guide her efforts in the
other? These are all questions we’ll have to ask her later, but we can surmise
some of her answers now.
Fifty-four
year old Priscilla had probably seen and taught hundreds, perhaps even
thousands of children by the time she composed “Give Me the Bible”. She was an
educator in Baltimore for some 50 years throughout her life, so as she
approached her mid-50’s, Owens had seen a generation of youngsters enter and
exit her classrooms. What impressed her as she wrote the four verses of this
hymn, one among over 200 that she created, mostly for children? Each of the
first three verses she penned conveys that she felt children arrived in her environment
with troubles. They were ‘lone and tempest tossed’, had ‘broken’ hearts, felt ‘fear’
and ‘grief’, and walked in ‘gloom’. Not a very happy picture, huh? She had a counterpoint,
however. The bible was no better place to start, a message she communicated on
Sundays, both in the classroom and with her poetic pen. There’s no tentativeness
to her approach in 1883. Her words are bold, right from the hymn’s first
syllables. We know not what specific kinds
of issues she had seen in her public school role, as well as in her Sunday
school position, but there must have been a myriad of them. But, was it
different on Monday through Friday, versus on Sunday? We could guess that Sunday
school kids needed less urging to open a bible – churchgoing parents would have
already been compelling this behavior, right? On the other hand, what about the
kids in her public school classrooms? Did she see they needed this instruction,
perhaps in a greater way?
Perhaps what
she couldn’t explicitly verbalize for kids, she wrote in her poems. Her beliefs
could have been read by any of her students in the Methodist Protestant and the Christian Standard, where
her poems were published. It must have been an effective technique, for
she wrote some 230 hymns that we still have. That’s about four or five lesson-poems
for her students per year, over the 50 years that Priscilla occupied a
classroom. Many have lasted well beyond her lifetime, so we could say she was prophetic,
in a way. A prophet’s message is from Him, and generally outlives its messenger’s
mortality. She’s still teaching. And, the
bible’s still in print.
A very brief biographic note on the composer, plus all 4
verses that she wrote for the hymn:
More biography on composer: http://www.hymnary.org/person/Owens_Priscilla
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