Almost Persuaded -- Philip Paul Bliss

 

Do you think that someone might have said to this author ‘Thank God you were not just “Almost Persuaded”, and let slip away the memory of that sermon that coaxed your poem’? If ever he were asked, Philip Paul Bliss might have responded that the minister whose words rang in his ears deserved some measure of credit for what Philip would write.  The minister that sparked Philip’s imagination was preaching to a crowd that was sitting and looking up at him from pews (maybe not too different from these shown here), but he could not have really expected that one of these seats would be the birthplace of a song that very day. Given what he had to say to conclude this sermon, he must have instead hoped that this would be the spiritual birthplace of one or more souls who would be moved by his words – that someone would accept God at that very moment. But even if no one responded to this minister’s plea on that occasion, Philip’s resulting song would have the desired impact more than once in future years. And, it’s a sermon that just keeps preaching, over 150 years later.

 

Philip Bliss had written enough songs by the time he sat in a church in 1871, that he had probably grown something like musical antennae, and could sense when a special moment was happening, when a song might be emerging. And so, the message he heard from a minister named Brundage resounded in the 33-year-old heart of Philip that day, especially during what we might say was the ‘altar call’ the minister made at his sermon’s conclusion. Perhaps this Minister Brundage had actually heard someone procrastinate to his face with the very words ‘You almost persuaded me’. Was he also perchance preaching about how an ancient king named Agrippa once used similar words to stiff-arm a persistent evangelist like himself (see Acts 26:27-28)? Many accounts of the song’s impact are recorded later, especially those in which Ira Sankey, a fellow songwriter of the time, was present to capture those moments when listeners to a message took action. They weren’t part of the almost crowd. But, tragically, at least one other episode ended with an Agrippa-like outcome – almost, but not yet.  How many people wrote or spoke to Philip about these gnawing words, how they pierced the tough, calloused heart of someone? Philip must have had his own memories of one or more malingerers, of those who just had other things more urgent on their agendas. It’s not a ‘convenient day’  (v.1), they might have said, or perhaps they avoided hearing the ‘prayers rise from (other) hearts so dear’ (v.2), or especially did not appreciate that ‘doom comes at last’  with a ‘bitter wail’ (v.3). These sound almost like personal memories, don’t they?

 

The words of Philip and the minister who first spoke them are like cattle prods, if you are that procrastinator, a postponing kind of person. ‘Get up from that seat!’, Philip would say. Delay no longer! You know deep-down what you should do, so what’s holding you back? If you could just see your future alternatives clearly, perhaps that would be the spur to action. But, God must have your faith, first. And, that means doing this without seeing it, first. That makes this thing something that can be side-stepped, if you’re the kind who demands concrete evidence. Yet, consider this: you’re headed somewhere, to a place that no one has ever returned from with concrete evidence. Will that ever change? This is a sightless adventure, so taking a somewhat blind plunge will be required.  And, almost won’t be close enough. Join the rest of us, who’ve been persuaded, and convinced. You won’t be sorry you left almost in the rear view mirror.  

 

See more information on the song story in this source: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.

 

See the link here for the story also: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/a/l/m/o/almostpe.htm

 

See here for author information: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/b/l/i/s/bliss_pp.htm

Everybody Will Be Happy Over There -- Eugene Monroe Bartlett

 

It was 1921, and this singer, songwriter, publisher, and teacher was really spreading his wings, someone might say. Eugene Monroe Bartlett may have been in a relatively small place in western Arkansas – Hartford, in Sebastian County – but that did not seem to limit his vision with respect to what he wanted to do with the music he loved so much. You might say he saw a much grander location than where he was, a place where “Everybody Will Be Happy (Over There)”, and inhabited by many times the number of folks living in Hartford. He had many reasons to feel upbeat, even ebullient, so that his cup overflowed. Although he found a way to express his emotional state in four verses and a chorus, this one song could not contain all he was feeling. Let’s see what other ways Eugene found to broaden and share what he was too excited to keep to himself.

 

The spiritual overflow that was obvious in Eugene’s personal faith, and which was expressed in the poetry of his song, had many other tentacles that reached out into related directions at about the time that ‘Everybody …’ was published. Eugene and two partners had established the Hartford Music Company just three years earlier, a platform for the emergence of two of the partners’ (Eugene’s and John McClung’s, as well as those of others) musical creations. Since one of Eugene’s business partners (David Moore) was a singing instructor, it was a natural outgrowth of their publishing enterprise when Eugene founded a music institute to teach shape-note singing also. A magazine, The Herald of Song, also arose at the same time to cover the musical groups that helped promote the ongoing activities at Hartford. It’s probably safe to say that Bartlett and all of these ventures were notable fixtures in the Hartford community of about 2,000 people (its population, according to 1920 census data), but these would not be confined to that one area. The publishing enterprise’s output was hundreds of thousands of volumes, if not more, and eventually burgeoned into branches in six other sites in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Texas, from where songbooks were shipped to 35 U.S. states and two foreign countries. Yes, Eugene’s vision encompassed much more territory than Hartford. It was also wider than any map detailing his company’s songbook shipments would show, too, as the words he penned for the 1921 ‘Everybody…’ suggested. He was talking about the ‘great beyond’ (v.1), a place where indeed his company’s volumes could not go, except in the memories of those who purchased them. How many numbered the ‘everybody’ that Eugene could imagine? Incalculable, he’d probably say. The ‘saved of earth’(v.1), family members, and certainly ‘Christians of all nations (alternatively ‘ages’)’ (v.2) were those Eugene could see. Though we know not what explicitly prompted Eugene’s poetic words, he had plenty of blessings, professionally and otherwise, to transport his enthusiasm into musical verse.  

 

Did everything go swimmingly for Eugene every day? If he were here, he could probably tell us about songbook shipments that went awry, or copies that were initially printed with mistakes, songs that just never worked, or students whom he couldn’t motivate.  If one or more of those were true, Eugene would have had an alternative reason for writing this poem – he longed for a better place that would not disappoint. But, since he continued to administer Hartford Music’s affairs into the mid-1930s, we can presume he had many more positives than negatives in his life’s ledger. He might also have said that all that he had while a mortal in 1921 was just a foretaste, that ‘over there’ would dwarf the ‘here and now’. He seemed to be counting on that truism. How about you?   

 

 

See the following for brief biography of the author: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/b/a/r/t/bartlett_em_sr.htm

 

See more biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Monroe_Bartlett

 

See more biography here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/e-m-bartlett-2660/

 

See here for description of the company that the author founded: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/hartford-music-company-and-hartford-music-institute-2661/

 

Who at the Door is Standing? -- Mary Bridges Canedy Slade

 

Was she still resisting in some way? Or, maybe she was just a careful listener, and very conscientious regarding what was good versus not so good for her emotional and spiritual health. On the other hand, had Mary Bridges Canedy Slade and her minister-husband just installed a new door at their home (as this blogger did a few years ago, see picture), prompting either of them to ask “Who at the Door is Standing?” on occasion? Probably not the latter – ‘Who’s there?’, we might say when a bell rings or someone knocks - for Mary asks the question as a metaphor. She might have been admitting that she needed to open up and practice a little more submission to her Master’s leading, as someone might do to allow another to enter following a polite request. But, being the spouse of a minister, perhaps she was also providing him an analogy for one of his sermons. After all, who among us hasn’t answered the door, or at least heard the knocking, at least once before?   

 

Mary Slade wrote just a handful of poem-songs, but several have survived and still are part of hymnals today, nearly 150 years after this 50-ish minister’s wife wrote/published this one about a door knocker (in 1876). The Slades were Fall River, Massachusetts residents, where Mary was also a teacher and an editor or publisher of two journals (the New England Journal of Education and Wide Awake) at one time or another. So, her motives for writing could have been various ones, including sermon illustrations for her husband, as well as pieces for discussion in her own classrooms or as articles for the journals she helped promote. Perhaps she used all of these methods to coax her readers to respond to the message from a patient God. From the picture Mary draws of this God, He’s rather unimposing, not hostile. Indeed, ‘patient(ly)’ (v.1) is how she describes Him, with ‘sweet(ly)’-sounding words (refrain) that He uses to ask gently for the hearers’ attention. It’s said that Mary was ‘warm-hearted’, so her depiction of God here was a character sketch that she apparently adopted for herself towards others. She must have thought the message would best communicate if it was personal, too. In the original poem, she says ‘my door’, versus ‘the door’ that is in hymnals today, and each of her verses express a one-to-one relationship between the hearer and the knocker. The hearer’s answer is not immediately positive, as Mary saw ‘lonely’ people and God, too (v.2), who are without each other, though He keeps asking for entrance (v.3). Mary might have been a warm-hearted minister’s wife, but she recognized reality. Some people need lots of time before they will agree that they need Him. Mary’s 4^th verse indicates she saw the reluctant hearer finally responding to Him, with a‘hasten’(ing) and ‘open wide’ attitude. We could conclude that Mary was an optimist, right?

 

Perhaps Mary’s own experience was that He's patient, with a gentle knocking, though it is persistent. If someone kept up that knocking or doorbell-ringing for long at my house, I’d undoubtedly think that person is rude. But, consider this -- at least they don’t try to break down the door! And, will that door-knocker eventually give up, and go away? Will the person inside the house become deaf, or hard-hearted, so that they are immune to the persuader? Mary kept editing the Wide Awake journal until her end, just six years after ‘Who at the Door...’ was published, according to one source. She apparently did not give up easily. Neither does God.     

 

See here for all the song’s verses and the refrain: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/w/h/o/a/whoatmyd.htm

 

Very brief biography on the author: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/l/a/d/slade_mbc.htm

 

A few more details of author here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/nutter/hymnwriters.Slade_NB.html