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

Sinners Jesus Will Receive (Christ Receiveth Sinful Men) -- Erdmann Neumeister

He was punctuating his sermon with a song, and was it a challenge he was reemphasizing to some who listened? The context of the words and their origin were perhaps significant for Erdmann Neumeister as he uttered the words “Christ Receives (Receiveth) Sinful Men” first spoken by some complainers centuries earlier. No doubt many who hung around Jesus were fascinated by Him -- in fact, perhaps by almost everything about Him. Then there were those moments when He said or did something repulsive, at least to the laymen’s way of thinking. Was 47-year-old Erdmann dealing with a similar dichotomy among the religious crowd he observed in Hamburg (in modern-day Germany; see its coat of arms here)? Or, was he really just highlighting the way the Divine One shakes up conventional social mores, to remind himself and his hearers how inclusive God is, how far He will go to rescue someone?

Erdmann Neumeister had been in ministry for over 20 years when he composed the words for a sermon and this hymn about a radical relationship between sinners and Christ in 1718. Perhaps it was a particular episode, or maybe it was just the totality of his experience with his culture and the well-to-do that stuck with him and helped spawn this hymn. Neumeister probably crossed paths and served not a few people who might have been regarded as the upper crust of the society in which he found himself. After attending and then lecturing at the university of Leipzig in the late 17^th Century, he was the personal mentor to a duke’s daughter, a relationship (with this family) that contributed to his appointment to another position as senior court preacher and superintendent in Sorau by 1706. All these were stepping stones, in a way, to a similar position in Hamburg where he went by 1715. It was there that he continued to preach and write hymns, including ‘Christ Receiveth…’. One day he apparently was delivering a message based on what some mutterers were saying about Jesus (Luke 15:2) Erdmann turned their words around, saying ‘Yes indeed, Christ does welcome the sinful.’ It was a message to his hearers, but maybe also to himself, that God doesn’t play favorites. The crowd with whom I rub elbows gets me not one step closer to His kingdom. Indeed, maybe I need to recognize how much alike the ‘sinners’ and I look, instead of the dissimilarities that I can see between us. Is there any difference, on the inside, between that beggar and me?

On which side of the ledger of life are you and me today? Do you look at yourself in the positive column, someone who’s a believer and has no apparent disqualifying warts? You follow the civil laws – you pay your taxes, don’t speed (at least not too much), etc. Maybe you even go to church and support a number of charities. People who know you say ‘He’s a good person.’ How do I honestly compare myself with the prostitute, or that guy who sneaks a little outta the contribution plate, or the guys who drinks and drives and manages not to get caught? Maybe he even brags a little about it, at least to those of his own kind. Erdmann reminds me (the positive column occupant) that my minus-column, crusty, smelly, cross-town burden-on-society fellow human being has as much access to the Holy Purifier, to the eternal, compassionate, and saving God as me. I just have to know this: He cleans the both of us up for Eternity with the same divine detergent – His blood.      

  

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; and Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990. 

See a brief biography of the author here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/n/e/u/neumeister_e.htm

 

Also see this link, showing all four original verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/c/h/r/chrisrec.htm  

Softly and Tenderly -- William Lamartine Thompson

Maybe the words first appeared on a scrap piece of paper, among the other various items that might have been found in this 33-year-old’s pockets at the time. William Lamartine Thompson admitted that many of the songs he wrote were those he penned on impromptu occasions, so what was he thinking and where was he when the verses of “Softly and Tenderly” were first recorded? Did he know someone who needed to be coaxed toward God, or consider the poem’s verses as he remembered someone who’d just ‘gone home’? Perhaps it was the words of a speaker, perhaps in or near his East Liverpool, Ohio hometown (see photo of its downtown area) that had moved him so, spurring his thoughts to reach out with words and music toward someone he had been unable to reach otherwise. It was what came to be known as ‘an invitation’, and one that Will did not want to go undelivered.

Spontaneity may have been one of Will Thompson’s musical habits, but his pursuit of what he must have considered his life’s calling was well-considered over a stretch of several years. It began in his teenage years when he began writing hymns, as well as secular tunes. After graduating from Mount Union College in Ohio, he kept pursuing music at the New England Conservatory, and then later across the ocean in Germany. He must have had a dogged attitude, since a commercial publisher’s rejection of his music did not deter him, but led to the formation of his own publishing company – Will L. Thompson & Company, in East Liverpool, Ohio; he later established another company in Chicago. He was the kind of fellow who listened whenever he heard something he thought might work musically, and often was said to instinctively write down the words on-the-spot wherever he was. ‘Softly and Tenderly’ was written when he was in his early 30s and published by 1880, showing that Thompson was not content to pursue his musical ventures in the secular arena, where he’d been pretty successful. One gets the sense from reading his poetry that Thompson had sat one day during a sermon’s conclusion and thought that the special call of the minister’s words needed a proper ending, a song to gently but firmly persuade hearers. His words suggest the message he heard was not one of the ‘fire and brimstone’ variety, but rather one that related the compassionate side of the Divine One. ‘Come home’, as Will wrote and sang them in the refrain, are poignant. Perhaps he intended them for use by some of the popular evangelists of his time, as they travelled from place to place to bring a message of hope, belonging, and redemption to those who would listen. God is Love, He declares about himself, and Will’s hymn communicates that with an emotional potency.        

It’s said that Will Thompson often travelled himself to communities in Ohio to sing his songs and gently urge people to consider what they heard. His words did not confine themselves to those small communities, though. Reportedly, the well-known evangelist Dwight Moody, on his deathbed told his good friend Will how much he loved the hymn ‘Softly and Tenderly’, and so the hymn has travelled considerably further than Ohio – in fact, across the ocean in Britain where Moody and Ira Sankey would spend considerable efforts to preach and sing His message. ‘Come home’ – is there anyplace else you’d rather be? Will Thompson thought that might resonate with you and me. Was he right?

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; and 101 Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985. 

See this site for all of the original verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/s/o/f/softlyat.htm

See a few brief details of the composer’s life here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/t/h/o/m/thompson_wl.htm

See also author’s biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Lamartine_Thompson