BLEST BE THE TIE THAT BINDS  John Fawcett

Orphaned when he was twelve, then forced to work fourteen hours a day in a sweatshop, John Fawcett learned to read by candlelight. He was con­verted at sixteen under the preaching of George Whitefield, and he was ordained a Baptist minister at the age of twenty-five. He began his minis­try at a poor church in Wainsgate in northern England. The small con­gregation could afford to pay him only a minimal salary, partly in potatoes and wool.

After seven years of ministry, Fawcett received a call to the prestigious Carter's Lane Church in London. All his personal belongings were packed onto the wagons outside the church. But as he was saying his farewells, he saw the tears on the faces of his people. As a result, he changed his mind and decided to stay.

Not long afterward, he wrote this hymn for the congregational Wainsgate. He recognized that the bond of love he experienced there was worth more than any material wealth. He and his wife, Mary, ministered in that small church for fifty-four years. 

STAND UP, STAND UP FOR JESUS  CHARLES WESLEY

In 1858, churches throughout Philadelphia united in a citywide evange­listic effort. Every morning and evening, services were held in churches, convention halls, and theaters. Dudley Tyng, a twenty-nine-year-old Episcopalian preacher, spoke to five thousand men, and one thousand responded to the gospel invitation.

Four days later, however, Tyng was tragically injured while watchings corn-threshing machine in a barn on the family farm. He caught his loose sleeve between the cogs, and his arm was severely torn. A main artery was cut, and he lost a great deal of blood. As he lay dying, he whis­pered to his father, "Stand up for Jesus, Father, and tell my brethren of the ministry to stand up for Jesus."

A friend, Presbyterian minister George Duffield, preached the next Sunday on the text "Stand therefore" and in conclusion read a poem that he had just written based upon Dudley Tyng’s last words, entitled "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus." The verses of the hymn first appeared as a leaflet for Sunday school children, then later were set to music. 

DEAR LORD AND FATHER OF MANKIND    John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier was an outstanding American poet who belonged to the Quakers, a group that did not practice hymn singing at the time. Whittier confessed, "I am really not a hymn writer, for the good reason that I know nothing of music." Nevertheless, several of his poems have found their way into church hymnals.

The stanzas that make up this hymn are taken from his longer poem "The Brewing of Soma," beginning with the twelfth stanza. In the earlier stanzas, Whittier writes about an intoxicating drink called soma that was brewed by a Hindu sect in India. Soma was drunk by worshippers in order "to bring the skies more near, or lift men up to heaven."

Whittier was disturbed to see Christians using emotionalism the same way. So he asked God to forgive our feverish ways, and instead "let our ordered lives confess the beauty of Thy peace." He was calling Christians back to sim­plicity and purity in worship. 

WONDERFUL WORDS OF LIFE  Phillip Bliss

As a child raised in a rural log cabin in Pennsylvania, Philip Bliss loved music. The only musical instrument he owned was a flute his father whittled for him from a cane. Philip hoped to buy a cheap violin, so he picked a basket of berries in the swamps and sold them door-to-door. Hearing the music of a piano coming from one house, Philip went to the door and listened, but the pianist told the barefoot ten-year-old to go away.

Two decades later, Philip Bliss was directing the music in evangelist Dwight L. Moody's evangelistic campaigns, where Bliss had become known for his singing voice and for the gospel songs he wrote.

When Moody's brother-in-law, Fleming H. Revell, was launching a new religious periodical, to be called Words of Life, he asked Philip Bliss to write a song for the first issue. Revell suggested both the title "Words of Life" and the text, John 6:67-68. In these verses Jesus sees many of his followers walking away and asks his inner core of twelve: "You do not want to go away also, do you?" Peter replies, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life"  As Revell requested, Bliss wrote the gospel song, "Wonderful Words of Life."

THE OLD RUGGED CROSS  George Bennard

From 1925 to 1960 "The Old Rugged Cross" was America's favorite gos­pel hymn. Each year when a poll was taken, it finished in the num­ber-one position. The song emerged when George Bennard was going through some personal spiritual struggles. He decided to reflect on the 

1. meaning of the Cross,
2.  what John 3:16 was all about
3. and what the apostle Paul meant when he talked about entering into the fellowship of Christ; sufferings.

Then one day, at one of his lowest points, he said, "I saw the Christ of the cross as if .I was seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page, take form, and act out the meaning of redemption." He became convinced that the Cross was "the very heart of the gospel." And then, he said, "The words of the finished hymn were put into my heart in answer to my own need."

Thus George Bennard's personal struggles were the seed of one of the most popular gospel songs of the twentieth century. 

JESUS PAID IT ALL  Elvina Hall, John T Grape

Elvina Hall wrote this hymn when she should have been listening to her pastor preach. Instead, she was sitting in the choir loft of her Baltimore church, looking for paper to write on. Finding no paper, she started scribbling on the flyleaf of her hymnal, and she ended up writing four stanzas — but not the chorus — of the hymn: "Jesus Paid It All."

John T. Grape, the church organist and a successful coal merchant in the city, composed the music. He said that he only dabbled in music. But one day as he dabbled, he came up with a tune he liked.

He called it "All to Christ I Owe." Grape gave a copy to his pastor, who wasn't too impressed with it.

However, when Hall gave the pastor the hymn she had written on the flyleaf of the hymnal, he remembered the organist's music. Surprisingly, Grape's music fit Hall's words EXACTLY , except that Grape had a refrain with his tune.

So Hall added the refrain:   "Jesus paid it all,   All to him I owe;  Sin had left a crimson stain  He washed it white as snow."