methodists

Leila Naylor Hymnwriter

April 15, 2009 by Chris Field Leave a Comment

Leila Naylor was born in Pennsville, Ohio, USA, on April 15, 1862. She married Charles Morris from the Morris Hardware lineage in 1881, and together they became active in the Methodist Episcopal Church (“Episcopal” because Methodists in the USA had bishops). They lived for 47 years in McConnelsville, Ohio.

At the age of twenty-nine she began writing gospel songs, keeping a writing pad handy in the kitchen as she went about her daily chores. Her songs were used in Methodist Churches and Camp Meetings which she was actively engaged with.

When her eyesight began to fail, at the age of 51, her son erected a huge blackboard, 28 feet long, with music staff lines upon it.

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Altogether about 1000 gospel songs (one historian suggests 1,500) came from her talented pen over 37 years of writing: The Stranger of Galilee; The Fight is On; Nearer, still Nearer; and the great Second Coming hymn, What if it were Today? The favourite Elim Chorus, No. 25, Sweeter as the Days go by, also came from her pen, in 1912.

For most of these, Mrs Morris composed the tune as well as writing the words.

She died on 23 July, 1929.

Younger readers, raised in churches where song lyrics are projected onto screens and hymnbooks have never been used, should consider a time before such technology. Hymnbooks and Chorus books, such as the Elim Choruses, were extremely influential and popular songs had an enduring quality. Where today a song is considered ‘old’ after a year or even a few months in some modern churches, the era of hymnbooks kept good songs in the popular domain for decades.

This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com

Find hundreds of succinct Church History posts at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/topics/ministry/church-history

Catherine Booth one of the Army’s Best Men!

October 4, 2008 by Chris Field Leave a Comment

This is the day that … Catherine Booth died, in 1890.

Catherine Booth (nee Mumford), was born to a coachbuilder in Derbyshire, in 1829. She read the Bible eight times by the age of twelve, but was converted at the age of 15, when the words of a hymn led her to assurance of salvation.

At fourteen she developed spinal curvature and four years later, incipient tuberculosis. While ill in bed she began writing magazine articles against alcohol.

Catherine met William Booth, a Methodist minister in 1852. Catherine was impressed with both the sermon and the young preacher.

William believed ministers should be “loosing the chains of injustice, freeing the captive and oppressed, sharing food and home, clothing the naked, and carrying out family responsibilities.” While keen on social reform, Catherine, an avowed feminist, disagreed with William’s views on women. She objected to William describing women as the “weaker sex” and she argued that women should preach, while William opposed the idea. Despite their disagreements about the role of women in the church, the couple married on 16th June 1855.

Catherine first preached in1860 when a strange compulsion seized her and she felt she must rise and speak. The sermon so impressed William that he changed his mind about women preachers. Catherine Booth soon developed a reputation as an outstanding speaker but many Christians were outraged by the idea. Lord Shaftesbury regarded William as the antichrist for his promotion of women preachers. Booth later wrote, “some of the best men in my Army are women”!

When William created the Salvation Army she took her place as the beloved mother of the movement. She particularly inspired young ladies to preach and evangelise, including her own daughters. She journeyed to Paris to help her daughter Catherine and a handful of other young ladies set up the Salvation Army there.

Some said that Catherine’s sermons were as good as her husband’s. Certainly many were converted under her ministry.

For 30 years she and her husband waged war on sin and reached out a loving hand to England’s poor and needy.

She also took social action including the Food For A Million Shops, where poor could buy an inexpensive three-course meal. She was angered by the sweated labour that many women were subjected to, working 14 hours a day for a pittance. Bryant and May matches also used yellow phosphorous that poisoned the women working with it. She began a campaign that her husband completed after her death, to end the use of yellow phosphorous.

Eventually she found herself on the banks of ‘chilly Jordan’. She writes from her deathbed – to the 20,000 gathered in the Crystal Palace:

“My dear Children and Friends, My place is empty but my heart is with you. You are my joy and my crown. Your battles, sufferings and victories have been the chief interest of my life these 25 years. They are still. Go forward … live holy lives … love and seek the lost; bring them to the blood … I am dying under the Army flag; it is yours to live and fight under. God is my salvation and refuge in the storm. I send you my love and blessing. Catherine Booth.”

On Saturday, 4 October, 1890, the old General and his family gathered around Catherine’s bed. They prayed. They sang. Such grand old hymns as:
Calvary’s stream is flowing so free,
Flowing for you and for me.

“Go on,” Catherine said … and they sang some more –
Jesus, my Saviour, has died on the tree,
Died on the tree for me! Hallelujah!

Eventually, unable to speak, Catherine Booth pointed to the text hanging upon the wall, which read, “My Grace is sufficient for thee”. “That”, writes her biographer, “was her last testimony to God’s faithfulness.”

This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History, which I previously considered to be a little stuffy and of little practical value. I find in the process of updating Don’s Christian Diary that I am being constantly refreshed, illuminated or challenged by the lives of those who have gone before.

Mary Bosanquet early Methodist Woman Preacher

September 1, 2008 by Chris Field Leave a Comment

This is the day that … Mary Bosanquet Fletcher was born in Leytonstone, in Essex England in 1739. (Some writers give the date of her birth as 12 September).

Her interest in the Christian faith began when she was only six years of age, through a Methodist maid employed by her parents. She took seriously Wesley’s preaching to “give all you can” using her own financial resources and her time to provide for persons in need. She became a class leader and then a preacher.

In 1763, she and Sarah Ryan took charge of a large house in Leytonstone, her birthplace, which became a sanctuary for the most destitute and friendless people in London. The house became a school, orphanage, hospital, and half-way house all-in-one. Thus she became one of John Wesley’s most faithful co-workers.

“People threw dirt at our People as they left on Sundays,” she wrote, “and they would put their face to the window and howl like wild beasts …”

But the work continued to grow. She travelled “far afield to speak at meetings, in the open air or more usually to meet classes.”

On 12 November, 1781, she married the godly Rev. John Fletcher, a Church of England clergyman who was very much in sympathy with the Methodist movement and who was John Wesley’s designated successor. John died four years later, leaving Mary to outlive him by almost 30 years.

Mary struggled with the calling to be a preacher, as did other Methodist women preachers. Wesley encouraged them, seeing the great effectiveness they had in their work. Wesley wrote to Mary, saying she had “an extraordinary call” to be a lay-preacher.

Maldwyn Edwards, Methodist minister and historian, writes that Mary Fletcher’s life was a “pattern of complete devotion to God in which she never withheld either her time or money or energy. Her incessant work for others, ranging from her care of children to her visitation of those in greatest need, and her undiminished zeal in communication “the glad tidings of salvation” may possibly have been paralleled in early Methodism, but never exceeded.”

This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com.

Mary Artemisia Lathbury’s Ministry with Pen

August 10, 2008 by Chris Field Leave a Comment

This is the day that … Mary Artemisia Lathbury was born in Ontario County, New York State, in 1841.

Her father was a Methodist minister … and her two brothers would also become Methodist ministers later in life. However pulpit ministry was not available to women, so Mary found her own way to touch lives.

Despite poor eyesight, Mary Lathbury became a professional artist, and even an art teacher at an academy in Vermont. She edited the Methodist Sunday-School Union magazine. She was a pioneer in the field of book and magazine illustration by women.

One day she heard a voice she believed was God, saying: “Remember, my child, that you have a gift of weaving fancies into verse and a gift with the pencil of producing visions that come to your heart; consecrate these to Me as thoroughly as you do your inmost spirit.”

She was one of the founders of the Chautauqua Movement, aimed to promote spiritual and cultural values to Methodists. During the summer months 50,000 people would attend the great convention meetings at this camp site at Lake Chautauqua (New York State).

In 1877 a Methodist bishop suggested that it would be good if the Chautauqua Movement had its “own vesper hymn”. As the sun set across the lake that night, Mary Lathbury penned the now well-known hymn, “Day is dying in the west, Heaven is touching Earth with rest…” The melody, called “Chautauqua” in some books, and “Evening Praise” in others, was composed by the camp Music Director, William Fiske Sherman. Note her words of praise to God in the chorus…
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts!
Heaven and earth are full of Thee!
Heaven and earth are praising Thee,
Our Lord most high!

Seven years later, at the same camp-site, Mary Lathbury again set pen to paper, this time to write a special study song for those who attended the Chautauqua meetings, “Break Thou the Bread of Life, dear Lord, to me…” Again it was set to music by William Sherman.

Thus she became known as the poet laureate of Chautauqua.

She remained single, dedicating her work, “to Him who is the best friend that woman ever knew”. She also founded the “Look Up Legion”, based on four rules promoted in Edward Everett Hale’s “Ten Times One is Ten”. These are:

Look up, and not down;
Look forward, and not back;
Look out, and not in,
And lend a hand.

Mary Lathbury died on 20 October, 1913, in New Jersey.

This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com.

John Wesley and the Methodists

June 17, 2008 by Chris Field Leave a Comment

This is the day that … John Wesley was born, in 1703. And during his remarkable ministry we know of two early Methodist preachers who were converted on this day.

John Nelson was a Yorkshire man who first heard Wesley preach at Moorfields (17 June, 1739). “As soon as he got on the stand, he stroked back his hair and turned his face to where I stood, and I thought, fixed his eyes upon me” (Early Methodist Preachers, page 2).

John Nelson continues, “This man can tell the secrets of my heart, but he hath not left me there; for he hath showed the remedy, even the blood of Jesus” (page 3).

In the years that followed John Nelson became one of Wesley’s loyal friends, preaching the old-time gospel.

Richard Rodda has also left his testimony for us in writing.

“On 17 June, 1758, God gave me a clear sense of His forgiving love,” he wrote to John Wesley (page 88).

Rodda was 15 years of age when his conversion took place, and by the age of 20 he was often found preaching three times a day in various places. At Worcestershire, “they brought gunpowder with them and almost filled the place with the smoke of it” (page 90). “Some of them pelted me with dirt and broken tiles.”

In Heresford, “a wicked man gathered dirt out of a kennel and threw it in my eyes and face … I could proceed no further.” In Cornwall, “the mob gathered and pelted me with rotten eggs” (page 92).

And so it goes.

Any “Christian” who is too lazy to get out of bed or turn off the TV to go to Church ought to read of the sufferings of Wesley and his early preachers, as they confronted the mobs with the claims of Christ!

This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com.

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