The Gospel Songs of Mary B. C. Slade

In 1889 the Gospel Advocate magazine of Nashville, Tennessee released its first hymnal under the title Christian Hymns. It was a small book containing 276 songs, but it can be claimed as the first hymnal intentionally for the use of the Churches of Christ, as the conservative, non-instrumental wing of the Restoration Movement in the United States was beginning to be identified. And though much of its content would fall by the wayside in coming years, we can identify at least one cluster of songs introduced by this hymnal that are still widely used today--five memorable lyrics by Mary B.C. Slade, listed below:

Beyond this land of parting

Hark! the gentle voice of Jesus falleth

Sweetly, Lord have we heard Thee calling (tune name FOOTSTEPS, later FOOTPRINTS)

There's a fountain free (tune name FREE WATERS)

Who at my door is standing? (tune name ALBERTA)

Of the 276 hymns in Christian Hymns, in fact, 25 had lyrics by Mary Slade, almost twice as many as any other lyricist (including Watts, Wesley, and Fanny Crosby). Though the majority of her lyrics  here were set to music by the prolific Methodist music editor, Rigdon McIntosh, 9 of them--including all five listed above--were set to music by McIntosh's late associate and mentor, Dr. Asa B. Everett. The combination of Slade's lyrics and Everett's music brought about a lasting group of songs that make this unlikely pair--a Northerner and a Southerner, who may have never met--worth a closer look. In this post, we will look at the contributions of Mrs. Slade; in a later post, we will address the career of Dr. Everett.

Mary Bridges Canedy Slade (1826-1882)

The 19th-century American hymnologist Hezekiah Butterworth offers this tribute to the life and work of Mary B. C. Slade, which serves as a fitting introduction to this interesting woman's career:

In music-books for young people and the fireside are to be found the initials "M. B. C. S." Few people are acquainted with the history of this lady out of her own city and State, except the mere fact that she was the editor of a school publication of much interest and worth, called "Good Times," and wrote much for young people, especially school songs. She died in Fall River, Mass., in the spring of 1882, at the age of fifty-six. In her early life she was a teacher. Out of this experience came two successful books, "The Children's Hour," and "Exhibition Days." She was one of the editors of the "Journal of Education," edited the "School Festival," and conducted a department in the Philadelphia "School Day Magazine." She was a most prolific writer of Sunday-school and day-school songs. Children were her delight. She worked for them to the last under the shadow of the sickness that ended her life. Her one ambition was to prepare the young for the highest duties of life. Millions of young people owe good influences to her.

A lifelong resident of Fall River, Massachusetts, Mary Bridges Canedy was born into a prominent and progressive family in that city. Her grandfather, John Luther, was one of the first dozen or so residents (Phillips, I:73). Mary's father, William B. Canedy, appears again and again in connection with public works committees (Borden, 514ff.), and served as a selectman (1812-1813) and as town clerk (1814-1815) (Centennial History, 239ff.).  He was especially involved in the schools, having been named to the committee that conducted  the first school census and set up the districts (Borden, 605), and serving on the School Committee in 1808, 1812, 1826, and 1827 (Centennial History, 240ff.).

Squire Canedy house,
Mary's childhood home

During Mary's youth Fall River rapidly became a major textile center, and was an early example of the social problems that came with industrialization. The town was divided between the old families and the increasing numbers of poor factory workers, many of them recent immigrants (Fowler, 63-65). The particular plight of child workers was brought forward by an 1842 petition to the Massachusetts Legislature appealing for regulation of their working hours and better provision for their education. Mary followed the family tradition of public service, and was appointed the teacher for the Second Primary School in 1845 at the age of nineteen (Fall River School Committee Report, 14). In fact all seven of the Canedy daughters became teachers, two of them traveling south to teach Freedmen's schools after the Civil War (Champlin). 

Albion & Mary Slade home, today an office building

In 1852 Mary married Albion K. Slade, a fellow teacher (some sources say he was a minister, and perhaps he was both). Though he was not from the wealthy side of the Slade family that owned the mills, he the grandson of the first ordained pastor of the First Baptist Church (Borden, 132; "AKS" FamilySearch). By 1855 he was appointed principal of the Maple Street Grammar School (Borden, 608), and in 1864 began a ten-year tenure as principle of the High School (Borden, 613).  He would eventually become the director of the Fall River school system (Blood, 11) and served in the Massachusetts legislature (Centennial History, 245). 

Mary Slade ca. 1850, Collection of
the Fall River Historical Society

After her marriage, Mary no longer appeared in the School Committee Reports; married women of her class typically kept house instead of working in the public. Not to say that her life was dull--in the 1850s the Mary and Albion Slade became associated with the Underground Railroad, offering their home as a safe house for Blacks who had escaped slavery in the South (Snodgrass, 486). According to her granddaughter, Slade used her charming personality and gift of conversation to stall law officers who came to search the house, throwing them off the trail and giving the fugitives time to relocate (Champlin). Mary Slade's willingness to reach across social barriers is also seen in her interaction with Joseph Krauskopf (1858-1923), later an important rabbi of Reform Judaism, but at the time just a 14-year-old immigrant boy on his own looking for work. He walked into the Slade home by mistake one day, thinking it was the public library, and ended up with an open invitation to borrow from the Slades' own books. Mary mentored the young man, and wrote a reference letter encouraging his acceptance at the newly founded Hebrew Union College (Bloom, 11-13).

Though she never taught full-time again, Slade's heart was still in the classroom and her pen was rarely still. She filled up her spare time writing poetry, songs, plays, and other enrichment activities for young children. Her earliest publication appears to be "Birds and Angels," a moralizing poem published in The Child's Friend and Family Magazine, Feb 1, 1853 (American Periodicals, ProQuest). From that time on her various sobriquets "M. B. C. Slade", "Mary B. C. Slade", or just "M. B. C. S." turn up in a variety of education journals and children's and family magazines. For a sense of the variety of areas in which her work had an impact, she was published in the inaugural volume of the Indiana School Journal in 1856, was reprinted in The Sunday School Teacher, and was a frequent contributor to children's magazines such as Our Young Folks. She wrote a number of original teaching pieces for L. O. Emerson's Merry Chimes: A Collection of Songs, Duets, Trios, and Sacred Pieces (Philadelphia: Charles Trumpler, 1865), and was prominently featured in the preface to that work. In the last decade of her life she edited the "Department of Dialogues and School Entertainments" in Boston University's prestigious Journal of Education. Her magnum opus was The Children's Hour (Boston: Henry A. Young, 1880), "containing dialogues, speeches, motion songs, tableaux, charades, blackboard exercises, juvenile comedies, and other entertainments, for primary schools, kindergartens, and juvenile home entertainments."

It was only natural that Mary B. C. Slade would try her hand at song lyrics. To the excellent list at Hymnary.org I have added a few other discoveries, documenting 158 unique lyrics by Mary Slade  (no doubt there were more) set to music by gospel song composers. In 1866 she broke into this field as a contributor to an interesting series called Our Song Birds, published by the Chicago firm Root & Cady. The children's music editor of Root & Cady, Benjamin R. Hanby, had the unusual concept of a children's secular song collection issued in quarterly parts, each named for a seasonal bird: The Snow Bird for January, The Robin (April), The Red Bird (July), and The Dove (October). Hanby's untimely death in 1867 brought the series to a close with two posthumous installments, The Blue Bird and The Linnet. Though it is uncertain if they ever met in person, Mary Slade corresponded with Hanby during the production of these songbooks (Gross, 70ff.). Slade contributed 16 lyrics to The Snow Bird, and 45 lyrics in all to a series that totaled 306 songs (Gross, Appendix C). (Coincidentally, the most famous result of this series was the Christmas song "Up on the house top" by B. R. Hanby in The Dove, but Mary Slade was not involved.)

George F. Root

During the same period she wrote eight lyrics for George F. Root's Temperance Movement songbook, The Musical Fountain (1866), and his Sunday School collection The Prize (1870) contained three new Slade lyrics along with 16 reprints. No doubt her continued association with Root brought the Fall River homebody to the attention of church music publishers nationwide. Though best remembered today for the Civil War anthems "Battle Cry of Freedom" and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp the Boys are Marching," G. F. Root was also co-founder of the New York Normal Institute with Lowell Mason, and was the first American composer in the genre of the secular cantata. He was a dynamic teacher, promoter, and publisher of church and school music, and not surprisingly was connected with just about everyone in that field (Fanny Crosby was a former student) (Wilhoit). In just a few years Mary Slade was contributing new lyrics to be set by prominent musicians such as Horatio Palmer (Palmer's Sabbath School Songs, 1868) and William O. Perkins (Starry Crown of Sunday School Song, 1869). Palmer was a publishing associate of Root (Root 152), and also the editor of the monthly musical magazine Concordia (Jones 127). Perkins was a European-trained choral conductor and composer, with more than 200 music conventions under his belt across the northern U.S. and in Canada (Jones 133).

Slade's collaboration with Root came to a sudden halt with the destruction of the Root & Cady publishing plant in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Though Root would eventually recover, the company was forced to sell its catalogue of copyrights and printing plates. Most went to the John Church Company of Cincinnati, with some going to Brainard & Sons in Cleveland, Ohio (Root 157). From this point forward we see Slade's songs began to appear in reprints in a wider variety of songbooks from various publishers. Slade wrote ten new songs for the Brainard publications Joyful Songs and Pure Diamonds, both published in 1872, all of which were set to music by the book's editor James R. Murray. A protégé of Root, Murray was a gifted editor (Root 142), and had taken Hanby's place in completing The Linnet, the last of the Song Birds books. Pure Diamonds was said to have sold half a million copies (Jones 104). Murray would continue to reprint Slade's songs during his later association with the John Church Company. 

Rigdon McIntosh

But it was another collaboration in the early 1870s that would set Slade's legacy firmly in place as a hymnwriter, and with a somewhat unlikely partner: Rigdon M. McIntosh (1836-1899). McIntosh set out in life as a school teacher in his native Tennessee, but an opportunity to join the Virginia music teachers L.C. and Asa B. Everett (of whom more in a future post) set him on the course that would become his career. McIntosh proved to be a dynamic teacher, a capable composer, and an excellent businessman (Oswalt 11ff.). The partnership was abruptly ended, however, by the Civil War--the Everetts went to Canada, and McIntosh enlisted in the Confederate States Army. Though they remained cordial after the war and occasionally collaborated, McIntosh went his own way in business. Years later McIntosh confided to a friend that he did not know the reason for the Everetts' decision, and had never asked, but the fact that he brought it up at such a late date is suggestive of his lingering mixed feelings toward their decision (Oswalt 15ff.). 

How exactly the ex-Confederate McIntosh obtained the services of the abolitionist Mary Slade is unknown, but in 1871 she supplied eight new lyrics for The Amaranth, a Sunday School book that McIntosh was editing for the Southern Methodist Publishing House. It is interesting that all of these were set to music by Asa B. Everett instead of McIntosh, even though McIntosh was never shy about including his own compositions. Perhaps there was some prior connection between Slade and the Everett during his student days in Boston, or during his Canadian sojourn; perhaps also they were more sympathetic in political and social views. (Slade's connection with McIntosh was fruitful, regardless, and continued well after Everett's death.) Oswalt notes that The Amaranth included more songs by Mary Slade than by any other living writer, including Fanny Crosby. And though most have fallen by the wayside, this publication saw the first appearance of one of the timeless Slade-Everett hymns, "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling (Footsteps of Jesus)." Hymnary.org counts 200 hymnals that have reprinted this song over the years, the first of Mary Slade's lyrics to break double digits.

from The Amaranth (Nashville: Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1871)

Atticus Haygood, the denomination's Sunday School Secretary, noted in 1873 that The Amaranth had sold 50,000 copies in a little over a year (The Emerald, preface). Though this was just a fraction of what the most successful Sunday School books might sell in the North, it was an encouraging number for a denominational press in the recovering post-war economy of the South. Encouraged by this reception, it seems, McIntosh was commissioned to bring out a companion book, The Emerald. His co-editor Haygood remarked that this effort "excels in the number of what we have called subject-songs . . . most written expressly for this book," where were "as useful in impressing the lessons as they are beautiful in expression and evangelical in sentiment" (Oswalt 192, quoting Sunday School Magazine 2 (April 1872): 110). Though these songs are not specifically marked in the songbook, there is a group of 25 selections that have instructions to read a Scripture selection before singing the song based upon that text. All of these are by Mary Slade, and it seems likely that she was asked to produce songs on these particular passages to fit with the Sunday School lessons. Anyone who has taught children's classes can see the usefulness of such songs, especially those dealing with specific events in the life of Christ. 

TITLE	FIRST LINE	SCRIPTURE
Sinful cities	Thou Bethsaida, the lovely	Mt. 10:13-15
Come unto Me	Hark, the gentle voice of Jesus falleth	Mt. 11:28-30
The sower	Hear how a sower	Mt. 13:1-8,18-23
The mustard seed	Liken the kingdom to the springing	Matt. 13:31-32
The lost sheep	The ninety and nine, his dear ones that stay	Matt. 18:12-14
The two sons	A man had two sons	Matt. 21:28-31
The marriage of the king's son	Once a feast was made	Matt. 22:1-14
The ten virgins	Once, forth to meet the bridegroom	Matt. 25:1-13
The seed growing silently	So is the kingdom	Mark 4:26-29
Peace, be still!	Rocked upon the raging billow	Mark 4:37-41
Blind Bartimeus	As forth from the city	Mark 10:46-52
Mary's memorial	Mary her dear Master sought	Mark 14:3-9
The barren fig-tree	In the vineyard of the Master	Luke 13:6-9
The prodigal son	The younger son, unto his father	Luke 15:11-32
The Pharisee and the publican	Into the temple of God, one day	Luke 18:10-14
Let them come	O I love to think how Jesus	Luke 18:15-16
Jesus at Jacob's well	O come to the beautiful valley with me	John 4:4-42
The Master calleth for thee	Her sad vigil keeping	John 11:28-29
Behold I stand at the door	Knock! knock! hear Him knock!	Rev. 3:20
Happy pilgrims	To the heavenly Jerusalem	Rev. 21:2, 18-27
The golden city	Say, have you read in the story olden	Rev. 21:18-23
To Canaan	We are marching to Canaan	Ps. 7:14, 15, 25-29
Praise the Lord!	Praise the Lord, happy children	Ps. 149:1,2, 100:2, 18:1
The kingdom coming	From all the dark places	Isa. 11:9, Rev. 11:15, Ps. 20:5
The living waters	The prophet stands and he lifts his voice	Isa. 55:1, John 7:37, Rev. 22:17

Most of Slade's texts in The Emerald (29 in all, by far the most by any single author) were set by Rigdon McIntosh this time. In the list above, however, we see the first appearance of another Slade/Everett perennial, "Hark, the gentle voice of Jesus falleth". Though it appears in only 38 hymnals in Hymnary.org, it is probably still immediately familiar to anyone from the Churches of Christ in the U.S. Part of this popularity is owed to its usefulness as a song for "extending the invitation" at the end of a sermon (what others may refer to as an "altar call"). Its later publishing history was typical of Slade's more successful songs--retention by the Methodist hymnals, early adoption to Cincinnati/Louisville publishers associated with the Disciples, Christian Churches, and Churches of Christ, and adoption by the Southern Baptist publishers. But her most prominent new song from this collection would become "From all the dark places", a missionary call set to music by "Emilius Laroche" (a pseudonym of Rigdon McIntosh (Oswalt 41)--Hymnary.org lists 102 hymnals with this song. It should be noted that despite Slade's progressive views, the opening lines "From all the dark places / Of earth's heathen races" betrays something of the unfortunately typical Eurocentric conception of mission work in that era; that may be why it fell out of use in the 1960s after so many years of popularity.

McIntosh issued another Sunday School book for the Southern Methodists in 1873, titled The Gem. I have not had the opportunity to examine it, but according to Oswalt this was just a compilation from the previous two (with only 12 new songs) and done in shape notes (200ff.). This undoubtedly helped Mary Slade's songs reach an even greater audience in the South. McIntosh's next "new" endeavor, however, would turn to the Northern markets, in a publication that relied even more openly on the strength of Mary Slade's writing.

Good News was publised in 1876 by the Oliver Ditson Company of Boston, one of the most prominent music publishers in the United States at the time. Oswalt provides evidence that McIntosh may have had leverage with Ditson because of an earlier copyright dispute (206-208), and that Ditson may have seen this as an opportunity to enter the Southern church music market with a recognized editor from the region (210). But McIntosh was also a proven success in producing good Sunday School music, not least because of the relationships he had built with lyricists. He noted in the preface of the work:

Most of the new hymns have been written by Mrs. Mary B. C. Slade, of Fall River, Mass., and Rev. Jos. H. Martin, of Atlanta, Ga., both of whom already occupy assured and leading positions in the hymnic literature of the country.

Mary Slade's work appears in 29 selections out of the 156 titles in Good News, and though she was exceeded in number by the aforementioned Joseph H. Martin with 35 songs, several of her new works proved to be far more lasting.

Title	First Line	Composer
The one astray	Ninety nine in the safe fold abiding	R. M. McIntosh
Tell it again	Into the tent where a gypsy boy lay	R. M. McIntosh
Beautiful Christmas	O'er the hills and adown the snowy dells	R. M. McIntosh
Bring the children	How happy were they	R. M. McIntosh
Christmas carol	Once o'er Judea's hills by night	R. M. McIntosh
To whom shall we go?	Hear, now, the blessed Jesus	R. M. McIntosh
Song for Centennial Day	Let us raise a song	R. M. McIntosh
Our choice	Thou, O Lord, all our sin and sorrow	R. M. McIntosh
Knocking at the door	Who at my door is standing	A. B. Everett
Seeking	What saith Jehovah, the holy one	R. M. McIntosh
Free waters	There's a fountain free	A. B. Everett
Hear Him calling	Are you staying, safely staying	A. B. Everett
Summer land	Beyond this land of parting	A. B. Everett
Loved one, farewell	Birds are rejoicing	A. B. Everett
Follow thou me	If I, like Galilee fishers	A. B. Everett
"Whosoever"	O'er the desert and dreary way	A. B. Everett

One notable feature of this group is the strong contribution by Asa Everett. Looking at Slade's total output as recorded in Hymnary.org, Everett was the most frequent composer for her hymn lyrics  after George F. Root, and she was the most frequently set author in Everett's output. McIntosh noted in the preface of Good News that Everett's death in late 1875 had interrupted the completion of the volume for a time, so perhaps it had been planned for Everett to compose even more of Slade's texts.

The most widely popular of these new songs (by number of instances recorded in Hymnary.org) was one I had never heard of: "Into the tent where a gypsy boy lay", with music by Rigdon McIntosh, appearing in 95 hymnals. A missionary song like "From all the dark places", it avoids some of the more overt condescension of the former but falls into the 19th-century poetic trope of the dying child. (To her credit, Slade more often than not avoided the overwrought sentimentality of popular lyrics in her era.) The next most popular of this batch of songs would be the perennial "Who at my door is standing" (88 instances in Hymnary.org), set to music by Asa B. Everett. Less widely used, but successful enough to still be sung today, were "Beyond this land of parting" and "There's a fountain free", also set by Everett.

Rigdon McIntosh published another Sunday School book with Ditson in 1881, but with a much smaller contribution by Mary Slade--only 7 new songs and 2 reprints. It was their final active collaboration, for Slade's health was failing; we know at least that she was ill for "many months" prior to her her death on 15 April 1882. According to her obituary in Boston University's Journal of Education (for which she had edited a department), Slade was in the process of putting together another volume of her own Sunday School material and devoted her final months to that unfinished work ("Current events" 255). In addition to touching tributes in her home town, Mary B. C. Slade's death was noted in the Boston Globe (15 April 1882, page 4), The Brooklyn Union (15 April 1882, page 4), and The Montreal Star (17 April 1882, page 2). Thus came too soon to a close, at the age of 56, of a busy career of service to children's education.

But her songs, of course, live on. Though the death of Rigdon McIntosh in 1899 seems to have ended the preferential use of her songs in Methodist songbooks, her work became enough a part of the Methodist repertoire that it crossed over from Sunday School songbooks to the official hymnal. The Methodist Hymnal editions of 1905 and 1935, published jointly by the Northern and Southern denominations prior to their reunification, included her missionary song "From all the dark places". And though her songs did not appear in the 1966 Methodist Hymnal or the 1981 United Methodist Hymnal, the popular Cokesbury Hymnal (1923) included "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling", as did Spiritual Life Songs (1930) and Upper Room Hymns (1942), jointly published by Cokesbury and Abingdon presses. 

Mary Slade's songs simultaneously fanned out beyond denominational borders into the burgeoning gospel music publishing in the North, and into the growing shape-note gospel tradition in the South. Two of her earlier works appeared in the six-part Biglow & Main Gospel Hymns series edited variously by Ira Sankey, Philip Bliss, and James McGranahan, and one of these, "With His dear and loving care" with music by James Murray, appeared in One Hundred Select Gospel Hymns in 1883. The missionary song "Into the tent where a gypsy boy lay" appeared in several late 19th-century publications by the John J. Hood Company in Philadelphia, edited by John R. Sweney, William J. Kirkpatrick, Tullius O'Kane, and others. 

In the South, Ruebush & Kieffer included Slade's "Hark! the gentle voice", "Who at my door is standing?", "From all the dark places", "Let them come", "There's a wail from the islands of the sea", and "Where the jasper walls are beaming" in their six-volume Crowning Day series (Dayton, Virginia, 1894-1904). Other regional shape-note publishers soon joined in, such as H. N. Lincoln's Songland Company in Dallas (Songland Melodies, 1900), and Eureka Carols, 1901, the first book from Indian Territory's Stephen Jesse Oslin. Anthony J. Showalter included Mary Slade's "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling" in his anthology Best Gospel Songs and Their Composers (Dalton, Georgia, 1904). Her songs continued to appear in the following decades in books by the next generation of shape-note publishers, such as James D. Vaughan of Tennessee and Robert H. Coleman of Dallas, Texas. Coleman included "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling" in 12 of his annual paperback songbooks between 1922 and 1939, often accompanied with "From all the dark places" or "Who at my door is standing?" 

A prominent Baptist leader in Texas, Coleman also edited hymnals for Broadman Press in Nashville, including the influential Modern Hymnal of 1926, in which he was assisted by his bright young employee B. B. McKinney (Music & Richardson 411-412). McKinney would later edit the widely popular Broadman Hymnal (1940), and Broadman Press would include Mary Slade's songs in Song Evangel (1940), Look and Live Songs (1945), Songs of Life (1946), Voice of Praise (1947), Evangelistic Songs (1948), Songs for Juniors (1953), Crusade Songs (1954), and Christian Praise (1964) as well. "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling" appeared in all of these, and "From all the dark places" in all but a few. When the Southern Baptist Convention brought out its larger committee-edited Baptist Hymnal in 1956, these two Mary Slade songs were included, and "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling" has appeared in each of the following editions down to the most recent in 2008.

It was among the Disciples of Christ, Christian Churches, and Churches of Christ, however, that Slade's songs found the widest and most lasting popularity. Though the Christian Hymnal (descended from Alexander Campbell's venerable Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs) was still the "unofficial-official" hymnal in the immediate post-war era, the lack of a central organization meant that congregations adopted whatever was available and appealing, whether as supplementary to the Hymn Book or as a substitute. In addition to the Central Book Concern in Cincinnati (later the Bethany Press, then the Chalice Press), hymnals for these churches were often published by the religious papers, such as Christian Standard (Standard Publishing, Cincinnati), Christian Guide (Guide Publishing, Louisville, Kentucky), and Christian-Evangelist (Christian Publishing, St. Louis) (Mott 80). There were also significant contributions by independent music editors and publishers such as the Fillmores of Cincinnati, who issued hymnals and Sunday School books for their own brethren as well as a broader range of school and choral music (Wakefield).

"Beyond this land of parting" appeared in the 1882 Christian Hymnal, but overall Mary Slade's songs were not widely used in the hymnals of the Central Book Concern and its successors, which were predominantly used in the (later named) Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) denomination (Wakefield). There may have been greater hesitation among these congregations to include the lighter gospel songs in the main hymnal, because a few more of her songs do appear in supplementary publications. The Morning Star, edited by Knowles Shaw had four of her songs, and  The Christian Sunday School Hymnal (St. Louis, Christian Publishing Co., 1883) was even more generous with eight of Mary Slade's songs included:

Who at my door is standing
Beyond this land of parting

From all the dark places

If I like Galilee fishers

Are you staying, safely staying

Praise the Lord

There's a beautiful place

We are marching to Canaan

Among the publishers later associated with the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental), however, her songs were taken up more enthusiastically. Popular Hymns (Louisville, Kentucky, 1883), edited by Christopher Columbus Cline and later published by the Guide Publishing Company of that city, included the following songs:

Who at my door is standing

Hark! the gentle voice

Beyond this land of parting

From all the dark places

In the desert days of old

Where the jasper walls are beaming

C. C. Cline

At around 300 songs, this book was a cheaper choice than the Christian Hymnal and was well received among smaller and less affluent congregations, which tended to be concentrated in the South. David Lipscomb, editor of the Gospel Advocate in Nashville, Tennessee and one of the leading voices among the most conservative congregations (later identified as the acapella Churches of Christ), endorsed Popular Hymns in an 1895 editorial (Bowman 62ff.). 

Cline carried over this usage of Mary Slade hymns into his editorial work for Standard Publishing of Cincinnati, which carried the imprimatur of the influential Christian Standard magazine and would become the unofficial house publisher for the Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental). The Standard Church Hymnal (1888) included "Who at my door is standing?", "There's a wail from the islands of the sea", "Where the jasper walls are beaming", and "Rocked upon the raging billow." A companion book published the same year, the Standard Sunday School Hymnal, went much further into Mary Slade's catalog, with more of her songs than I have yet to find outside a songbook not edited by Rigdon McIntosh:

From all the dark places

In the vineyard of the Master

Rocked upon the raging billows

Come down beside the waters

Liken the kingdom to the springing

As forth from the city

Hear how a sower once

The Master stood at the vineyard gate

Once a feast was made

Her sad vigil keeping

Thou Bethsaida, the lovely

In the desert days of old

O I love to think

If I like Galilee fishers

Say, who hath sorrows

The sun is rising o'er the ocean

This regard for Mary Slade's songs would continue in Standard Publishing songbooks in the early 20th century, such as the Christian Church Hymnal (1906) edited by H. R. Christie, and though the usage dropped off as the decades went by, the Favorite Hymns songbooks of mid-century still carried "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling" and "Hark! the gentle voice".

The conservative acappella congregations, predominantly Southern and later to be identified as the Churches of Christ, generally used publications from Standard Publishing or the Fillmore Bros. in the post-Civil War era (Bowman 57). But as the 19th century drew to a close, the rift over the evolving role of the American Christian Missionary Society (which controlled the Christian Hymnal following the death of Alexander Campbell), and the growing discord between Isaac Errett of the Christian Standard and David Lipscomb of the Gospel Advocate, caused the conservatives to sour on the Cincinnati publishers and seek their own hymnal. Lipscomb, in fact, had retained the services of C. C. Cline as early as 1884 to edit such a songbook, but after numerous delays Cline instead threw in his lot with Errett as editor of the Standard Church Hymnal and Standard Sunday School Hymnal. 

David Lipscomb

Cline did, however give Lipscomb the valuable advice to seek the services of Rigdon McIntosh (Bowman 63ff.) McIntosh had delivered the Southern Methodist Hymn and Tune Book (1874) less than a year after he was brought in to revive the floundering project (Oswalt, 100ff.), and Lipscomb probably saw McIntosh as the solution to his own similar difficulties. Typical for the practical- and profit-minded music editor, McIntosh supplied much of the material from his own recent publications, employing his own works and those of his cadre of favorite lyricists and composers (Oswalt 142). The result was  the  previously mentioned Christian Hymns (Nashville: Gospel Advocate, 1889), with its group of 25 Mary Slade songs that made her the largest contributor of lyrics in the book:

Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling

Who at my door is standing?

Hark! the gentle voice

Beyond this land of parting

There's a fountain free

From all the dark places

There's a beautiful place 

I've stayed till late

Are you staying, safely staying

Rocked upon the raging billow 

In the desert, days of old

Look abroad o'er the fields

Liken the kingdom to the springing 

The ninety and nine

As forth from the city

Say, who hath sorrow

Where the jasper walls are beaming

Say, have you read 

In the vineyard of the Master

To the heavenly Jerusalem 

Once a feast was made 

There's a wail from the islands of the sea

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!

Once, forth to meet the bridegroom

Of course the presence of the songs does not mean they were learned and sung, but they were in the hands of the congregations for many years; despite some flaws, Christian Hymns was reasonably successful, and Gospel Advocate was still advertising it for sale as late as 1921 (Bowman  67). In the meantime Mary Slade's songs had begun to appear in the songbooks by Firm Foundation in Austin, Texas: the New Gospel Song Book (1914), edited by Austin Taylor and G. H. P. Showalter, included "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling" and "There's a fountain free", and their Gospel Songs no. 2 (1919) added to these "Beyond this land of parting" and "From all the dark places". In 1921 the first edition of the influential Great Songs of the Church edited by Elmer Jorgenson was published, and included "Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling", "Who at my door is standing?", and "Hark! the gentle voice". Most familiar in its "No. 2" edition with the dark blue cover, this hymnal was the most widely used in Churches of Christ during the 20th century, and was taken up in some Independent Christian Churches as well.

In the 1920s the hymnal business at Gospel Advocate fell to the able hands of Charles Mitchell Pullias, a noted preacher and writer who was also a gifted song leader. Pullias continued the strong representation of Mary Slade's songs in Choice Gospel Hymns (1923) with the following lyrics:

Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling

Who at my door is standing?

Hark! the gentle voice

There's a fountain free

From all the dark places

There's a beautiful place

Are you staying

Where the jasper walls are beaming

Pullias brought out a completely new Christian Hymns in 1935 with the help of a young assistant named Lloyd Otis Sanderson, who would take over hymnal editing for the Christian Hymns no. 2 (1948) and Christian Hymns III (1966). All three editions contained the classic five Mary Slade songs that would be common repertoire in the Churches of Christ for the rest of the century:

Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling

Who at my door is standing?

Hark! the gentle voice

Beyond this land of parting

There's a fountain free

All five would appear in later hymnals from a variety of publishers:

New Wonderful Songs for Work and Worship (Firm Foundation, 1938)

Standard Gospel Songs (Tillit S. Teddlie, 1940?)

Gospel Songs and Hymns (Will W. Slater, 1944)

Sacred Selections for the Church (ed. Ellis J. Crum, 1956)

The Hymnal (Marion Davis Co., 1957)

Majestic Hymnal no. 2 (Firm Foundation, 1959)

Christian Hymnal (ed. J. Nelson Slater, 1963)

The Great Christian Hymnal (ed. Tillit S. Teddlie, 1965)

Songs of the Church (Howard Publishing, 1977)

Church Gospel Songs & Hymns (ed. V. E. Howard, 1986)

Hymns for Worship (ed. R. J. Stevens & Dane K. Shepard, 1988)

Praise for the Lord (Praise Press, 1992)

Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs (Sumphonia, 2012)

I would list Songs of Faith and Praise (Howard Publishing, 1994) as well, but it inexplicably omits "Who at my door is standing?", perhaps through editorial oversight. 

What enabled Mary Slade's songs to catch on, and to continue in use for so long? I can suggest a variety of reasons:

• Her language is direct and simple, but not childish. Slade was writing for youth, and mostly avoided the rhetorical flourishes of Victorian poetry, but she also avoided "cutesiness" and talking down to her readers. Her lyrics are understandable to children and still relevant to adults.
• She wrote close to Scriptural subjects, often with specific Scripture readings in mind, and led the reader to make application. When Jesus said "Follow Me," what might that require us to do? When He said, "I stand at the door and knock," what will be our answer?
• She often captured a certain spiritual longing, yet without becoming maudlin. In "There's a fountain free" the inclusiveness of the gospel call combines with a weariness and longing for rest and fellowship: "'Tis for you and me, and its stream I see / Let us hasten joyfully there." The third stanza of "Who at my door is standing?" plaintively expresses the frustration of a struggling believer, asking, "Jesus, art Thou not weary / Waiting so long for me?"
• Many of her best lyrics were set to attractive, singable, and appropriate music by Asa B. Everett, who will be the subject of a later post.

In closing this review of some of the contributions of this remarkable lady, I can do no better than to quote from her obituary in Boston University's Journal of Education, a department of which she edited for a number of years. Her peers noted her editorial work and contributions to teaching material, and closed their tribute with the thought-provoking observation that, "Her life was so full of good works that we cannot call it short" ("Current events" 255). May we all live lives of such usefulness, to be so remembered! 

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References:

"Albion King Slade", FamilySearch. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pedigree/landscape/LHKS-LT6

Blood, William W. Apostle of Reason: a Biography of Joseph Krauskopf. Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co., 1973. https://kenesethisrael.org/sites/default/files/uploaded_documents/apostle_of_reason_-_krauskopf_-_12_0.pdf

Borden, Alanson. Our Country And Its People: a Descriptive And Biographical Record of Bristol County, Massachusetts. [Boston]: Boston History Company, 1899. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009833153/

Bowman, John. Sweetly the Tones are Falling: a Hymnal History of Churches of Christ. Brentwood, Tennessee: Penmann Press, 1984.

A Centennial History of Fall River, Mass. New York: Atlantic Publishing, 1877.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t0000rt2m

Champlin, Kenneth. The Underground Railroad in Fall River, supplemented by the Fall River Historical Society. https://lizzieborden.org/exhibits/black-history-month-2017/

"Current events." Journal of Education (Boston University, School of Education), vol. 15, no. 16 (20 April 1882), page 255. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951000712620i?urlappend=%3Bseq=265%3Bownerid=13510798902710298-284

The Emerald, edited by Atticus G. Haygood and R. M. McIntosh. Nashville, Tennessee: Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1873. https://archive.org/details/emeson00hayg/

Fall River, Massachusetts. School Committee. Report of the General School Committee of the town of Fall River, 1845-46. Accessed via Sabin Americana Collection, Galenet.org.

Fowler, Orin. History of Fall River: With Notices of Freetown And Tiverton. Fall River, Massachusetts: Almy & Milne, Printers, 1862.  https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008733076/

Good News, edited by Rigdon McIntosh. Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1876.  https://archive.org/details/goodnewsorsongst00mcin

Gross, Jeanne Bilger. Benjamin Russel Hanby, Ohio Composer-Educator, 1833-1867: His Contributions to Early Music Education. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1987.
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu148758461216499&disposition=attachment

Hall, J. H. Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1914.
https://archive.org/details/biographyofgospe00hall/

Harp, Scott. "Charles Mitchell Pullias." History of the Restoration Movement.  https://www.therestorationmovement.com/_states/texas/pullias,cm.htm 

Jones, F. O. A Handbook of American Music and Musicians. Canaseraga, N.Y.: F. O. Jones, 1886. https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Handbook_of_American_Music_and_Musicia/iJ3tteJkp6cC

Massachusetts. General Court. House of Representatives. 1842 House Bill 4. Petition of Citizens of Fall River regarding children in factories. http://archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/750257

McIntosh, Rigdon M., editor. Good News : Or, Songs and Tunes for Sunday schools, Christian Associations, and Special Meetings. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Company, 1876
https://archive.org/details/goodnewsorsongst00mcin

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines. [vol. 3], 1865-1885. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956.

Music, David W., and Paul A. Richardson.  I Will Sing the Wondrous Story : a History of Baptist Hymnody in North America. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2008.

Oswalt, Lewis Earl. Rigdon McCoy McIntosh: Teacher, Composer, Editor, and Publisher. D.M.A. dissertation, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1991.

Pappas, Nikos. "Rigdon McCoy McIntosh and the Tabor." Commonplace: the Journal of Early American Life. Accessed 2 May 2022. http://commonplace.online/article/rigdon-mccoy-mcintosh-and-the-tabor/

Root, George F. Story of a Musical Life: an Autobiography. Cincinnati: John Church Co., 1891. https://archive.org/details/storyofmusicall00root/

 

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. The Underground Railroad: an Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations. London: Routledge, 2008.

Wakefield, John C. "Stone/Campbell Movement: Early Years through 1955." Dictionary of North American Hymnology (now part of Hymnary.org).  https://hymnary.org/files/denom_files/stn-cmp%20hmnls%20early.doc (Word document download)

Wilhoit, Mel R. "Root, George Frederick (1820-1895), composer and music educator." American National Biography. Oxford University Press. Date of access 1 May. 2022  https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1801003