It is said that some of the spiritual speeches given by Abraham Lincoln
inspired these two sisters, Anna and Susan, to write some of our most
familiar songs that actually were prayers put to music.
What inspired them the most was a speech by Lincoln in which he said:
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have
been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown
in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we
have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand, which
preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us;
and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that
all these blessing were produced by some superior wisdom, and virtue of
our own. … We have become too proud to pray to the God that made us.
The Warner sisters were Sunday school teachers in
West Point, New York. They taught the cadets in the U.S. Military
Academy of which most ended up in the Civil War, with many fighting each
other on the battlefield. From the hearts of the sisters came "Jesus
Loves Me."
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak but He is strong.
Jesus loves me! He will stay
Close beside me all the way;
Thou hast bled and died for me,
I will henceforth live for Thee.
As the Civil War went on many men and women on both
sides produced prayers and songs that glorified the struggle but that
also called upon the mercies of God. One such was Robert Lowry, a
professor of rhetoric and the pastor of the Hanson Place Baptist Church
in Brooklyn. He had become depressed at reading the war casualty list
and also because some of his friends and parishioners had come down with
the deadly typhoid disease.
As Robert put it, his "imagination began to take
itself wings" and he began to think how he could raise everyone’s
spirits. In fifteen minutes one evening he had sketched out the words
for "Shall We Gather At the River." He immediately sat down and worked
out the melody on the parsonage organ.
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God?
Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.
While riding on a train after the war, Lowry heard a
group of drunken lumbermen singing his hymn, and singing through every
word of it! He realized that what he had written would endure long after
he was gone.
