I Love to Tell the Story
Words by Miss Kate Hankey Music by W. G. Fischer
"I love to tell the story
Of unseen things above.”
“Last winter a young man appeared here from British Columbia,” says a letter from Surrey, England. '' He was in the Royal Marines. He was a total abstainer and was doing all he could to promote temperance among his comrades. While here he went to church, and the curate, who had a conversation with him, was much pleased with his manly behavior and resolute desire to do right. He wore a medal and had good-conduct marks on his clothes. This man was the little boy whom Miss T. had picked up in Battersea Park many years before, and who had learned of the gospel of salvation entirely by listening to the maidservants singing sacred songs while scrubbing doorsteps and cleaning windows. The hymn that, as a child, he seemed to make entirely his own was, ' I love to tell the story, ' though he knew several others when he was picked up in the park. As he had never been to church or chapel, the hymns were the only channel through which divine truth had been conveyed to him, and by which the first seed was sown in his heart that made him a man of character and usefulness."