April 28, 2018 (Saturday)
From Hymnary.org: Alfred Henry Ackley was born on January 21, 1887 in Spring Hill, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest son of Stanley Frank Ackley and the younger brother of B. D. Ackley. His father taught him music and he also studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary in Maryland and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1914. He served churches in Pennsylvania and California. He also worked with the Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver evangelist team and for Homer Rodeheaver’s publishing company. He wrote around 1500 hymns. He died July 3, 1960 in Los Angeles.
The soloist on the video below is Jack Holcomb. I never met him, but I was fortunate enough to meet his parents. I was singing in a revival meeting in the early 1950’s at the Park Lake Drive Baptist Church in Waco, Texas; the pastor, Bill Suhr, took me visiting in the community one day and we made a stop at the home of Jack Holcomb’s parents. They were a sweet couple, very proud of their son. Many a young singer has made Jack Holcomb his model for ministry. He died young in 1968, fifty years ago.*
Alfred H. Ackley
1922
Refrain:
“Take up thy cross and follow Me,”
I hear the blessed Savior call;
How can I make a lesser sacrifice,
When Jesus gave His all?
Verses:
I walked one day along a country road,
And there a stranger journeyed too,
Bent low beneath the burden of His load:
It was a cross, a cross I knew.
I cried, “Lord Jesus,” and He spoke my name;
I saw His hands all bruised and torn;
I stooped to kiss away the marks of shame,
The shame for me that He had borne.
“Oh, let me bear Thy cross, dear Lord,” I cried,
And, lo, a cross for me appeared,
The one, forgotten, I had cast aside,
The one, so long, that I had feared.
My cross I’ll carry till the crown appears–
The way I journey soon will end–
Where God Himself shall wipe away all tears,
And friend hold fellowship with friend.
* Read more about Jack Holcomb. Click here. (Takes you to a blog with links to more).