SEND THE LIGHT

Charles Gabriel grew up on a farm in Iowa where he lived until he was the age of seventeen.  From his early life, he was drawn to music.  When his Methodist family purchased a reed organ, he taught himself to play it.  His parents were a great encouragement and by age 16 he was leading singing schools.  Charles married…but due to his very busy schedule of travel and music teaching…this relationship failed.  In 1887, he moved to California to get a new start and was soon remarried.

Charles was working at the Grace Methodist Church in San Francisco, when the Sunday School superintendent came to him asking for a missionary hymn to use during Easter services.  Gabriel responded by writing SEND THE LIGHT.  On that Sunday, March 6, 1890, the new hymn was sung with great enthusiasm.  In the congregation was a visiting missionary representative who loved the words and carried the hymn back to the East.  The immediate popularity of Gabriel’s hymn propelled him to prominence in the hymn writing community.

Once before in his life, Charles had tried to support himself by composing hymns…but had failed.  As unplanned as it was…within two years after composing this hymn, he was in Chicago, devoting his life full time to writing and publishing hymns. 

Over his career, he edited 35 gospel songbooks, 8 Sunday School songbooks, 7 books for men’s chorus, 6 for women, 10 for children, 19 collections of anthems and 23 cantatas.  Yet he was best known for his amazing output of 7,000 hymns!  Do you recognize some of them?  “His Eye Is on the Sparrow”, “I Stand Amazed in the Presence”, “Brighten the Corner Where You Are”; and what about “That Will Be Glory for Me” or maybe you recognize “Since Jesus Came into My Heart”?  It really seems so fitting from a man named Gabriel!