I watched a video earlier today and a part of it was the old children’s hymn, Jesus Loves Me. I’m sure that if you’ve been around church for very long you know this beloved hymn.

Jesus loves me! this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong;
They are weak, but He is strong.

Refrain

Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me! He who died
Heaven’s gate to open wide.
He will wash away my sin,
Let His little child come in.

These two stanzas and the refrain, according to one hymnal, were written by the original author, Anna B. Warner.

I went through one of my books of hymn stories, Then Sings My Soul*, and found this. I thought it would be nice to share.

Anna and Susan Warner lived in a lovely townhouse in New York City, where their father, Henry Whiting Warner, was a successful lawyer. But the Panic of 1837 wrecked the family’s finances, forcing them to move into a ram-shackle Revolutionary War-era home on Constitution Island on the Hudson, right across from the Military Academy at West Point.

Needing to contribute to the family income, Anna and Susan began writing poems and stories for publication. Anna wrote “Robinson Crusoe’s Farmyard,” and Susan wrote, “The Wide, Wide World.” The girls thus launched parallel literary careers that resulted in 106 publications, 18 of them coauthored.

One of their most successful joint projects was a novel titled Say and Seal in which a little boy named Johnny [Fax] is dying. His Sunday school teacher John Linden, comforts him by taking him in his arms, rocking him, and making up a little song, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so…”

The novel became a bestseller, second only to Uncle Tom’s Cabin; when hymnwriter William Bradbury read the words of John Linden’s little song (written by Anna), he composed a childlike musical score to go along with them. “Jesus Loves Me” soon became the best-known children’s hymn on earth.

Despite their success, the Warner sisters never seemed able to recover from the staggering financial reverses of 1836. Years later a friend wrote, “One day when sitting with Miss Anna in the old living room, she took from one of the cases a shell so delicate that it looked like lace work, and holding it in her hand, with eyes dimmed with tears, she said, ‘There was a time when I was very perplexed, bills were unpaid, necessities must be had, and someone sent me this exquisite thing. As I held it, I realized that if God could make this beautiful home for a little creature, He would take care of me.”‘

For forty years, Susan and Anna conducted Bible classes for cadets at West Point, both were buried with full military honors. They are the only civilians buried in the military cemetery at West Point. To this day, their home on Constitution Island is maintained by West Point as a museum to their memory.

*Then Sings My Soul: 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories by Robert J. Morgan, ©2003,
Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., pg. 139

Click here for another link that shares some interesting information on their work with the cadets at West Point – including Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Mar 6th, 2019, Wed, 1:07 pm