Words & Music: , 1909:

It was in Ap­ril of 1909, while Frank was di­rect­ing the mu­sic for Evan­gel­ist W. S. Bu­chan­an in a ser­ies of ser­vic­es be­ing held in Pro­vi­dence Christ­ian Church, Scran­ton Penn­syl­van­ia, that he was in­spired to write the mu­sic of “It Pays to Serve Je­sus”, one of his fin­est gos­pel hymns. His hosts dur­ing the Scran­ton en­gage­ment were Mr. and Mrs. Gwy­lym Ed­wards, choir di­rect­or and Church or­gan­ist re­spec­tive­ly of the Pro­vi­dence con­gre­ga­tion. One day while Frank was mus­ing at the key­board of the Ed­wards’ pi­a­no, a mel­o­dy sud­den­ly came to him which he de­cid­ed was worth sav­ing. So he quick­ly wrote it down on a piece of mu­sic pa­per which he usu­al­ly car­ried around in his pock­et for just such emer­gen­cies, and prompt­ly for­got all about it.

Returning to his home in In­di­an­a­po­lis af­ter the Penn­syl­van­ia meet­ing for a per­i­od of rest and fel­low­ship with his fam­i­ly, he brought his new tune with him. A few days lat­er he paid a vi­sit to an eighty-two year old friend, M. E. Mick, a de­vout mem­ber of the Me­ri­di­an Street Meth­od­ist Church of that ci­ty. Dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion, Mick sud­den­ly said to Huston, “Bro­ther Hus­ton, you have wri­tten so ma­ny good songs, won't you write one for me on the sub­ject we have just been dis­cuss­ing, and call it, ‘It Pays to Serve Je­sus’?” Frank in­ter­rupt­ed to re­mind his aged friend that there was al­rea­dy a pub­lished song bear­ing that ti­tle, where­up­on Mick re­plied, “I know there is, but I think you can write a bet­ter one.”…While in [Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­van­ia,] Hus­ton re­called Mick's plea of sev­er­al weeks ear­li­er, so he went to the fine pi­a­no in the liv­ing room of his host and host­ess [and] sud­den­ly he re­called the man­u­script in his pock­et, and out of sheer cur­i­os­it­y, he took it out placed it on the mu­sic rack of the piano and played through it. In­trigued with what he had com­posed and then com­plete­ly for­got­ten, he played it a se­cond time and then a third, while the words of a stan­za and chor­us fell in­to place al­most spon­tan­eo­us­ly. Be­fore he knew it, he was sing­ing a brand new hymn to his own orig­in­al tune.