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Mary Wilder Tileston
Mary Wilder Tileston was born on August 20, 1843, in Salem, Massachusetts, to Caleb Foote, owner and editor of the Salem Gazette, and Mary Wilder White Foote. Raised in a family with strong intellectual and religious ties—her brother Henry Wilder Foote became a Harvard-educated minister, and her brother Arthur Foote a noted composer—she attended private schools in Salem. On September 25, 1865, she married John Boies Tileston, a publisher’s son, and they had seven children: Mary, Margaret, Roger, Amelia, Wilder, Edith, and Eleanor. The family lived in Concord, Massachusetts, on a 200-acre farm from around 1874 to 1882, then moved to Salem and later Brookline, Massachusetts, where she died on July 3, 1934. Tileston’s career was centered on her literary contributions rather than preaching. Her most notable work, Daily Strength for Daily Needs, a collection of prose, verse, and scripture for daily reading, sold over 250,000 copies by 1910 and was highly regarded. She compiled other devotionals, including Prayers Ancient and Modern (1897) and children’s works like The Child’s Harvest of Verse (1910), reflecting her love for spiritual literature. While not a preacher by occupation, her anthologies served a preaching-like function, offering spiritual guidance to readers. Her legacy lies in these writings, which continue to inspire, rather than in a formal ministerial role.
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Mary Wilder Tileston preaches about the everlasting joy and happiness found in God, where souls awakened to His presence see earth as a fatherland and face the future with courage and light hearts. She emphasizes that happiness is a natural portion for those who have chosen God, as He is the source of infinite joy and communicates happiness to the soul in union with Him. Tileston highlights that true happiness is a perfect alignment and cheerful compliance of the soul with the Will of God, making Heaven itself a state of eternal joy and conformity.
Choosing Happiness
In Thy name shall they rejoice all the day. PSALMS 89:16 Now first to souls who thus awake Seems earth a fatherland: A new and endless life they take With rapture from His hand. The fears of death and of the grave Are whelmed beneath the sea, And every heart, now light and brave, May face the things to be. FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG HAPPINESS, let us understand this well, is as truly our portion here as above; it cannot fail to fall within the lot of those who have chosen for their portion Him whose nature is one with infinite, unalienable Joy. God, in communicating Himself to the soul, of necessity communicates happiness; and all souls in union with Him have returned to their central rest, and are happy, in exact proportion to the closeness and fulness of their union,--happy, in other words, by so much as they have within them of God. DORA GREENWELL HAPPINESS, Heaven itself, is nothing else but a perfect conformity, a cheerful and eternal compliance of all the powers of the soul with the Will of God. SAMUEL SHAW, 1669
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Mary Wilder Tileston was born on August 20, 1843, in Salem, Massachusetts, to Caleb Foote, owner and editor of the Salem Gazette, and Mary Wilder White Foote. Raised in a family with strong intellectual and religious ties—her brother Henry Wilder Foote became a Harvard-educated minister, and her brother Arthur Foote a noted composer—she attended private schools in Salem. On September 25, 1865, she married John Boies Tileston, a publisher’s son, and they had seven children: Mary, Margaret, Roger, Amelia, Wilder, Edith, and Eleanor. The family lived in Concord, Massachusetts, on a 200-acre farm from around 1874 to 1882, then moved to Salem and later Brookline, Massachusetts, where she died on July 3, 1934. Tileston’s career was centered on her literary contributions rather than preaching. Her most notable work, Daily Strength for Daily Needs, a collection of prose, verse, and scripture for daily reading, sold over 250,000 copies by 1910 and was highly regarded. She compiled other devotionals, including Prayers Ancient and Modern (1897) and children’s works like The Child’s Harvest of Verse (1910), reflecting her love for spiritual literature. While not a preacher by occupation, her anthologies served a preaching-like function, offering spiritual guidance to readers. Her legacy lies in these writings, which continue to inspire, rather than in a formal ministerial role.