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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 God's ability to abundantly provide grace for His children, ensuring they have more than enough for every good work. She emphasizes the importance of seeking God's help to free us from worries and self-will, allowing us to fully surrender to Him as His obedient children, constantly crying out to Him as our loving Father. Despite the challenges and distractions of daily life, God's grace sustains us, keeping us from falling irrecoverably and providing a sense of His presence even in the busiest and most demanding moments.
Peace in the Bustle of Life
God is able to make all grace abound toward you: that ye always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work. 2 CORINTHIANS 9:8 O LOVE, Thy sovereign aid impart To save me from low-thoughted care; Chase this self-will through all my heart, Through all its latent mazes there; Make me Thy duteous child, that I Ceaseless may "Abba, Father" cry. GERHARD TERSTEEGEN THE grace which keeps me from falling one inch further, irrecoverably, and is not worn out by my provocations in this wilderness, is simply more visibly alive and active in my most certain experiences, more prompt, more steady, than I have any experience of among material things and persons. Everything material. is simply feeble; and everything personal is shadowy, as compared with this personality under whose shadow I am allowed to dwell. And all this is the more extraordinary because of the hurry, hotness, dryness, aridity of the life I am obliged to live in London, if correspondence, interviews, letters, are to be kept down and dealt with at all. The want of time to read and think, the shortness and distractions of prayer, seem to threaten one's very existence as a conscious child of God. And yet He is on my right hand and I know it. EDWARD WHITE BENSON
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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.