- Home
- Speakers
- Mary Wilder Tileston
- Source Of Peace
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.
Download
Topic
Sermon Summary
Mary Wilder Tileston preaches on the importance of fearing the Lord and walking in His ways, emphasizing that true happiness and well-being come from aligning our will with God's will. She highlights that the key to a divine life and perfect happiness lies in obedience to God's will, rather than in worldly knowledge or speculation. Tileston stresses that the ultimate source of misery is self-will, and the path to blessedness is found in surrendering our wills to God, which brings rest and peace.
Source of Peace
Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord; that walketh in His ways . . . Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. PSALMS 128:1,2 WE think it a gallant thing, to be fluttering up to heaven with our wings of knowledge and speculation; whereas the highest mystery of a divine life here, and of perfect happiness hereafter, consists in nothing but mere obedience to the Divine will. Happiness is nothing but that inward sweet delight, which will arise from the harmonious agreement between our wills and the will of God. There is nothing in the whole world able to do us good or hurt, but God, and our own will: neither riches nor poverty, nor disgrace nor honor, nor life nor death, nor angels nor devils; but willing, or not willing, as we ought. RALPH CUDWORTH The one misery of man is self-will, the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. What disturbs us in this world is not "trouble," but our opposition to trouble. The true source of all that frets and irritates, and wears away our lives, is not in external things, but in the resistance of our wills to the will of God expressed by external things. ALEXANDER MACLAREN
- Bio
- Summary
- Transcript
- Download
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.