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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 transformative power of love in our lives, emphasizing that love is the essence of life and lovelessness leads to spiritual death. She highlights that as God's grace works in our hearts, it manifests through love, selflessness, and living for others, serving as evidence of our transition from spiritual death to life. Tileston encourages believers to embrace love, which brings light, peace, and joy even in the midst of challenges, ultimately leading us to experience the heavenly life of God's love.
Love of Life
We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. 1 JOHN 3:14 FOR who has aught to love and loves aright, Will never in the darkest strait despair, For out of love exhales a living light, The light of love, that spends itself in prayer. HARTLEY COLERIDGE LOVE is life, and lovelessness is death. As the grace of God changes a man's heart and cleanses and sanc-tifies him, this is the great evidence of the change, this is the great difference which it makes; that he begins to grow in love, to lay aside self-seeking, and to live for others--and so he may know that he has passed from death unto life. He may know it even here and now--yes, that great discovery of love, that learning to live for others and finding the grace and gentleness that God is keeping up all over the world--even now it is the way from death to life. Even now it changes homes, it lightens every burden, it brings peace and gladness into the hardest days; it alters even the tone of a man's voice and the very look of his face. But all this, blessed and surpassing as it is, far above all else in the world, still is but the beginning. For that life into which we pass, as God's dear grace of love comes in us and about us, is the very life of heaven. FRANCIS PAGET
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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.