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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 struggles and triumphs in the Christian journey, emphasizing that although believers may feel perplexed and cast down at times, they are not in despair or destroyed. Even when feeling faint, they should continue pursuing their faith. God promises to blot out transgressions and not remember sins, offering grace to perfect their efforts. While some may face intense battles with sin and hardship, those who persevere and fall while fighting towards God will find comfort and healing in His everlasting arms.
Continue the Struggle by God's Grace
Perplexed, but not in despair; cast down, but not destroyed. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:8,9 Faint, yet pursuing. JUDGES 8:4 I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. ISAIAH 43:25 I don't think it is possible to overrate the hardness of the first close struggle with any natural passion, but indeed the easiness of after-steps is often quite beyond one's expectations. The free gift of grace with which God perfects our efforts may come in many ways, but I am convinced that it is the common experience of Christians that it does come. There may be some souls, whose brave and bitter lot it is to conquer comfortless. Perhaps some terrible inheritance of strong sin from the father is visited upon the son, and, only able to keep his purpose pure, he falls as fast as he struggles up, and still struggling falls again. Soft moments of peace with God and man may never come to him. He may feel himself viler than a thousand trumpery souls who could not have borne his trials for a day. For you and me is reserved no such cross and no such crown as theirs who falling still fight, and fighting fall, with their faces Zionwards, into the arms of the everlasting Father. "As one whom his mother comforteth" shall be the healing of their wounds. JULIANA HORATIA EWING
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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.