Testimony: 'Now I've given Jesus everything'

As president of Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute in the early 1900s, R.A. Torrey received a letter from a pastor in Savannah, Ohio, regarding his troublemaker son, William R. Newell (born in 1868). He asked Torrey if his son could be enrolled into Moody's school.

As Torrey himself wrote about the situation: "When I was president of the Moody Bible Institute, I received a letter from a very concerned pastor who told me of a son who was causing himself and his family a great deal of trouble.

"His life was really mixed up. And the father felt that attendance at Moody would help. I advised the father that even though I sympathized with him, for I was a father; yet, because I was running a Bible school and not a reform school, I had to deny his request.

"After many letters of pleading his cause, I finally gave in with the stipulation that the rebellious teen must see me each day and make every effort to abide by the rules and requirements of the Institute." 

Torrey later said of Newell, “I never saw a young man with more problems.” But as the months went by, with Newell desperately trying to be a good student and obeying the rules, improvements were evident.

Then one afternoon, Newell burst into Torrey’s office to given him the news that he had become a Christian. Newell went on to graduate from MBI, became a minister and then returned to the school as a teaching member of the faculty.

One day in 1895, Newell, as he was sitting at his classroom desk during a planning period, began to pen a "word picture" in the form of a poem describing his testimony. He used the back of an old envelope to write down the words. He later recalled, “As I read what I had written, I realized that it was a word picture of what had happened in my life.”

Upon finishing the poem, Newell took it to Moody's music director, Daniel Towner.  “Towner went to a vacant piano room, sat down, and started writing a tune for his friend’s lyrics. An hour later, the music was finished, and the two friends were sitting down by a piano, singing the new creation together.”

The poem that became the all-time classic hymn "At Calvary" has the lyrics:

Years I spent in vanity and pride
Caring not my Lord was crucified
Knowing not it was for me He died
At Calvary

By God's Word at last my sin I learned
Then I trembled at the law I'd spurned
Till my guilty soul imploring turned
To Calvary

There Your mercy and Your grace was free
There Your pardon multiplied to me
There my burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary

Now I've given Jesus everything
Now I gladly own Him as my King
Now my raptured soul can only sing
Of Calvary

There Your mercy and Your grace was free
There Your pardon multiplied to me
There my burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary

Oh the love that drew salvation's plan
Oh the grace that brought it down to man
Oh the mighty gulf that God did span
At Calvary

There Your mercy and Your grace was free
There Your pardon multiplied to me
There my burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary

There Your mercy and Your grace was free
There Your pardon multiplied to me
There my burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary

There my burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary

(new article tomorrow)