Introduction
Hubbard descended from an old New York family that included Oliver Wendell Holmes and Wendell Phillips, who were closely related to her father. Alluding to her literary relatives, she wrote, Surely I should not feel elated over my little gift of poesy, when it is such a tiny rivulet, issuing from the great mountain stream of my forbears.
Her mother died when she was nine years old, and she went to school in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
At age 18, she entered a Philadelphia publishing office as a proofreader, and her first articles were printed under a pseudonym.
One of her prose articles, Human Life, published in The Lutheran, attracted much attention, which gave her, while hiding behind her nom de plume, much pleasure.
Her first hymn writing was done for an Elgin, Illinois publisher, and for other compilers, around 1895. The greatest happiness I ever experienced was when I was able for active Christian work—now, as my treacherous heart makes me have to be so careful, I never wrote a thing that touched other hearts, unless my own was touched by the Holy Spirit.
Copyright records show her in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, in 1914.
I heard a voice, a holy voice,
And thus it spoke to me,
I will thy right hand firmly hold,
For I’ve redeemèd thee;
Fear not My child, I know thy name,
’Tis written up above;
I surely will remember thee
With everlasting love.
I heard a voice, a loving voice,
And thus it spoke to me,
Go find the weary ones of earth,
A message give for Me;
Tell them, I bid the weary rest,
The wandering ones to come;
The shelter of their Savior’s breast
Is peace, and love, and home.
I heard a voice, my Savior’s voice,
Go work today for Me,
I spent a weary, toilsome life,
And suffered death for thee;
And canst thou sit, and take thine ease,
When souls each day are lost?
Oh show the love thou hast for Me!
Go, work at any cost.
Marian Wendell Hubbard
The Inner Voice, 1904
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