Charles Luther was born on this day in 1847. Luther was a Baptist even before his conversion. That is the church in which he was raised. But just because someone is a professing Christian that doesn’t make him one. Charles was later born again just prior to, or during, his studies at Brown University. Even though Brown was a Baptist school, Charles attended intending to become a journalist. But he had a beautiful singing voice and a talent for music. The Lord wouldn’t let him remain in the civil newspaper industry, and eventually he began singing of the good news in Christ with a Baptist evangelist named Pratt. But the Lord was still not through with Charles, and he too became a powerful preacher and evangelist.
In 1891 Luther was pastor of the Baptist church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when A. G. Upham was invited to hold special meetings. In the course of a message Upham referred to a young man who was dying from an accident. The boy told Upham that he wasn’t afraid to die because his soul was safely in the hands of his Saviour, but he was disappointed with himself that he had to go to heaven empty-handed – without taking any others that he had led to Christ. The illustration moved the heart of Pastor Luther, and he sat down penning the hymn, “Must I go, and empty-handed, thus my dear Redeemer meet…” Luther eventually published a hymnal with about twenty-five sacred songs, but “Must I go,” became his best known. I am told there were originally five verses but I could only find four. The last of them reads: “O, ye saints, arouse, be earnest, Up and work while yet ‘tis day; Ere the night of
death o’ertake thee, Strive for souls while still you may.”
Source: “This Day in Baptist History,” Thompson and Cummins