X As I left my hometown of Cazenovia, New York, bound for the 1876 camp meeting held at the Thousand Island Park in upper New York State, my heart was hungering for the spiritual food I knew would be awaiting me there. it was an occasion I looked forward to each year, for God seemed to speak to people's hearts and especially to mine in an unusual way at that hallowed spot.

X I will never forget the opening Sunday morning service. Beginnng with the doxology and through each hymn and Scripture, it all served to remind me of the greatness of a God Who had made the earth, the skies, and the great universe, yet loved and cared for us, His children. The speaker that morning chose as his topic our relationship to God through His Son, Jesus Christ. How man, as a sinner, was alienated and far from God; but how he became an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ through faith in His finished work on the cross. In the course of the message, the speaker could control himself no longer and shouted, "Christian friends, we are the children of a King! Our Hearvenly Father's a King! Poor ones, take heart, you'll have a palace someday built for you by Jesus Himself!" I don't have to tell you that I felt as if I were walking on air as I left that service and as I walked toward my cottage. The complete set of words had come to me, and I entitled them, "The Child Of A King."

X The simple, but forceful, musical setting of this song has had much to do with the song's acceptance and its continued use. So I feel a word about John Sumner, who wrote this very fitting musical setting, is in order. Rev. John Sumner was a young pastor in the town of Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. Before becoming a preacher, Sumner had been a singing schoolteacher. He and his wife, Alma, with their melodeon in the back of their wagon, drove up and down the Susquehanna Valley teaching old and young alike to sing from a three-foot-high book that he had designed. This made it possible for those in the back of the room to see the notes clearly. It was while thus engaged that he met P. P. Bliss. in December of 1876, the shocking news came to him of the terrible train disaster at Ashtabula, Ohio. The great writer of Gospel songs, P. P. Bliss, had been killed. Young Sumner was heartbroken, for Bliss had been a real friend to the young preacher. While on his knees in prayer for the loved ones who had been left, a longing came over him. He prayed that in some way he might carry on for his friend. This desire stayed with him. The following Februrary, as he was looking through the Northern Christian Advocate magazine, he read Miss Buell's poem. Immediately he knew he must put it to music. This he did, and in a matter of months people the length and breadth of the land were singing, "I'm a child of the King." John Sumner did not go on to become a prolific composer like Bliss, but God did answer his prayer; for "A Child Of The King" has found its way alongside the songs of P.P. Bliss as a song that must be included in a Gospel hymnbook.