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[Above: Pacific Garden Mission, courtesy of Jamie Janosz]

GOD'S MOST EFFECTIVE WITNESSES often are those he rescues from the deepest pits of sin. Jerry McCaulay, founder of America’s first rescue mission, was an ex-con. Several of the men who became leaders of Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission had seamy pasts, too. For instance, Harry Monroe and Mel Trotter had been hopeless alcoholics. 

On this day, 3 September 1918, Walter Grand Taylor arrived in Chicago to become superintendent of the Pacific Garden Mission. He, too, had a past with a dark underside.  

Growing up in Pittsburgh, he ran with a gang. Although a model student in school, outside he was a thief. Unsuspecting faculty gave him a certification to teach. He even served as an assistant principal. However, he dreamed of wealth and followed a succession of trades that brought him increasing material success until he became co-owner of a pharmaceutical business.  

That is when his young wife died. A Christian, she had often pleaded with him to follow Christ. In February 1896, he realized she was in heaven whereas he was bound for hell. Alone in his room, he knelt and prayed. Soon afterward he became a Christian worker and sold his share in the pharmaceutical company. He met Ethelwyn Robinson when she volunteered to accompany him at the piano as he sang a gospel song, and they married in 1898.  

After Taylor graduated from Moody Bible Institute, the pair worked among miners and railroad men in Colorado. Taylor was actually running from God when he accepted that position; he knew God was calling him to work among derelicts but did not want to obey. Clean and well-dressed, he had once contracted lice by putting his arm around a man who was down and out. He shuddered at the remembrance. 

Still, when God called the couple to take over a city mission in Montreal, Canada, they accepted. Although the city was reputed to be cold to the gospel, God used the Taylors to bring hundreds of people to saving faith—people from the highest echelons of society to the lowest. They were even more successful with a “fresh air” camp, but because they could not raise enough money to keep it going, they resigned in 1916. 

Following two short-lasting positions, the Taylors accepted a call to Pacific Garden Mission. For eighteen years “Ma and Pa Taylor” preached the gospel, gathering souls for Christ’s eternal kingdom and expanding the mission’s work. Out of their experiences came a well-known hymn. 

An alcoholic who attended some of the Pacific Garden’s nightly preaching services uttered a despairing prayer: “You don’t know how bad I am, Lord. Really, I’m the worst man in the world. You can’t save me; I’m too bad.” Ethel remembered the words of a recent evangelist who had said, “Calvary covers it all.” She repeated them to the despairing man. He understood and believed, exclaiming, “Calvary does cover it all! My whole past of sin and shame.” 

That was the genesis of her hymn “Calvary Covers it All” with its refrain: 

Calvary covers it all,

My past with its sin and stain;

My guilt and despair

Jesus took on Him there,

And Calvary covers it all. 

Today Pacific Garden Mission operates Chicago’s largest homeless shelter. It continues to preach the gospel in person and through radio programs such as Unshackled!

—Dan Graves

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For a contemporary documentary about work among those who are down and out watch God is at Work S01E07 - Homeless from the series God Is at Work at RedeemTV.