There is a gate that stands ajar

There is a gate that stands ajar. Lydia Odell Baxter’* (1809-1874). According to JJ, p. 118, this hymn was written ‘for S.J. Vail [the composer of the tune] about 1872’, and published in New Hallowed Songs (n.d., but a successor to Philip Phillips*’s Hallowed Songs, 1865) and in the Gospel Songs (1874) of Philip P. Bliss*. JJ went on to write that ‘it has attained to some popularity’, which was probably true of Britain, where it was in the Mirfield Mission Hymn Book* (1907), but something of an understatement with regard to the USA. It had four stanzas and a refrain: There is a gate that stands ajar,  And thro’ its portals gleaming A radiance from the cross afar,  The Saviour’s love...