recent description calls Bliss's songs "homey" and has it that they sounded "very much like the ballads of the music-hall stage," which is to say that they had a wide appeal.[46] The popularity of "Hold the Fort" sustains these views, for by the time of Bliss's death it was said to have been translated into "nearly all the European languages . . . into Chinese and the native languages of India," and was, in short, "popular beyond any other Sabbath School song of the age."[47]
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After Bliss's death, Whittle continued his evangelism, with James McGranahan replacing his old friend Bliss as the major's gospel singer.[48] Whittle also continued his relationship with Moody, under whose auspices he had begun his evangelistic work. For some years he maintained his home in Northfield, Massachusetts, where Moody founded the Northfield Seminary and the Mount Hermon School for boys and held annual religious conferences. In addition to his preaching, Whittle wrote a number of gospel songs, generally under the pseudonym "El Nathan." His friend George Stebbins thought these songs put him "well in the front rank" of the gospel song writers. One of them, set to music by his daughter May, was "Moment by Moment," which he wrote during the 1893 World's
