The last time that Hen­ry Ward Beech­er was in his pul­pit—6th March, 1887—he re­mained for some time at the close of the ev­en­ing ser­vice list­en­ing to the choir prac­tis­ing, and was ev­i­dent­ly moved by their ren­der­ing of this hymn. While sit­ting and list­en­ing he no­ticed two street ar­abs com­ing in­to the church to en­joy the mu­sic al­so. He came down, and speak­ing to them ten­der­ly he drew them to his heart and kissed them. Whe­ther this touch of hu­man­i­ty was due to the hymn or simp­ly the re­sponse of his deep­ly emo­tion­al na­ture in see­ing two un­for­tu­nates be­fore him, with all their un­de­vel­oped pos­si­bil­i­ties, we can­not say, but of this we are sure, that the last grand ut­ter­ance that he heard in his church was this hymn: I Heard the Voice, etc., for, a few hours af­ter­wards the sha­dows of the long night fell up­on his ether­e­al spir­it; the sil­ver cord that bound him with the out­er world was loosed, and though the soul still lin­gered over the mor­tal frame which she had filled with abun­dant life for sev­en­ty-four years, as if loath to de­part, the eyes, the sens­es were all but sealed, and the lips on which list­en­ing thou­sands had hung for half a cen­tu­ry were si­lent. It was fit­ting that he who took such an ac­tive part in the eman­ci­pa­tion of the slave should close his life un­der the in­spir­a­tion of this ten­der hymn, and take those two street ar­abs to his heart as rep­re­sent­ing the hu­man­i­ty he loved so well!

Morrison, pp. 221-2