Scripture Verse

Introduction

Origin of the Hymn

The au­thor of the words of this beau­ti­ful hymn was a high-caste na­tive of In­dia. Af­ter her con­ver­sion to Chris­ti­an­ity, it is said, she spent some years in the home of an Eng­lish cler­gy­man, and wrote the po­em…there. It made its ap­pear­ance in a book of po­ems of which she was the au­thor…

The hymn was first sung by [George Steb­bins] as an of­fer­to­ry in one of the church­es in Brook­lyn, New York. It was oft­en re­peat­ed as an of­fer­to­ry, and on oc­ca­sions was sung in ev­an­gel­is­tic ser­vices.

But it had its larg­er in­tro­duc­tion to the pub­lic dur­ing the All-Win­ter Mis­sion con­duct­ed by Mr. Moo­dy and my­self in Lon­don in the win­ter of 1883–84, when I sang it fre­quent­ly, as did Mr. Steb­bins, who spent sev­er­al months as­sist­ing in the mis­sion.

It was al­so oft­en sung by Miss Beau­cham, daugh­ter of the late La­dy Beau­cham and since the wife of Co­lo­nel Dru­ry-Lowe, one of the he­roes of the In­di­an Mu­ti­ny, and un­cle of Lord Cur­zon, Vi­cer­oy and Gov­er­nor-Ge­ne­ral of In­dia.

The hymn at once came into ge­ne­ral fa­vor, and the deep­ly spir­it­ual tone of the words brought bless­ing to ma­ny. The song was af­ter­wards pub­lished in Gos­pel Hymns, and in Sac­red Songs and So­los.

Very soon it found its way in­to all parts of the world. Dr. Hud­son Tay­lor, head of the great Chi­na In­land Mis­sion, stat­ed at North­field [Mas­sa­chu­setts] that it was the fav­or­ite hymn of his mis­sion­ar­ies.

The win­ter of 1890–91 Mr. and Mrs. Steb­bins spent in In­dia. While vis­it­ing the ci­ty of Al­lah­abad, the home of Miss Gor­eh, Mr. Steb­bins sought her out and made her ac­quaint­ance.

He found her en­gaged in mis­sion work among the wo­men of Ind­ia, a mo­dest, de­vo­ted Chris­tian, held in high es­teem by mis­sion­ar­ies of all de­no­mi­na­tions and by all who knew her.

Thus the two sing­ers whose names had be­come as­so­ci­at­ed in Chris­tian song met each oth­er—one from the far East, and one from be­yond far West­ern seas—both in­spired by the same Lord, in the sec­ret of whose pre­sence they long since came to abide.

Sankey, pp. 166–67