Scripture Verse

Introduction

Origin of the Hymn

One morn­ing it came in­to my mind as I went to la­bour, to write an hymn on the ‘Gra­cious Ex­pe­ri­ence of a Chris­tian.’ As I went up Hol­born I had the chorus,

On Christ the sol­id Rock I stand,
All other ground is sink­ing sand.

In the day I had four first vers­es com­plete, and wrote them off. On the Sab­bath fol­low­ing I met bro­ther King as I came out of Lisle Street Meet­ing…who in­formed me that his wife was ve­ry ill, and asked me to call and see her. I had an ear­ly tea, and called af­ter­wards.

He said that it was his usu­al custom to sing a hymn, read a por­tion, and en­gage in pray­er, be­fore he went to meet­ing. He looked for his hymn-book but could find it no­where. I said, ‘I have some vers­es in my pock­et; if he liked, we would sing them.’

We did, and his wife en­joyed them so much, that af­ter ser­vice he asked me, as a fa­vour, to leave a copy of them for his wife. I went home, and by the fire­side com­posed the last two verses, wrote the whole off, and took them to sis­ter King…

As these verses so met the dy­ing wo­man’s case, my at­ten­tion to them was the more ar­rest­ed, and I had a thou­sand print­ed for dis­tr­ibu­tion.

I sent one to the Spi­ri­tu­al Ma­ga­zine, with­out my initials, which ap­peared some time af­ter this. Brother Rees, of Crown Street, So­ho, brought out an edi­tion of hymns [1836], and this hymn was in it. Da­vid Den­ham in­tro­duced it [1837] with Rees’ name, and oth­ers after…

Your in­sert­ing this brief out­line may in fu­ture shield me from the charge of stealth, and be a vin­di­ca­tion of truth­ful­ness in my con­nec­tion with the Church of God.

Edward Mote
Letter to the Gos­pel Her­ald