I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
Matthew 28:20
Words: Maltbie D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), pages 173–74.
Music: Advent (Goss) John Goss, 1872 (🔊 pdf nwc).
Alternate Tunes:
No Distant Lord Have I was written as a very personal and intimate expression of Dr. Babcock’s devotion to Jesus Christ, his unfailing Friend and Saviour. That the poem, or parts of it, would ever be used as a hymn probably never entered his mind. However, three stanzas of the poem were first set to music in 1927 and incorporated in “The Church School Hymnal for Youth” in 1928, in the section dealing with the spiritual presence of Christ.
Laufer, p. 56
No distant Lord have I,
Loving afar to be;
Made flesh for me, He cannot rest
Until He rests in me.
Brother in joy and pain,
Bone of my bone was He;
Now—intimacy closer still,
He dwells Himself in me.
I need not journey far
This dearest Friend to see;
Companionship is always mine;
He makes His home with me.
I envy not the twelve,
Nearer to me is He;
The life He once lived here on earth
He lives again in me.
Ascended now to God,
My witness there to be,
His witness here am I, because
His Spirit dwells in me.
O glorious Son of God,
Incarnate Deity,
I shall forever be with Thee
Because Thou art with me.