Johnson’s au­to­bi­o­graphy al­so re­lates some in­ci­dents con­nect­ed to the song:

In 1881 I was in At­lan­ta put­ting an oil show in the Ex­po­si­tion for the Stand­ard Oil Co. Sun­day morn­ing I en­tered a church near my stop­ping place just as Sun­day School was be­gin­ning and was shown into a bi­ble class. The first piece sung was this one, and I had the van­i­ty to tell the lead­er of the class that the piece was mine. He said, It is mine too, I like that piece. I ven­tured a step far­ther and said I wrote it. He an­swered, Well, it is worth writ­ing; I have thought I would write it off my­self. I gave it up. Ano­ther in­stance was the fol­low­ing: I was for a time con­fined in a hos­pi­tal at What­com, Wash. (Feb 1900) hav­ing had an op­er­a­tion per­formed, and in an ad­join­ing room was a young la­dy who had re­ceived se­vere in­jur­ies from fall­ing from a high bridge by the back­ing of a fright­ened horse, and she had been thrown through the rail­ing. She was a good sing­er, ac­com­pa­ny­ing her songs with her gui­tar, and as she lay up­on her bed, sang ma­ny songs, most­ly gos­pel, which sound­ed out through the halls and rooms ve­ry sweet­ly to the gra­ti­fi­ca­tion of ma­ny lis­ten­ers, who sent back to her words of ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Among other things she of­ten sang “The Rock That Is High­er Than I.” At length, get­ting so that I could walk on crutch­es, I ob­tained the per­mis­sion of the ma­tron and made her a visit, thank­ing her for the en­joy­ment she had af­ford­ed us, and mak­ing known to her the au­thor­ship of the piece men­tioned, to her great sur­prise. Ano­ther test­i­mo­ny of ap­pre­ci­a­tion which gave me much sa­tis­faction was a let­ter I re­ceived from a la­dy, and how she found my ad­dress was a mys­te­ry. She wrote that it was the dy­ing re­quest of her fa­ther that she should find out my where­a­bouts and write, thank­ing me for the com­fort the words had giv­en him. When in St. Lou­is in 1901 on a vi­sit to Will­iam and Na­than, who should come in on me but the re­port­er of one of the pa­pers, say­ing he want­ed to take the pic­ture of the au­thor of “The Rock That Is High­er Than I.” How he was in­formed of the fact that I was there, I didn’t know. It was not through my bro­thers. If I was flat­tered at so much at­tent­ion, the flat­tery was all spoiled when my pic­ture ap­peared.