Scripture Verse

Introduction

Origin of the Song

I wrote the first part to­ward the end of Ja­nu­ary 1866. I was un­well at the time, just re­cov­er­ing from a se­vere ill­ness, and the first stan­za real­ly in­di­cates my state of health, for I was lit­er­al­ly “weak and wea­ry.”

When I had writ­ten the first part, which con­sist­ed of eight stan­zas of four lines each, I laid it aside, and it was not un­til the fol­low­ing No­vem­ber that I com­pleted the whole hymn.

Blanchard, p. 89

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This ex­cel­lent hymn by Miss Han­key, of Lon­don, has been tran­slat­ed in­to ma­ny lang­uag­es, and has been set to sev­er­al tunes. Dr. Doane has this to say re­gard­ing the mu­sic by which it has become po­pu­lar, and the oc­ca­sion on which he com­posed it:

“In 1867 I was at­tend­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion of the Young Men’s Chris­tian As­so­cia­tion in Mon­tre­al. Among those pre­sent was Major-Gen­er­al Rus­sell, then in com­mand of the Eng­lish force dur­ing the Fen­i­an ex­cite­ment. He arose in the meet­ing and re­cit­ed the words of this song from a sheet of fool­scap paper—tears stream­ing down his bronz­ed cheeks as he read.

I wrote the mu­sic for the song one hot af­ter­noon while on the stage coach be­tween the Glen Falls House and the Craw­ford House in the White Moun­tains. That ev­en­ing we sang it in the par­lors of the ho­tel. We thought it pret­ty, al­though we scarce­ly an­ti­ci­pat­ed the po­pu­lar­i­ty which was sub­se­quen­tly ac­cord­ed it.

Sankey, pp. 256–57