Scripture Verse

Introduction

Anecdotes

These lines ex­press the ex­per­i­ences, the hopes and the long­ings of a young Chris­tian late­ly re­leased. Wri­tten on the ve­ry edge of life, with the bet­ter land ful­ly in view of faith, they seem to us foot­steps print­ed on the sands of Time, where these sands touch the ocean of Eter­ni­ty. These foot­prints of one whom the Good Shep­herd led through the wil­der­ness in­to rest, may, with God’s bless­ing, con­trib­ute to com­fort and di­rect suc­ceed­ing pilg­rims.

William Ar­not, ed­it­or, Fa­mi­ly Trea­su­ry

The first time this hymn was sung is still fresh in my mem­o­ry. The morn­ing af­ter I had com­posed the music the Rev. W. H. Ait­kin was to speak at our mis­sion in the great Bow Road Hall, in Lon­don, Mr. Moody hav­ing made an ar­range­ment to speak at Her Ma­jes­ty’s The­a­ter.

It was a love­ly morn­ing, and a great ga­ther­ing had as­semb­led at the meet­ing, which was held at eight o’clock. Before the ser­mon I sang Be­neath the Cross of Je­sus as a so­lo; and as in the case of The Nine­ty and Nine much bless­ing came from its use for the first time.

With eyes filled with tears, and deep­ly moved, the preach­er said to the au­di­ence: Dear friends, I had in­tend­ed to speak to you this morn­ing up­on work for the Mas­ter, but this new hymn has made such an im­pres­sion on my heart, and ev­id­ent­ly up­on your own, that I will de­fer my pro­posed ad­dress and speak to you on The Cross of Je­sus.

The ser­mon was one of the most pow­er­ful I have ev­er heard, and ma­ny souls that morn­ing ac­cept­ed the mes­sage of grace and love. Some years lat­er Mr. Aitk­in held many suc­cess­ful meet­ings in New York and oth­er ci­ties in this coun­try, and he of­ten used this hymn as a so­lo.

An odd in­ci­dent oc­curred in con­nec­tion with Mr. Ait­kin’s use of this hymn in St. Paul’s Church, at Broad­way and Wall Street, the mon­ey cen­ter of Am­er­i­ca.

A gen­tle­man, hav­ing heard this piece sung fre­quent­ly by great con­gre­ga­tions of bus­i­ness men and Wall Street brok­ers in St. Paul’s Church, called up­on the pub­lish­ers of the small book of words which had been dis­trib­ut­ed in the church, and said that he wished to se­cure that beau­ti­ful Eng­lish tune which Mr. Ait­kin used so much in his meet­ings.

When he was told that he could find it in any copy of Gos­pel Hymns he be­came quite in­dig­nant, and in­sist­ed that it was a fine clas­sic which the great preach­er had brought with him from Eng­land—noth­ing like the Moody and San­key trash!

Having se­cured a co­py of Mr. Ait­kin’s hymn book con­tain­ing the fine Eng­lish tune to the beau­ti­ful words of Be­neath the Cross of Je­sus, he went away hap­py, but on­ly to find that it was wri­tten by the au­thor of the mu­sic to The Nine­ty and Nine.

Sankey, pp. 260–62