Stuart K. Hine. In 1885, at age 26, Swed­ish preach­er Carl G. Bo­berg wrote the words only of a po­em en­ti­tled O Store Gud. Sev­er­al years lat­er, Bo­berg at­tend­ed a meet­ing and was sur­prised to hear his po­em be­ing sung to the tune of an old Swed­ish mel­o­dy.

In the early 1920s, Eng­lish mis­sion­ar­ies, Stuart K. Hine and his wife, min­is­tered in Po­land. It was there they learned the Russ­ian ver­sion of Boberg’s po­em, O Store Gud, cou­pled with the orig­in­al Swed­ish mel­o­dy. Lat­er, Hine wrote orig­in­al Eng­lish words and made his own ar­range­ment of the Swed­ish mel­o­dy, which be­came pop­u­lar and is now known as the hymn, How Great Thou Art.

The first three vers­es were in­spired, line upon line, amidst un­for­get­ta­ble ex­per­i­ence­s in the Car­pa­thian Mount­ains. In a vill­age to which he had climbed, Mr. Hine stood in the street sing­ing a Gos­pel Hymn and read­ing aloud, John, Chap­ter Three. Among the sym­pa­the­tic list­en­ers was a lo­cal vill­age school­mas­ter. A storm was ga­ther­ing, and when it was ev­i­dent that no fur­ther tra­vel could be made that night, the friend­ly school­mas­ter of­fered his hos­pi­tal­i­ty. Awe-in­spir­ing was the mighty thun­der echo­ing through the mount­ains, and it was this im­pres­sion that was to bring about the birth of the first verse.

Pushing on, Hine crossed the mount­ain fron­tier into Ro­ma­nia and in­to Bu­ko­vina. To­ge­ther with some young peo­ple, through the woods and for­est glades he wan­dered, and heard the birds sing sweet­ly in the trees. Thus, the se­cond verse came in­to be­ing. Verse three was in­spired by the con­ver­sion of many Car­pa­thi­an mount­ain-dwell­ers. The fourth verse did not come about un­til Hine’s re­turn to Bri­tain.

How Great Thou Art, Swed­ish folk melody mel­o­dy, adapt­ed by Stuart K. Hine (MIDI, NWC, PDF).

HOW GREAT THOU ART © 1949 & 1953, and this arrangement © 2010 by the Stuart Hine Trust.
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