Our church was un­der­go­ing re­pairs, and the ca­bi­net or­gan was placed in my care. Thus af­ford­ed a plea­sure not be­fore en­joyed, I de­light­ed my­self in play­ing ov­er some of our Sun­day school hymns.

I de­ter­mined to give tan­gi­ble shape to a theme that had been run­ning in my mind for some time, to write, if pos­si­ble, an an­swer to Brad­bu­ry’s beau­ti­ful piece, Je­sus Paid It All. I made it a mat­ter of pray­er and stu­dy and gave to the pub­lic the mu­sic now known as All to Christ I Owe.

It was pro­nounced ve­ry poor by my choir and friends, but my dear wife per­sis­tent­ly de­clared that it was a good piece of mu­sic and would live. Time has proved the cor­rect­ness of her judg­ment.

Soon af­ter, the Rev. George W. Schreck called on me to se­lect an­y­thing new that I had to of­fer. On hear­ing this piece he ex­pressed his plea­sure with it and stat­ed that Mrs. El­vi­na M. Hall had writ­ten some words that would just suit the mu­sic. I gave him a co­py of it and it was soon sung in several church­es here in Bal­ti­more [Mar­y­land] and well re­ceived. At the sugg­es­tion of friends I sent a co­py to Pro­fess­or The­o­dore Per­kins and it was pub­lished in Sab­bath Ca­rols. Un­der the pro­vi­dence of God it has been go­ing ev­er since. I trust that it has not failed to ac­comp­lish some good to my fel­low-men for the glo­ry of God.

John Grape

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On New Year’s night, 1886, some mis­sion­ar­ies were hold­ing op­en-air ser­vic­es in or­der to at­tract pass­ers-by to a near-by mis­sion, where meet­ings were to be held lat­er. All to Christ I owe was sung, and af­ter a gen­tle­man had giv­en a short ad­dress he hast­ened away to the mis­sion. He soon heard foot­steps close be­hind him, and a young wo­man caught up with him and said:

I heard you ad­dress­ing the open-air meet­ing just now; do you think, sir, that Je­sus could save a sin­ner like me?

The gen­tle­man re­plied that there was no doubt about that, if she was anx­ious to be saved. She told him that she was a ser­vant girl, and had left her place that morn­ing after a dis­a­gree­ment with her mis­tress.

As she had been wand­er­ing about the streets in the dark, won­der­ing where she was to spend the night, the sweet mel­o­dies of this hymn had at­tract­ed her, and she drew near and lis­tened at­tent­ive­ly. As the dif­fer­ent verses were be­ing sung, she felt that the words sure­ly had some­thing to do with her.

Through the whole ser­vice she seemed to hear what met her op­pressed soul’s need at that mo­ment. God’s Spi­rit had showed her what a poor, sin­ful and wretch­ed creature she was, and had led her to ask what she must do. On hear­ing her ex­per­i­ence, the gen­tle­man took her back to the mis­sion and left her with the la­dies in charge.

The young, way­ward wo­man was brought to Christ that night. A si­tu­a­tion was se­cured for her in a min­is­ter’s fa­mi­ly. There she be­came ill and had to be ta­ken to a hos­pi­tal. She ra­pid­ly failed and it became ev­i­dent that she would not be long on earth.

One day the gen­tle­man whom she had met on New Year’s night was vis­it­ing her in the ward. After quot­ing a few suit­a­ble vers­es of Scrip­ture, he re­peat­ed her fav­o­rite hymn, All to Christ I owe…and she seemed over­whelmed with the thought of com­ing to glo­ry…Two hours af­ter­ward she passed away.

Sankey, pp. 110–11