Scripture Verse

Introduction

Origin of the Song

One day in a child­ren’s meet­ing in Uti­ca, New York, the Rev. E. P. Ham­mond writes me, “while I was ex­plain­ing how Je­sus loved us and gave him­self for us, I no­ticed a bright look­ing girl burst­ing in­to tears. She re­mained at the in­qui­ry meet­ing, and with oth­ers was soon hap­py in the love of Christ.

The next day she handed me a let­ter of which this is a part: ‘I think I have found the dear Je­sus, and I do not see how I could have re­ject­ed him so long. I think I can sing with the rest of those who have found him, Je­sus is mine. The first time I came to the meet­ings I cried, but now I feel like sing­ing all the time.’ This prompt­ed me to write the hymn, but I had no thought of its ev­er be­ing sung…

Mr. Spur­geon was ve­ry fond of this hymn. At the first meet­ing in his building one of his dea­cons said to me, ‘This Ta­ber­nacle will seat six thou­sand grown peo­ple, but there are eight thou­sand crowd­ed in­to it today.’

Three thou­sand could not get in on ac­count of the crowd. Ev­ery child had one of our hymn books, and all unit­ed in sing­ing this hymn which they loved so much. It has been sung in our meet­ings in near­ly ev­ery state in the Un­ion, and trans­lat­ed in­to ma­ny lang­uag­es. We sang it in our da­ily meet­ings in Je­ru­sa­lem, near where Christ was cru­ci­fied, and away in Alas­ka, two thou­sand miles north of San Fran­cis­co. Thou­sands of child­ren sang it in Nor­way and Swe­den, day af­ter day.

Sankey, pp. 241–43