“I HEAR THE SAVIOUR SAY.”
This is classed with the Gospel Hymns, but it was a much-used and much-loved revival hymn—especially in the Methodist churches—several years before Mr. Moody's great evangelical movement. It was written by Mrs. Elvina M. Hall (since Mrs. 485 / 427 Myers) who was born in Alexandria, Va., in 1818. She composed it in the spring of 1865, while sitting in the choir of the M.E. Church, Baltimore, and the first draft was pencilled on a fly-leaf of a singing book, The New Lute of Zion.
I hear the Saviour say,
Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in me thine all in all.
The music of the chorus helped to fix its words in the common mind, and some idea of the Atonement acceptable, apparently, to both Arminians and Calvinists; for Sunday-school children in the families of both, hummed the tune or sang the refrain when alone—
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe,
Sin had left a crimson stain;
He washed it white as snow.