On Christ the solid Rock, etc.
Wm. B. Bradbury composed the tune (1863). It is usually named “The Solid Rock.”
“ABIDE WITH ME! FAST FALLS THE EVENTIDE.”
The Rev. Henry Francis Lyte, author of this melodious hymn-prayer, was born at Ednam, near Kelso, Scotland, June first, 1793. A scholar, graduated at Trinity College, Dublin; a poet and a musician, the hard-working curate was a man of frail physique, with a face of almost feminine beauty, and a spirit as pure and gentle as a little child's. The shadow of consumption was over him all his life. His memory is chiefly associated with the district church at Lower Brixham, Devonshire, where he became “perpetual curate” in 1823. He died at Nice, France, Nov. 20, 1847.
On the evening of his last Sunday preaching and communion service he handed to one of his family the manuscript of his hymn, “Abide with me,” and the music he had composed for it. It 260 / 218 was not till eight years later that Henry Ward Beecher introduced it, or a part of it, to American Congregationalists, and fourteen years after the author's death it began to be sung as we now have it, in this country and England.
Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide,
The darkness deepens,—Lord with me abide!
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!
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