The composer, Friedrich Filitz, 1804-76, was a musician and editor of German chorale books. He spent all his life in Munich except the years 1843-47 in Berlin.
175. O Love that wilt not let me go
George Matheson, 1842-1906
A song of joyful resignation, love, and trust, born out of the author’s experience of suffering. The story has been circulated that the hymn was written after the woman whom Matheson loved gave him up because of his becoming blind—a good story with one defect, viz., that it isn’t true. It could not be true because Matheson became blind at 15 and the hymn was not written until he was 40 years old.
The author’s own account of the composition of the hymn is as follows:
My hymn was composed in the manse of Innellan, on the evening of June 6, 1882. I was at that time alone. It was the day of my sister’s marriage, and the rest of the family were staying over night in Glasgow. Something had happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression rather of having it dictated to me by some inward voice than of working it out myself. I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. The Hymnal Committee of the Church of Scotland desired the change of one word. I had written originally “I climb the rainbow in the rain.” They objected to the word “climb” and I put in “trace.”
George W. Matheson, son of a wealthy merchant in Glasgow, was an able and greatly honored minister in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He was educated at Glasgow University and licensed to preach when 24 years old. During his University course, and all the rest of his life, he had to depend on the eyesight of others, which makes his accomplishments all the more remarkable. He was a brilliant student and became a distinguished preacher and pastor. At St. Bernard’s Church, Edinburgh, he served a membership of over 2,000, never neglecting his duties of pastoral calling in which he was invariably accompanied by his devoted sister. He was a scholar of distinction and was the author of 25 books, including such well-known works as Representative Men of the Bible, Representative Women of the Bible, The Spiritual Development of St. Paul, and a book of Sacred Songs. Of the many hymns he wrote, several have been used in hymn books but only this one has gained universal popularity.
MUSIC. ST. MARGARET was written one summer day as the composer was sitting by the sea on the island of Arran and reading over Matheson’s verses. The tune came to him suddenly and he hastened to the house where he was staying where (in his own words): “I wrote the music straight off, and I may say that the ink of the first note was hardly dry when I finished the tune.”
The composer, Albert Lister Peace, 1844-1912, was organist at Glasgow Cathedral and at the time he wrote this tune, he was music editor of the revised Scottish Hymnal of 1885.