For comments on the author, Jane Eliza Leeson, see [Hymn 298].
MUSIC. INNOCENTS. For comments on this tune, see [Hymn 64].
430. I am Jesus’ little lamb
Henriette Luise von Hayn, 1724-82
A song of the Good Shepherd’s care of His lambs, based on Isa. 40:11: “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom.”
Henriette Luise von Hayn, born in Idstein, Nassau, early in life gave her heart to Christ and often rose at night to spend hours on her knees in prayer. Influenced by the writings of Zinzendorf, she became interested in joining the “Brotherhood,” against the wishes of her parents. One morning, after reading Matthew 10:37, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” she decided to leave home and did so, mailing a letter in the neighboring village to her parents explaining her intention to go to Herrnhag to join the Moravian colony at that place. However, she was detained at Frankfurt and returned to her home. Her parents now granted her wish to join the Moravians and the rest of her life was spent as a useful and influential member of the Brotherhood, first at Herrnhag and later at Herrnhut, where she received spiritual instruction from Zinzendorf himself. On August 8, 1776, she wrote “Weil ich Jesu Schäflein bin,” a poem of seven stanzas, in honor of Sister Christine Petersen’s thirty-sixth birthday. Our hymn is a selection of three stanzas from this poem.
The German version of the poem is as follows:
Weil ich Jesu Schäflein bin
Freu ich mich nur immerhin
Ueber meinen guten Hirten