History of Hymns: 'My Jesus, I Love Thee'

“My Jesus, I Love Thee”
Formerly attributed to William R. Featherstone
The United Methodist Hymnal, 172

My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine;
For thee all the follies of sin I resign.
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou;
If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

Congregations have long appreciated the prayerful quality of this beloved hymn, which has appeared in 1,100 hymnals in the United States, including more than fifty published since 1980. The enduring popularity of “My Jesus, I Love Thee” may be attributed to its simple yet profound lyrics, memorable melody, and ability to evoke a deep sense of devotion and love for Jesus. The historical path of “My Jesus, I Love Thee” winds back and forth between Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. This article summarizes some of the major stops on the way.

Authorship

Hymnologists and hymnal editors have often credited this well-known hymn among evangelicals to Canadian William Ralph Featherston (1849-1873), a member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Montreal. Though many sources indicate that his birth year was 1846 and his family name was “Featherstone,” The Canadian Wesleyan Methodist Baptismal Register suggests that he was born as William Featherston to John and Esther Featherston on July 20, 1849. Featherston’s name does not appear in nineteenth-century hymn collections, and his authorship of “My Jesus, I Love Thee” is based entirely on the witness of Elizabeth Featherston Wilson (1835-1917), William’s aunt, who lived in Los Angeles, California, at the time. Elizabeth received a hand-written copy of the words from William and relayed this information to influential musical evangelist Ira D. Sankey (1840-1908), who mentioned it in My Life and Sacred Songs (London, 1906, pp. 165-166). Sankey’s publication perpetuated several factual inaccuracies. Featherston died at age 23, rather than 28, and did not write the hymn in 1858 “when he was only about sixteen years of age” (Sankey, p. 165). Other sources indicate that he composed the hymn at age twelve, the year the hymn was first published (1862). Rather than a hymn by a child, however, it is a “hymn for any child of faith, no matter their age” (Maurand, n.d.). The notion that William Featherston is the author makes for an interesting story, but it is unfounded.

A second candidate, James Haynes Duffell (1811-1883), was credited as the author by another musical evangelist, Charles M. Alexander (1867-1920) in Victorious Life Hymns (Philadelphia, 1919). “Jas. Duffield, as he was noted in this collection, was an iron smelter who lived primarily in West Bromwich, a market town in the West Midlands, England. A Primitive Methodist, he emigrated to Australia in 1881, where he died. Although his authorship could seem more plausible, no manuscripts exist to verify it (Fenner, 2021).

Recent research by David Maurand indicates that the hymn is likely the composite work of Maryland Methodist preacher Caleb Jarvis Taylor (1763-1817), editor, British Baptist pastor Joseph Foulkes Winks (d. 1866), and British Methodist minister William Antliff (1813-1884), a scholar proficient in ancient languages and founder of two periodicals, The Christian Messenger and The Child’s Friend, who served congregations in the East Midlands and Lancashire. The final collaborator was Charles Russell Hurditch (1840-1908), a British evangelist and perfumer (Maurand, n.d.). In all instances, the hymn was published without attribution, a common practice in the nineteenth century. The next section traces the textual origins and versions.

Textual Sources

Although the authorship of this hymn remains uncertain, more recent evidence indicates that the text in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) was influenced by an eight-stanza hymn by Maryland Methodist preacher Caleb Jarvis Taylor (1763-1817) titled “O Jesus, my Saviour, I know thou art mine,” published in Taylor’s Spiritual Songs (Lexington, Kentucky, 1804), a words-only collection. The first stanza of this unattributed hymn text follows:

O Jesus my Saviour, I know thou art mine;
For thee all the pleasures of earth I resign:
Of objects most pleasing I love thee the best;
Without thee I'm wretched but with thee I'm blest.

Though unattributed in its first publication, Thomas S. Hinde (1785-1846), an abolitionist and Methodist minister, assigns authorship to Taylor in Hinde’s The Pilgrim’s Songster (Chillicothe, Ohio, 1815), who reprinted all eight stanzas from Taylor’s publication. Hinde appears to have known Taylor and was well acquainted with his hymns.

The earliest publication of “My Jesus, I Love Thee” was in 1862 in the London periodical The Christian Pioneer (February, vol. 16, no. 2) edited by Joseph Foulkes Winks, where it appeared in six, four-line stanzas. The primary connection with Taylor’s text is the first two lines of stanza one and the recurring final line in each stanza, “If ever I loved thee, my Jesus ‘tis now.” This quasi-refrain is derived from stanza 6, line 1 of Taylor’s hymn, beginning, “If ever I lov’d, sure I love thee my Lord.” Both Taylor’s version and the revised version use the same meter (11.11.11.11), allowing them to be sung to the same tunes.

The original stanzas on Winks’s version of “My Jesus, I Love Thee” follow:

1. My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine,
For Thee all the pleasures of sin I resign;
My blessed Redeemer, my Saviour art Thou:
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, it’s now,

2. I love Thee because Thou hast first loved me,
And purchased my pardon when nailed to the tree;
I love Thee for bleeding when on Calvary's brow:
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, it's now.

3. I love Thee because thou has saved me from hell—
How dearly I love Thee my tongue cannot tell;
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow:
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, it’s now.

4. I love Thee for pardon, I love Thee for peace,
And the sweet hope of heaven Thy Spirit conveys,
For it ladens my heart as onward I go;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, it’s now.

5. May I love Thee in life, may I love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
And say, when the death-dew is on my cold brow,
“If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, it’s now.”

6. In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I will ever adore Thee in regions of light;
I’ll sing with a glittering crown on my brow,
“If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, it’s now.”

Hymnals rarely print all six stanzas. Most current hymnals include modified versions of four stanzas—1, 2, 5, and 6—from Winks’s publication. These modifications were the work of William Antliff in The Primitive Methodist Magazine (London) in October 1862 (p. 640). Antliff increases the intimacy of the text: “O Jesus, my Saviour” in Taylor’s hymn becomes “My Jesus, I love thee.” First-person references (I, me, mine) number 23 in four stanzas. Winks’s “pleasures” becomes “follies” in Antliff’s publication. Other changes even out the prosody, including the quasi-refrain: Taylor’s “If ever I lov’d, sure I love thee my Lord” becomes “If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, it’s now” in Winks’s February 1862 publication, and the more flowing, “If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now” in Antliff’s October 1862 periodical. Finally, Charles Russell Hurditch edited two words in the final stanza of Antliff’s four-stanza version, publishing these in The London Hymn Book (1864). Line 2 of Antliff’s stanza 4 reads, “I’ll ever adore thee in the heaven of light.” Hurditch’s variant reads, “I’ll ever adore thee in heaven so bright.” Thus, the version in today’s hymnals is a compilation of four unattributed texts by four editors: Taylor, Winks, Antliff, and Hurditch.

From UK to USA

Evidence suggests that this hymn may have spanned England and the United States via the Primitive Methodist Church through the efforts of American evangelist Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834), a charismatic New England Methodist abolitionist. Dow may have brought Methodist preacher Caleb Taylor’s early version (published in Kentucky in 1804), perhaps used in the camp meetings of the Second Great Awakening, with him during his 1805 trip to England, the second of three journeys. From there, it followed the path described above.

The hymn reached a different audience when a Nottingham, England, native known only as “John S.” introduced it in the United States in 1865. “John S.” was a member of the Christian Commission, a relief organization caring for wounded Civil War soldiers. The four-stanza version (with “follies”) was printed on the front page of Vermont Christian Messenger (14 March 1867), supplied by a second Christian Commission worker, R. W. Harlow, who learned the hymn at City Point (now Hopewell), Virginia, in 1865. Harlow’s version repeated the last line, indicating that it was likely sung to a Welsh melody, AFFECTION (also known as FIDELITY) by John Ellis (1760-1839), printed in Melodies of Zion (London, 1866). This tune first appeared in the United States as “English Melody” in The Revivalist (Troy, New York, 1868), a camp-meeting songbook edited by Joseph Hillman and L. Hartsough. The Sacred Harp (Philadelphia, 1844) reprinted the tune EXPRESSION from Zion Songster (rev. 1834) with Taylor’s text.

GORDON, the tune known today, was written by Baptist educator Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836-1895), founder of Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, when he served as pastor of Clarendon Street Baptist Church in Boston. He authored a handful of texts and composed several melodies. His most prominent tune, GORDON, appears in his collection, the Vestry Hymn and Tune Book (no. 562, Boston, 1872), where it is paired with the version of the hymn he found in The London Hymn and Tune Book (1864), under the heading of “Miscellaneous” without attribution. Through Gordon’s tune, this hymn moved more widely into the hymnic sphere of evangelicals, where it remains popular today. GORDON is reminiscent of other devotional melodies from this era, such as HAMBURG by prominent New England music educator Lowell Mason (1792-1872), sung to Isaac Watts’s “When I survey the wondrous cross.” Both musical settings follow a predominantly step-wise melody supported by simple diatonic homophonic harmonies.