46th Day of Easter - O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

This song isn’t sung very often because the tune it is set to in hymnals sounds very dated — the overly-sentimental style of the late 19th century is a bit syrupy for most congregations these days.

If you want to listen to the lyrics sung in a spirit of worship, I suggest this lovely choral arrangement, though it oddly leaves out the last verse. That is a shame.  I suspect the composer wanted it to be more palatable for public school choruses, so she left out the reference to the cross.

O Love - Elaine Hagenberg

If you want to sing along with a tune that works well with the text, try this one.

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go - Indelible Grace

(I wish the singable version above didn’t have such a country hoedown feel, but it is a wonderful tune for congregational singing.)

And if you enjoy over-the-top sentimentality done well, look no further than this version of the traditional ST. MARGARET tune.

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go - Bill Gaither TV

The words were written by George Matheson, a Scottish clergyman who became the pastor of a 2,000 member church - a mega-church even by modern standards. The accomplishment was particularly notable in that Matheson had very poor vision in his youth and went totally blind as a young adult. He never married, having had a youthful engagement broken by a fiancée who decided she didn’t want to live her life with a blind man. Though this song was written some twenty years after the engagement, it is not hard to imagine that Matheson may have still felt a sense of loss and rejection. Whatever the cause of his suffering, God met him in it and gave him”dayspring from on high.”

The site Hymnal.net includes Matheson’s account of writing the song:

My hymn was composed in the manse of Innellan on the evening of June 6th, 1882. I was at the time alone. It was the day of my sister’s marriage, and the rest of the family were staying overnight in Glasgow. Something 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. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this one came like a dayspring from on high. I have never been able to gain once more the same fervor in verse. ”


And here is the inspired text:

O love that will not let me go,I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its flow
may richer, fuller be.

O light that foll’west all my way,I yield my flick’ring torch to thee;
my heart restores its borrowed ray,
that in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
may brighter, fairer be.

O joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
and feel the promise is not vain
that morn shall tearless be.

O cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
and from the ground there blossoms red
life that shall endless be.