Words: , 1877.

Music: , 1879.

Mr. Wit­ter has said re­gard­ing this hymn: “I may say that the ori­gin of ‘While Je­sus whis­pers to you’ is for­ev­er linked with some of the most sac­red ex­per­i­ences of my life. I see the old farm­house in New York State, over­look­ing the beau­ti­ful Wy­om­ing Val­ley, and those West­ern hills, which to my child­hood eyes were the rim of the world. It was in the sum­mer of 1877 and I was home from col­lege to nurse my saint­ed mo­ther through her last ill­ness, and at the same time I was teach­ing a term in school. The bi­o­graphy of was in our home, and his sweet songs were run­ning through my mind from morn till even­ing. I prayed that even I might be in­spired to write such hymns as would touch hard hearts and lead them to Christ. One Sa­tur­day af­ter­noon, while bunch­ing the hay which had been mown along the road­side, the words of this lit­tle hymn seemed to sing them­selves in­to my soul, and with mu­sic al­most ident­i­cal with that to which they were lat­er set by the sweet sing­er Palm­er. I hast­ened to the house and, run­ning up­stairs, knelt be­side the bed of a bro­ther, for whose sal­va­tion my mo­ther was in con­stant prayer. There, up­on my knees, I tran­scribed the words to pa­per, and with a strange con­scious­ness that they were God-giv­en and that God would use them.”