This is one of those hymns which, as Dr. Tel­ford re­marks, has “stamped it­self deep in the re­li­gious life of Meth­od­ism.” Few hymns have been more quot­ed by Meth­od­ist min­is­ters in their dy­ing hours than this, es­pe­cial­ly the last stan­za. But per­haps the young­est “preach­er” that ev­er made use of it ten­der­ly and ef­fect­iv­ely in the dy­ing hour is de­scribed in the fol­low­ing in­ci­dent, which serves al­so to show how the ear­ly Meth­od­ists taught such hymns as this to their child­ren at home and in Sun­day Schools:

By a dis­tress­ing ac­ci­dent a lit­tle girl on­ly sev­en years of age was se­vere­ly burned and had to be tak­en to a hos­pi­tal in Lon­don. At a Meth­od­ist Sun­day school she had learned to love and to sing the hymn be­gin­ning, “Je­sus, the name high over all.” On the last night of her life all the pa­tients were qui­et in the ward where she lay, and no­thing was heard but the tick and strike of the clock, when sud­den­ly the lit­tle suf­fer­er broke the si­lence by sweet­ly sing­ing…from her fa­vor­ite hymn…Then si­lence reigned again in the room, and for some time, as be­fore, on­ly the tick­ing of the clock was heard when the me­lo­di­ous voice of the lit­tle suf­fer­er again broke the si­lence and many other suf­fer­ers in the room heard her sing­ing soft­ly: “Hap­py, if with my lat­est breath I may but gasp his name”…

And with that the lit­tle preach­er’s voice was in­deed hushed in death, but not un­til ma­ny had heard, in the words of this ten­der song as she so sweet­ly sang it, a gos­pel mess­age ne­ver to be for­got­ten.