Words & Music: , 1888; some hymn­als show the au­thor as Sank­ey’s pseu­do­nym, Ri­an A. Dykes.

During one of my trips to Great Bri­tain, on “The Ci­ty of Rome,” a storm raged on the sea. The wind was howl­ing through the rig­ging, and waves like mount­ains of foam were break­ing over the bow of the ves­sel. A great fear had fall­en up­on the pass­en­gers. When the storm was at its worst we all thought that we might soon go to the bot­tom of the sea. The con­vict­ion came to me that the Lord would be with us in the try­ing hour, and, sit­ting down in the read­ing room, I com­posed this hymn. Be­fore reach­ing Eng­land the tune had formed it­self in my mind, and on ar­riv­ing in Lon­don I wrote it out and had it pub­lished in “Sa­cred Songs and So­los.” It has been much em­ployed in Eng­land in con­nect­ion with ser­mons on the se­cond com­ing of Christ, and was fre­quent­ly used by Mr. Moo­dy.