Words: , 1852. The song was pop­u­lar­ized in the Moo­dy- evan­gel­is­tic cam­paigns in Bri­tain. The Con­gre­ga­tion­al Quar­ter­ly for Oc­to­ber 1874 says:

…it was writ­ten, she tells us, in the little back third sto­ry bed­room, one Sab­bath morn­ing in 1852, on her re­turn from church.

Music: Dul­ce Do­mum, , 1876. Al­ter­nate tune:

• Nearer My Home, (1834-1895)

A gentleman tra­vel­ing in Chi­na found at Ma­cao a com­pa­ny of gam­blers in a back room on the up­per floor of a ho­tel. At the ta­ble near­est him was an Amer­i­can, about twen­ty years old, play­ing with an old man. While the gray-haired man was shuf­fling the cards, the young man, in a care­less way, sang a verse of “One sweet­ly sol­emn thought,” to a ve­ry pa­the­tic tune. Sev­er­al gam­blers looked up in sur­prise on hear­ing the sing­ing. The old man, who was deal­ing the cards, gazed stead­fast­ly at his part­ner in the game, and then threw the pack of cards un­der the ta­ble.

“Where did you learn that song?” he asked. The young man pre­tend­ed that he did not know what he been sing­ing. “Well, no mat­ter,” said the old man, “I have played my last game, and that’s the end of it. The cards may lie there till dooms­day, and I’ll ne­ver pick them up.” Hav­ing won a hun­dred dol­lars from the young man, he took the mo­ney from his pock­et and, hand­ing it over to the lat­ter, said, “Here, Har­ry, is your mo­ney; take it and do good with it; I shall with mine.”

The tra­vel­er fol­lowed them down­stairs, and at the door heard the old man still talk­ing about the song which the young man had sung. Long af­ter­ward a gen­tle­man in Bos­ton [Mass­a­chu­setts] re­ceived a let­ter from the old man, in which he de­clared that he had be­come a “hard work­ing Christ­ian” and that his young friend al­so had re­nounced gam­bling and kin­dred vic­es.