Words: Eliza H. Hamilton.

Music: (1840-1908).

Years ago, while re­viv­al meet­ings were be­ing held in one of the large towns in Scot­land, a young girl be­came anx­ious about her spir­it­u­al con­di­tion. Re­turn­ing from one of the meet­ings, she went to her own min­is­ter and asked him how she might be saved.

“Ah, lass­ie,” he said, “don’t be alarmed! Just read your Bi­ble and say your pray­ers, and you will be all right.”

But the poor, il­lit­er­ate girl cried out: “O Min­is­ter, I can­na read, I can­na pray! Lord Je­sus, take me as I am!”

In this way the girl became a fol­low­er of Christ; and a la­dy who heard of the girl’s ex­per­i­ence wrote this hymn…I found the vers­es in a re­li­gious news­pa­per and set them to the sim­ple mu­sic by which they are now most gen­er­al­ly known. At the same time al­so found the vers­es and set them to mu­sic, and he sent them to me at the same time that I was send­ing my tune for the same words to him. In “Gos­pel Hymns” both tunes are pub­lished.

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A min­is­ter in Eng­land writes to me about a Christ­ian wo­man, a shoe­mak­er’s wife, who had a lodg­er that was an ob­stin­ate un­be­liev­er. “The good wo­man oft­en tried to in­duce him to go to meet­ings, but in vain. Tracts which she placed on the ta­ble in his room she found crushed on the floor. She would smooth them out and again place them so as to at­tract his at­ten­tion, but he would read no­thing but his no­vels and news­pa­pers. One spring the old man fell ill with bron­chi­tis. The good wo­man act­ed as his nurse, for he had no rel­a­tives who cared for him. She used the op­por­tun­i­ty, oft­en speak­ing to him about his soul and read­ing the Word of God; but she could make no im­press­ion up­on him. One day she was read­ing the hymn ‘Je­sus, my Lord, to Thee I cry,’ and when she came to the re­frain, the old man called out to her sharply: ‘That’s not in the book!’ The wo­man an­swered, ‘Why yes, it is.’ He de­clared again that he did not be­lieve it was in the book. The good wo­man told him that he could read it for him­self. He asked for his glass­es, and read with won­der and amaze­ment, again and again, ‘My on­ly plea—Christ died for me! oh, take me as I am.’ A few weeks af­ter­ward he said to the wo­man one morn­ing, ‘I am go­ing home to-day, and I am so hap­py, so hap­py!’ In an hour or two he passed away, re­peat­ing those words to the last.”

If you know when this song was writ­ten, or where to get a pho­to of Eli­za Ham­il­ton

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