My Jesus, I Love Thee

Representative Text

1 My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine;
for thee all the follies of sin I resign;
my gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou;
if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

2 I love thee because thou hast first loved me
and purchased my pardon on Calvary's tree;
I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow;
if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

3 I'll love thee in life, I will love thee in death,
and praise thee as long as thou lendest me breath,
and say when the deathdew lies cold on my brow:
If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

4 In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I'll ever adore thee in heaven so bright;
I'll sing with the glittering crown on my brow:
If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

Psalter Hymnal, (Gray)

Author (attributed to): James H. Duffell

Born in West Bromwich, England; worked as an iron smelter; was married with three children; emigrated to Sydney, Australia, in 1881 and died there. Go to person page >

Author (attributed to): William R. Featherston

William Ralph Featherston(e) Canada 1846-1873. Born at Montreal, Quebec, Canada, he joined the Wesleyan Methodist Church there. He became a Christian at age 16 while in Toronto, and is thought to have written his famous hymn about the same time. He sent the poem to his aunt, Ms. E. Featherston Wilson and she gave it to a publisher. Adoniram. J Gordon, an evangelist, founder of Gordon College & Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, found the hymn in a 1870 London hymnal and was impressed with the words, but did not like the tune, so he composed the melody that has been used with the hymn ever since. Featherstone is thought to have married Julie R MacAlister in 1869 and that they had a son, John, in 1870. Featherstone died in Montreal a… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine
Title: My Jesus, I Love Thee
Author (attributed to): William R. Featherston (1862)
Author (attributed to): James H. Duffell (1862)
Meter: 11.11.11.11
Language: English
Notes: Spanish translation: See "Oh Cristo, yo to amo! Que mío eres sé" by George Paul Simmonds; Swahili translation: See "Yesu nakupenda"
Copyright: Public Domain
Liturgical Use: Songs of Response

Notes

Those that say youth is wasted on the young might be surprised to hear that William Ralph Featherston (1846-1873) is believed to have written "My Jesus I Love Thee" at the age of 16!

Featherston, a Weslyan Methodist from Montreal, wrote the text at the time of his conversion and sent it to his aunt in Los Angeles. Somehow, the poem made its way to England where it was published anonymously in The London Hymn Book two years later. Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836-1895), who was compiling a Baptist hymn book, liked Featherston's text, but decided it needed a better tune than the one that was used in The London Hymn Book, so he wrote a new tune for it which he published in The Service of Song for Baptist Churches. This is the tune that is still used today.

It's astounding the variety of people, lands, and circumstances that came together in the creation of this song. Certainly God wanted it to be used in our worship of Him. —Greg Scheer, 1994

In some sources in the early twentieth century, this hymn was attributed to James H. Duffell of West Bromwich, England. Duffell's authorship was corroborated by people who knew him. Featherston's purported authorship is troublesome, not least because he was a teenager in Canada when the hymn first emerged in England, and the hymn did not appear in any known sources in Canada (hymnals, books, newspapers, magazines) until much later. His aunt, Elizabeth Featherston Wilson, was living in Canada in the 1860s and did not emigrate to the U.S. until around 1895, first in Minnesota, then settled in Los Angeles around the time she contacted Ira Sankey; thus the popular notion of William sending the hymn to his aunt in Los Angeles is an anachronism, considering William died in 1873. For more details, see Hymnology Archive. —Chris Fenner

Tune

GORDON (Gordon)

In 1870 Featherstone's text came to the attention of Adoniram J. Gordon (b. New Hampton, NH, 1836; d. Boston, MA, 1895), an evangelical preacher who was compiling a new Baptist hymnal. Because he was unhappy with the existing melody for this text, Gordon composed this tune; as he wrote, "in a moment…

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