Why Do You Wait?

Top Media Text Author Text Info Tune Timeline Page Scans Instances

Why do you wait, dear brother

Author: George F. Root
Tune: [Why do you wait, dear brother] (Root)
Published in 417 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI, Recording

Representative Text

1 Why do you wait, dear brother,
O why do you tarry so long?
Your Savior is waiting to give you
A place in His sanctified throng.

Refrain
Why not, why not,
Why not come to Him now?
Why not, why not,
Why not come to Him now?

2 What do you hope, dear brother,
To gain by a further delay?
There’s no one to save you but Jesus,
There’s no other way but His way. [Refrain]

3 Do you not feel, dear brother,
His Spirit now striving within?
O why not accept His salvation
And throw off your burden of sin? [Refrain]

4 Why do your wait, dear brother?
The harvest is passing away;
Your Savior is longing to bless you,
There's danger and death in delay. [Refrain]

Source: The New National Baptist Hymnal (21st Century Edition) #194

All representative texts • Compare texts ^ top

Author: George F. Root

Root, George F., MUS. DOC, born in Sheffield, Berkshire County, Mass., Aug. 30, 1820. He is much more widely known as a composer of popular music than as a hymn writer. Four of his hymns are in I. D. Sankey's Sacred Songs & Solos, 1878. Nos. 16, 100, 293, and 297. A sympathetic biographical sketch, with portrait, is in The Tonic Sol-Fa Reporter, Sep. 1886. He died Aug. 6, 1895. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)… Go to person page >

^ top

First Line:	Why do you wait, dear brother
Title:	Why Do You Wait?
Author:	George F. Root
Language:	English
Refrain First Line:	Why not? why not?
Publication Date:	1878
Notes:	Swahili translation: See "Kwa nini wataka kungoja"
Copyright:	Public Domain