I Hear Thy Welcome Voice: A Song History

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Lewis Hartsough, a Methodist Episcopal minister who served pastorates in New York and later helped found his church's Utah Mission, wrote both the words and the music of this invitation hymn in 1872.[1] Hymnary.org records that he composed it during a revival meeting in Epworth, Iowa, and many of the hymnals it lists give the tune the name WELCOME VOICE.[2] Hartsough was also the musical editor of The Revivalist, a songbook that ran through eleven editions between 1868 and 1872.[1]

Etching of a small chapel on a hillside above the sea

Félix Hilaire Buhot, The Chapel Saint-Michel at l'Estre, etching, drypoint and roulette, 1881. A French seaside chapel, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the hymn.

In his memoir, Ira D. Sankey recalled that the hymn first appeared in the monthly Guide to Holiness, that a copy reached him in England in 1873, and that he promptly added it to Sacred Songs and Solos, calling it "one of the most helpful of the revival hymns."[3] In America, P. P. Bliss and Sankey included it as number 63 in their Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs (1875).[4] Hymnary.org lists it in more than 800 hymnals and records translations into Spanish, Dutch, and Swahili, and into Welsh by John Roberts (Ieuan Gwyllt); the 1979 Welsh and English Hymns and Anthems sets that version to a tune listed as ARGLWYDD, DYMA FI (GWAHODDIAD).[5][6]

Larry Conger includes it in Hymns, Spirituals, And Sacred Songs, a collection of classic gospel tunes for mountain dulcimer, published by Fingers Of Steel.[7]

Our book that contains the song "I Hear Thy Welcome Voice"

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "Lewis Hartsough".
  2. Hymnary.org: "[I hear Thy welcome voice] (Hartsough)".
  3. Internet Archive: "Ira D. Sankey, My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns and of Sacred Songs and Solos" (1907).
  4. Hymnary.org: "Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs" (1875).
  5. Hymnary.org: "I Hear Thy Welcome Voice".
  6. Hymnary.org: "Mi glywaf dyner lais".
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hymns, Spirituals, And Sacred Songs".
  8. Image: Félix Hilaire Buhot, The Chapel Saint-Michel at l'Estre, etching, drypoint and roulette, 1881. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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