Jesus, I Come: A Song History

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The words of "Jesus, I Come," also known by its opening line "Out of My Bondage, Sorrow and Night," are by William T. Sleeper (1819–1904), a New Hampshire native educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, the University of Vermont and Andover Theological Seminary.[1] His early ministry was spent in home-mission work in Maine and Massachusetts, and he then led Worcester's Summer Street Congregational Church for over three decades.[1] The hymn was printed in 1887 in Gospel Hymns No. 5, compiled by Ira D. Sankey, James McGranahan and George C. Stebbins, with Sleeper's verses set to music by Stebbins.[2] Hymnary.org gives the tune the name JESUS, I COME and indexes the text in more than 300 hymnals.[3][4]

Engraving of the prodigal son kneeling before his father outside a house, with onlookers and a landscape behind

Lucas van Leyden, The Return of the Prodigal Son, engraving, ca. 1510. Shown for its homecoming theme; it has no connection to the hymn.

Stebbins described how he and Sleeper came to work together in his 1924 memoir, George C. Stebbins: Reminiscences and Gospel Hymn Stories.[5] During evangelistic meetings in Worcester at which he was helping Dr. Pentecost, Stebbins invited Sleeper, a Worcester minister with some experience as a hymn writer, to supply verses on the new birth; the outcome was the gospel song "Ye Must Be Born Again."[5] The text of "Jesus, I Come" reached Stebbins from Sleeper only years afterward, and the composer judged it "a hymn of rare excellence, from any point of view."[5] By Stebbins's account, Sleeper knew before his death that the hymn had found wide use both overseas and in America.[5]

Larry Conger includes it in Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of sixteen gospel hymns for the chromatic mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Jesus, I Come"

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "William T. Sleeper".
  2. Internet Archive: "Gospel Hymns No. 5" (1887).
  3. Hymnary.org: "JESUS, I COME (Stebbins)".
  4. Hymnary.org: "Out of My Bondage, Sorrow and Night".
  5. Internet Archive: "George C. Stebbins: Reminiscences and Gospel Hymn Stories" (1924).
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer".
  7. Image: Lucas van Leyden, The Return of the Prodigal Son, engraving, ca. 1510. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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