Jesus Paid It All: A Song History

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"Jesus Paid It All" pairs words by Elvina M. Hall with a tune by John T. Grape, both members of Monument Street Methodist Church in Baltimore, where Grape, a coal merchant by trade, played the organ and led the choir.[1][2] Hymnary.org dates the text to 1865 and Grape's tune, ALL TO CHRIST, to 1868.[1][3] The origin story appears in John Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, which says Hall wrote the words in the spring of 1865 on the flyleaf of a hymnal, The New Lute of Zion, while sitting in the choir of a Baltimore Methodist church.[4] Later retellings add that the pastor, given Hall's verses, remembered a tune Grape had brought him separately and found that the two fit, with Hall then supplying words for the refrain.[2][3] Julian's entry, as Hymnary.org reproduces it, says nothing of the pastor or the tune, so this part of the story rests on later accounts and is best read as church tradition.[4] Hall, a native of Alexandria, Virginia, died in 1889, though her birth year is given variously as 1818, 1820 and 1822.[4][2]

Engraving of the Crucifixion with four angels, Mary and John

Martin Schongauer, The Crucifixion with Four Angels, engraving, c. 1475. A Crucifixion, shown for the hymn's subject.

The hymn's first appearance, according to Hymnary.org, was in Theodore E. Perkins's Sabbath Carols (1868), and a scan of that New York songbook prints it under the title "Fullness in Christ," with five stanzas, the words credited to Mrs. E. M. Hall and the music to J. T. Grape.[1][5] Oddly, the same book also contains a different song titled "Jesus Paid It All," credited to Perkins.[5] Most modern hymnals print four stanzas, and Hymnary.org notes that whoever trimmed the text is unknown.[1] Julian reports that the hymn reached Ira D. Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos in 1878 and won some popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.[4] Hymnary.org now counts it in nearly a thousand hymnals, among them the Baptist Hymnals of 1991 and 2008, the African American Heritage Hymnal (2001) and Christian Worship (2021).[1]

For mountain dulcimer players, a DAD-tuning setting of the hymn is in Larry Conger's Hymns, Spirituals, And Sacred Songs, a Fingers Of Steel collection of classic gospel tunes, 36 pages long, sold with an MP3 recording of every song.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Jesus Paid It All"

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "Jesus Paid It All".
  2. Discipleship Ministries: "Jesus Paid It All".
  3. Hymnary.org: "ALL TO CHRIST (Grape)".
  4. Hymnary.org: "Elvina M. Hall".
  5. Internet Archive (Princeton Theological Seminary Library): "Sabbath Carols: A New Collection of Music and Hymns" (1868).
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hymns, Spirituals, And Sacred Songs".
  7. Image: Martin Schongauer, The Crucifixion with Four Angels, engraving, c. 1475. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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