Living For Jesus: A Song History

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"Living For Jesus" carries the date 1917, but its melody is about two years older than its words.[1] C. Harold Lowden first wrote the tune around 1915 as a cheerful number for children's services, titled "Sunshine Song" (in Lowden's own recollection, "The Sunshine Song").[1][2] In 1917, while assembling hymns for a forthcoming book, Lowden returned to the melody, judged that it deserved sturdier words, renamed it "Living for Jesus," and mailed it to the poet Thomas O. Chisholm.[2][1] According to Discipleship Ministries, Chisholm at first resisted, since he had never fitted a poem to music already written, but before long he sent back four stanzas with a refrain.[2]

Sunny beach scene with women and children under bright parasols on the sand beside blue water and white clouds

William Merritt Chase, At the Seaside, oil on canvas, ca. 1892. Shown in a nod to the tune's first title, "Sunshine Song"; it has no connection to the hymn.

The finished hymn was printed that year in Uplifting Songs, compiled by Lowden and Rufus W. Miller and published by the Heidelberg Press of Philadelphia.[1][3] Chisholm (1866–1960), a Kentucky editor with little formal schooling who served briefly as a Methodist pastor, wrote more than 1,200 poems; Discipleship Ministries ranks this hymn second in popularity among his works only to "Great Is Thy Faithfulness."[1][2] Lowden (1883–1963), a New Jersey composer and hymnal editor, served for 28 years as minister of music at Linden Baptist Church in Camden.[1]

The hymn is used as a song of dedication and appears in hymnals such as the Psalter Hymnal and The Faith We Sing; in the Christian Reformed Church it is known as the theme song of the Calvinist Cadet Corps.[1][2] Larry Conger includes it, credited to Chisholm and Lowden, in Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of sixteen gospel hymns arranged for the chromatic mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[4]

Our book that contains the song "Living For Jesus"

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "292. Living for Jesus" (Psalter Hymnal, 1987).
  2. Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: 'Living for Jesus' pledges full commitment to Christ".
  3. Princeton Theological Seminary, Theological Commons: "Uplifting songs" (Heidelberg Press, 1917).
  4. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer".
  5. Image: William Merritt Chase, At the Seaside, oil on canvas, ca. 1892. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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