What do you do when, in God’s providence, you find yourself facing a difficult situation? What do you do when you’re not sure how you’re going to handle it? What do you do when you don’t have anyone nearby to lean on for support and you feel like you’re all on your own? And what do you do in those circumstances when you even feel like God has let you go? Here’s a hymn that gives you words for song as you reach out to the Lord. “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.”
Its author, George Matheson (1842-1906) was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the eldest of eight children. After excelling at school he entered Glasgow University where he studied Classics, Logic and Philosophy. While there he met and fell in love with a girl who was a fellow student and they were planning to get married. But at the age of 20, he discovered that he was going blind. When he broke the news to his fiancé, with a cruelly blunt answer she told him that she could not go through life caring for a blind husband, and so she abandoned the relationship, breaking his heart..
George continued with his studies, even as his vision deteriorated from his incurable condition, until he was totally blind. In His mercy, God led George’s sister to volunteer to care for him. Before completely losing his sight, he had written two books of theology and some feel that he could been the greatest leader for the church of Scotland in his day. With his sister’s help, George left the world of academia for pastoral ministry and wound up preaching to 1500 people each weekend.
In 1882 his sister fell in love and was preparing for marriage herself. On the eve of the wedding, he was struggling to digest the news, wondering what would happen to him. His whole family had left to get ready for the next day’s celebration. He was alone and facing the prospect of living the rest of his life without the one person who had remained to help him. Of course, that brought to mind his own wedding day that had been cancelled twenty years earlier. It’s hard to imagine what waves of sorrow and uncertainty swept over him that night.
It was in the darkness of that hour that George Matheson wrote this hymn. He wrote later that all the words came to him within five minutes, and that it was the only hymn he ever wrote that required no editing. Most hymn writers would testify that they struggled through repeated drafts of their texts, revising and tweaking them until the meter and language and choice of images finally seemed just right. But not so with this hymn that the Lord gave George that night. Here is his own account of how one of the most beloved hymns of the late 19th century came to be written.
My hymn was composed in the manse of Innellan on the evening of the 6th of June, 1882. . . . Something happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression rather of having it dictated to me by some inward voice than of working it out myself.
I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high. I have never been able to gain once more the same fervor in verse.
He began his ministry in 1868 at Innellan, on the Argyll coast near Dunoon. He stayed there for 18 years. Not only did he preach, but he wrote a number of books on spiritual matters which proved popular with contemporary Christians. His ministry and writings came to the attention of Queen Victoria and when in Scotland she invited him to preach at Balmoral. She also had one of his sermons published, on the Book of Job. In 1886 he moved to Edinburgh, where he became minister of the 2000 member St. Bernard’s Parish Church for 13 years. It was here that his chief work as a preacher was done.
George never did marry but he continued to prove the truth of his hymn, that there was a love that would never let him go – the love of Christ for the sinner. The love that was demonstrated for all the world to see at the cross of Calvary. The love that is spoken of in the Bible in John Chapter 3 verse 16, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” George Matheson died suddenly of a stroke on the 28th of August 1906 in Edinburgh and is buried in the Glasgow Necropolis. His hymn remains a particular favorite of those Christians whose lives are touched by tragedy and loss but who know that underneath them are the everlasting arms of a loving God and Savior.
Albert Lister Peace (1844-1912), a well-known Scottish organist of his day, wrote the tune ST. MARGARET in 1885, just three years after Matheson had written the lyrics, at the request of the Scottish Hymnal Committee. According to Peace, the tune came to him as quickly as the text had come to Matheson. “After reading it over carefully, I wrote the music straight off, and may say that the ink of the first note was hardly dry when I had finished the tune.” It was done in less than five minutes. The tune name was likely an expression of love for his wife and daughter, both of whom were named Margaret. Peace became organist at Glasgow Cathedral, St George’s Hall, Canterbury Cathedral, and Newcastle Cathedral.
Before looking at each individual stanza, notice these two literary characteristics that mark the high quality of the composition. The first is the way each stanza begins with a key word: “Love, Light, Joy and Cross.” These are not only attributes of Matheson’s relationship with Christ, but also names given to Christ. The second is the way each stanza concludes with parallel phrases of his desire for the lasting and increasing impact of these qualities: that they “may richer, fuller be; may brighter, fairer be; that morn shall tearless be; life that shall endless be.” These two characteristics are remarkable not only in the literary excellence of the hymn. But even more extraordinary is the fact that this all came to Matheson within the course of less than five minutes.
In stanza 1, we sing of Jesus and the LOVE that He gives. It is a supernatural, divine love that will never let us go. Matheson was learning to rest his anxious soul in the Lord, even as he faced a life of physical blindness. Each of us should remember that the life we have is a life that we give back as a living sacrifice to our Savior. When we do that, His love becomes like a deep ocean of such depths that its flow will be richer and fuller, once we have surrendered it to Him.
Oh love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee.
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be.
In stanza 2, we sing of Jesus and the LIGHT that He gives. It is like a torch that will follow us, and therefore guide us, even in those moments when its light seems to be merely flickering. But it will always be there, and as we depend on Him, it will grow stronger until it is no longer that flickering torch, but rather like the sunshine’s blaze, growing stronger day by day. That reminds us of Psalm 119:105, “Thy Word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.”
Oh light that followest all my way, I yield my flickering torch to thee.
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day May brighter, fairer be.
In stanza 3, we sing of Jesus and the JOY that He gives, even amidst pain. And notice that it is not only there, but is actually seeking us there through that pain. Here is the sovereign initiative of God as He comes to us when we are too weak spiritually to seek Him. We have all experienced times that remind us that the joy of the Lord can be the strongest in our times of pain and suffering and loss. Matheson’s imagery here is of the flood of Noah’s day which brought terrible suffering, but after which was marked by God’s promised joy, sealed with a rainbow. Should we not, every time we experience those times of pain, look up to the rainbow that glimmers through the rain, and look forward to a morn that shall be tearless?
Oh joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee.
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain That morn shall tearless be.
In stanza 4, we sing of Jesus and the CROSS through which He gives us these blessings. When our face is downcast, it is as we remember the cross of Jesus that the cross seems to actually lift our head to look up to Him. The words are reminiscent of John 3 where we read that as people were cured by looking up to the bronze serpent in the wilderness, even so are we cured by looking up to the Lord Jesus on the cross. While some turn away from the cross, thinking it an unworthy symbol for our faith, we dare not fly from it. No, we run to it, once we have faced our sins and, in effect, “lay in dust, life’s glory dead.” But from the deadness of God-given, humble repentance, “there blossoms red life that shall endless be.”
Oh cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee.
I lay in dust’s life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red Life that shall endless be.
Here is a recording of the hymn from Keith and Kristyn Getty.