Both Christians and non Christians suffer injuries and ailments that leave them questioning their future. But there ought to be a recognizable difference in the attitude with which they handle their suffering and limitations. Christians don’t retreat into bitterness and depression. A very different response has been true people who are confident in the Lord’s goodness, despite their present hardships. We see that very dramatically with hymn-writers like Fanny Crosby (the blind writer of “Blessed Assurance”), Charlotte Elliott (the invalid writer of “Just As I Am”), William Cowper (the depression victim who wrote “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”), Lydia Baxter (bed-ridden with constant pain, writing “Take the Name of Jesus With You”), and Margaret Clarkson (the arthritic victim who wrote “O Father, You Are Sovereign”). Rather than focusing on their pain and limitation, they focused on the Lord and His goodness. And like Paul writing to the Philippians from prison in Rome, he wrote about how the Lord was using these conditions as an opening to share the gospel and see others come to the Savior.
We add to the ranks of saints like these the author of “More About Jesus Would I Know,” Eliza Edmunds Hewitt (1851-1920). She was born on June 28, 1851, in Philadelphia, PA, the daughter of Capt. James S. and Zeruiah Edmunds Stites. She was a close friend of Fanny Crosby and wrote this hymn in 1887. She suffered from a serious spinal injury which left her temporarily a shut-in. Despite her major health limitations, she wrote more than 70 hymns, including “When We all Get to Heaven,” “Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown,” and “There Is Sunshine in My Soul Today.” Sometimes she used a pseudonym, as in writing “My Faith Has Found a Resting Place” where she used the name Lydie Edmunds.
She lived and died in Philadelphia. She graduated as valedictorian of her class. A spinal injury cut short her career as a teacher. She was struck in the back by an incorrigible student while trying to correct him. He swung his slate writing board and hit her in the back. After the injury, Eliza was placed in a heavy body cast which completely immobilized her for six months.
Following her confinement, the doctor let Eliza go for a short walk in nearby Fairmount Park on a warm spring day. Her heart overflowing with joy for her recovery, she returned home and penned one of her first and best-known hymns, “There’s Sunshine In My Soul Today.” Out of this experience she developed a desire to share her feelings with others through writing poetry and became a prolific writer of children’s verses. In her later years, Eliza’s physical condition greatly improved, and she was able to be even more active in her writing.
During her convalescence, she studied English literature. She felt a need to be useful to her church and began writing poems for the primary department. She went on to teach Sunday school, take an active part in the Philadelphia Elementary Union, and become Superintendent of the primary department of her church. Originally a member of the Olivet Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, when she married and moved to another section of the city she joined the Calvin Presbyterian Church, where she taught the primary class in Sunday school, sometimes with as many as 200 children, until her death in Philadelphia on April 4, 1920.
Most of Mrs. Hewitt’s best known songs seem to focus on Jesus., and that is certainly true of “More About Jesus Would I Know.” Some of her children’s poems came to the attention of composer John Robson Sweney (1837-1899). Sweney produced several well-known melodies, such as that used with Fanny Crosby’s “Tell Me the Story of Jesus.” As a result of this initial contact, Sweney and Mrs. Hewitt collaborated on many well-known hymns, including “More About Jesus,” for which Sewney composed the tune SWENEY. The song was first published in Glad Hallelujahs co-edited by Sweney in 1887 with William James Kirkpatrick (1838-1921). Kirkpatrick has also given us many famous melodies, including the one used with Fanny Crosby’s “Redeemed, How I Love to Proclaim It.”
Surely one of the dynamics of the Christian’s hope and joy is to know more about Jesus, and as a result to actually know Him better. We recognize this quality in senior saints whom we know have come to know Jesus so much better than we. Their lives are filled with a much greater vision of Jesus, and a much richer sense of His presence and glory. When we are with them, we can’t help but feel we are closer to Jesus by being close to someone who is closer to Him than we ourselves. Singing this song will hopefully increase the intensity of our desire to know more and more about Jesus, and thereby to live closer and closer to Him.
If we want to know more about Jesus, what are some of the things we want to know about Him?
In stanza 1, we want to know more about His grace. And how has God made His grace most visible to us? It is in the cross of Christ who died for unworthy sinners like ourselves. Sovereign grace is much, much more than simply God’s acting kindly toward us. It is the amazing benevolence in which He has not treated us as we deserve (pouring out His wrath upon us in just judgment), but has instead given to us the opposite of what we deserved by forgiving our sins, adopting us as His beloved children, and promising us an eternity of joy in His presence in the new heavens and the new earth. And the more we know about that grace, the more we will want to show it to others that they might also see “more of His saving fullness.” And it is the essence of that request that is repeated in the refrain at the end of each stanza.
More about Jesus would I know, More of His grace to others show;
More of His saving fullness see, More of His love who died for me.
More, more about Jesus, More, more about Jesus;
More of His saving fulness see, More of His love who died for me.
In stanza 2, we want to know more about His holy will. In His Upper Room Discourse in John 14-16, Jesus promised that He would send the “other Comforter,” the Holy Spirit, and that He would bring Jesus’ words to the minds of His followers, teaching them to understand God’s will for them. We depend on that promise of the Holy Spirit to guide us every time we read or listen to the Scripture. The Spirit is our teacher to enable us to discern God’s will for our lives, not only in the initial matters of repentance and saving faith, but in every detail of our lives. The Spirit’s primary work is to open the eyes of our hearts to see Jesus. And so we sing that He would be continually “showing the things of Christ to me.”
More about Jesus let me learn, More of His holy will discern;
Spirit of God, my teacher be, Showing the things of Christ to me.
In stanza 3, we want to know more about His Word. This is the only way for us to know Him and to know more about Him. We do not look for visions or special revelation apart from what the Holy Spirit has placed in our inspired Scriptures. The Bible is God’s final and authoritative revelation. It is here that we meet Jesus and learn more about Him. And it is not only information that we gain from His Word. It is here that we actually meet Him, “holding communion with my Lord.” It is in His word that our hearts hear His voice, and see His face by faith. If we want to know more about Jesus, it will be through the Scriptures, “hearing His voice in ev’ry line, making each faithful saying mine.”
More about Jesus in His Word, Holding communion with my Lord;
Hearing His voice in ev’ry line, Making each faithful saying mine.
In stanza 4, we want to know more about His coming, His coming again in glory. When His earthly ministry was complete, He ascended back into the presence of the Father, where He is seated at God’s right hand, interceding for His people day and night. And He will continue to be enthroned there until the day appointed for His return. While we cannot know the day or the hour, Jesus instructed us to be ready at any moment for His appearing. Our task until then is to remain faithful to His Word, and to carry out the Great Commission, spreading the gospel invitation to the ends of the earth. He has promised to build His kingdom, and the gates of hell will not stand in His way. Every day, our hearts look to the heavens anxiously awaiting “His coming, Prince of peace.”
More about Jesus on His throne, Riches in glory all His own;
More of His kingdom’s sure increase; More of His coming, Prince of peace.
Here is a recording of the song as sung by the well-known gospel quartet, the Blackwood Brothers.