His name is not familiar to most church-goers, but his first hymn is very well-known, and will be found in almost every hymnal today. It describes the very heart of Christianity – faith in Jesus Christ, specifically trusting in what His substitutionary death accomplished for those who have believed in Him (John 3:16). The hymn also looks ahead to the confidence believers have that at the end of our lives, He will carry us safely home to be with Him (Philippians 1:6).
Ray Palmer (1808 – 1887) is often considered to be one of America’s best 19th century hymn writers. He was born in Little Compton, Rhode Island. His early years were spent in Boston where he worked for a while in a dry goods store. He attended the famous Park Street Congregational Church, which has maintained faithfulness to the gospel and to the Word of God in the midst of the increasingly liberal religious culture of New England.
The Holy Spirit awakened young Palmer’s heart to the gospel during those years, and he began to sense a call to pastoral ministry. After attending Phillips Academy in Andover, he entered Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut. During the previous years of the college presidency of Timothy Dwight (author of the hymn I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord), Yale experienced an extraordinary spiritual revival that deeply affected almost the entire student body and led many into ministry careers.
Though several decades had passed before Palmer entered Yale, some of the spiritual energy must have remained. Palmer was ordained to the gospel ministry in 1835. He served churches in Bath, Maine and Albany, New York before serving as secretary of the American Congregational Union. A popular preacher and author, he wrote original poetry and translated hymns, including Bernard of Clairvaux’s 12th century hymn Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts. After resigning in 1878, he moved to Newark, New Jersey, where he died in 1887.
While other hymns of his continue to appear in hymnals (he wrote 38), the first one he wrote has remained the most widely sung to this day: My Faith Looks Up to Thee. He wrote the words in 1830, soon after his graduation at the age of 24 and while he was teaching in New York. The ideas for the hymn apparently flowed very easily. Later he said about its composition, “I gave form to what I felt, by writing, with little effort, the stanzas. I recollect I wrote them with very tender emotion and ended the last line with tears.” Hopefully, we will have the same reaction when we sing these wonderful words.
Two years later the hymn found its way into the hands of Lowell Mason for a project that he was engaged in at the time, a cooperative effort with Dr. T. Hastings, to produce a collection of songs for families. Mason wrote music for the hymn and gave it the title “Self Consecration.” The tune name was later changed to OLIVET. Lowell Mason has given us many of the tunes we use today. The PCA’s Trinity Hymnal contains 28 that he either wrote or arranged, including the music we use to sing O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, Joy to the World, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Nearer My God to Thee, There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood, and Blest Be the Tie that Binds. He wrote more than 1600!
Mason was born in 1792 in Massachusetts and then spent the first part of his career in Savannah, Georgia at the Independent Presbyterian Church (which continues a strong gospel and reformed witness today with PCA pastor, Terry Johnson). In 1827 he moved to Boston where he co-founded the Boston Academy of Music. He developed “Singing Schools” which were widely copied, so that he is regarded as the father of public-school music. By 1853 he had moved to New York City to serve as music director at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. His last move was in1860 to his estate in Orange, New Jersey where he died in 1872.
This first hymn that Ray Palmer wrote points us to the one who ought to be at the center of every worship service and every sermon: the Lord Jesus.
In the first stanza, we affirm that a personal response to the gospel is necessary. It’s not Christianity’s faith; it is MY faith, MY trusting in the person and work of the Redeemer, the Lamb of G0d slain for me on Calvary’s cross. And we acknowledge that our great need is for forgiveness because of the guilt of our sin. Our longing is that having cleansed us, He would make us His own.
My faith looks up to Thee, thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior divine:
Now hear me while I pray, take all my guilt away,
O let me from this day be wholly Thine.
In the second stanza we plead for the saving grace He has promised when we come to Him with fainting hearts, needing to repent, devoid of zeal, cold to His divine love. Again, I turn to the cross, believing that He died for me, paying the penalty for my cosmic treason (as R. C. Sproul so often described it). We are not saved by our love for Him but love for Him is the inevitable result in the heart which He has made His by His atoning work. And my heart remains cold until He changes it and places within it a living fire of love for him, “white hot passion,” as John Piper writes.
May Thy rich grace impart strength to my fainting heart, my zeal inspire;
As Thou hast died for me, O may my love to Thee
Pure, warm, and changeless be, a living fire.
Stanza 3 looks down the road to the struggles we face in this sin-infected, polluted world. Life’s griefs do indeed envelope us in a dark maze in which we not only struggle to survive, but also struggle to make sense of. We need a guide who can lead us through. And in Jesus we have one who can not only guide us, but also turn darkness to day and wipe sorrow’s tears away, if we keep our eyes on Him. As our guide, we trust Him to keep us from straying, as He has promised:“I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5)
While life’s dark maze I tread, and griefs around me spread, be Thou my guide;
Bid darkness turn to day, wipe sorrow’s tears away,
Nor let me ever stray from Thee aside.
Stanza 4 brings us to thoughts of the end of our earthly lives. This is a stanza I have sung many times at the side of the bed of an elderly saint as death approached. Life’s transient dream will end, and death’s cold sullen stream will roll over us at the end. But Jesus has assured us that even death cannot separate us from His love (Romans 8:38-39), and so we can call on Him to take away any fear and distrust that may arise in our last moments. And how wonderful to have the confidence that He will, as He promised (and guaranteed by His own resurrection) bear us safe above into His presence, since He has ransomed our souls. He purchased us, we belong to Him, and He assured us that of all that the Father has given Him, He will not lose a single one (John 6:39).
When ends life’s transient dream, when death’s cold, sullen stream shall o’er me roll,
Blest Savior, then, in love, fear and distrust remove;
O bear me safe above, a ransomed soul.