Up from the Grave He Arose!

Robert Lowry, 1875

“I have no method,” said the Reverend Lowry with a shy smile. He seems not to have regarded himself as a great artist, though he gave all his considerable talents and his energy to his work as a preacher and a composer and compiler of hymns. “Sometimes the music comes and the words follow, fitted insensibly to the melody.” He’d then scribble the words or the music down on a scrap of newspaper or the back of an envelope, lest they vanish from his memory by the time he got home to his study. That, I guess, is how you end up writing more than 500 hymns, and among them some of the most beloved in America, because what Lowry did, in bringing the word of God to ordinary people — farmers, factory workers, miners, tradesmen of all kinds — was like what he did for them in music also, bridging the gap between the classical hymn and the American folk song. He meant for them to be sung by everyone in a congregation, and not just by trained choirs.

Do you love the sweet melody to “I Need The…