He Leadeth Me

"As a young man who recently had been graduated from Brown University and Newton Theological Institution, I was supplying for a couple of Sundays the pulpit of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. At the mid-week service, on the 26th of March, 1862, I set out to give the people an exposition of the Twenty-third Psalm, which I had given before on three or four occasions, but this time I did not get further than the words “He Leadeth Me.” Those words took hold of me as they had never done before, and I saw them in a significance and wondrous beauty of which I had never dreamed. It was the darkest hour of the Civil War. I did not refer to that fact—that is, I don’t think I did—but it may subconsciously have led me to realize that God’s leadership is the one significant fact in human experience, that it makes no difference how we are led, or whither we are led, so long as we are sure God is leading us. At the close of the meeting a few of us in the parlor of my host, good Deacon Watson, kept on talking about the thought which I had emphasized; and then and there, on a blank page of the brief from which I had intended to speak, I penciled the hymn, talking and writing at the same time, then handed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it to The Watchman and Reflector, a paper published in Boston, where it was first printed. I did not know until 1865 that my hymn had been set to music by William B. Bradbury. I went to Rochester, New York to preach as a candidate before the Second Baptist Church. Going into their chapel on arrival in the city, I picked up a hymnal to see what they were singing, and opened it at my own hymn, He Leadeth Me." - Joseph Henry Gilmore

He leadeth me, O blessèd thought
O words with heav’nly comfort fraught
What ’er I do, where’er I be
Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me

Refrain He leadeth me He leadeth me By His own hand He leadeth me His faithful follower I would be For by His hand He leadeth me

Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom By waters still, over troubled sea Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me

Lord, I would place my hand in Thine Nor ever murmur nor repine Content, whatever lot I see Since ’tis my God that leadeth me

And when my task on earth is done When by thy grace the vict’ry’s won E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee Since God through Jordan leadeth me

Joseph Henry Gilmore was the son of New Hampshire Governor Joseph A. Gilmore. He was born on April 29, 1834 in Boston, Massachusetts, and died on July 23, 1918 in Rochester, New York.