Give me a sight, O Saviour

Authors:
Themes:
Scriptures:
  • Psalms 119:28
  • Psalms 19:12-13
  • Jeremiah 31:3
  • Ezekiel 36:26
  • Luke 1:35
  • Luke 23:33
  • John 13:1
  • John 6:69
  • Acts 5:30
  • 2 Corinthians 5:21
  • Galatians 2:20
  • Ephesians 1:7
  • 1 Peter 2:24
  • Revelation 6:2
Book Number:
  • 417

Give me a sight, O saviour,
of your great love to me-
the love that brought you down from heaven
to die on Calvary.

O make me understand it,
help me to take it in-
what it meant for you, the holy One,
to bear away my sin.

2. Was it the nails, O Saviour,
that bound you to the tree?
No, but your everlasting love-
your love for me, for me.

3. O wonder of all wonders,
that, through your death for me,
my open sins, my secret sins,
can all forgiven be!

4. Then melt my heart, O Saviour,
bend me, yes, break me down,
until I name you Conqueror,
and Lord and Sovereign crown.

Katherine A M Kelly 1869-1942

The Son - His Suffering and Death

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Tune

The story behind the hymn

If the expression and the genre are different, this early 20th-c gospel song has 3 features which Wesley himself would have appreciated: the sense of wonder, of God’s ‘everlasting love’ (Jeremiah 31:3), and of personal appropriation—‘for me, for me’; cf 435 and 776. Katharine A M Kelly’s words and music were published in The Christian Life Hymnal of the National Young Life Campaign, the Young Life Campaign Hymn Book (compiled by Arthur and Frederick Wood c1919) and several subsequent collections including Golden Bells (1925 edn) and the 1957 Christian Praise. The first (1921) book of CSSM Choruses, later Scripture Union Choruses, included the refrain.

The author’s tune MAKE ME UNDERSTAND is sometimes given a pause before the refrain (which was originally marked ‘A trifle slower’), to emphasise the meaning of her words; opinions differ as to whether this is now appropriate.

A look at the author

Kelly, Katharine Agnes May (Mary)

KELLY, Katharine Agnes May (‘Mary’), b Croydon, Surrey 1869, d Tunbridge Wells, Kent 1942. As her hymn is evangelical in tone and found almost exclusively in evangelical books, it may be assumed that this reflects the author’s own convictions. No 417.