King of my life, I crown you now

This composition of over 80 years ago is the combined work of a Quaker author and a Methodist composer. With a distinctive lilt to both words and music, it bears many marks of its own generation. It also has enduring qualities which give it a place in several current books. Jennie Hussey’s words appeared in the American New Songs of Praise and Power in 1921, and in The Musical Salvationist for March/April 1946. The original text read in stz 3, ‘… hear the voice/ that called her by her name,/ and bade her mourning heart rejoice/ and her dear Master claim.’ Stz 4 read: ‘May I be willing, Lord, to bear/ daily my cross for thee …’; and 5.2, ‘for all who know not thee’. While referring to Gethsemane, Calvary, and the empty tomb, the hymn could as easily be placed in one or other of the sections on ‘The Christian Life’.

William J Kirkpatrick’s LEST I FORGET was the music set to the words on their first appearance, and sung with them ever since. It is the one example in this book of the work of an influential and prolific gospel song composer, here arranged for Praise! by Linda Mawson.

b Henniker, NH, USA 1874, d Concord, NH 1958. Began writing verse as a child of about 8, and continued as an adult to write poems, children’s stories, and over 150 hymns. A member of the Society of Friends, she spent most of her life on the family farm where 4 generations of her Quaker ancestors had lived and worked, including much time caring for an invalid sister. Towards the end of her life she asked to be baptized. Her closing years were made harder by crippling arthritis, and spent mainly in the Home for the Aged in Concord, New Hampshire. The refrain of her best-known hymn also features as a single-stanza song in CSSM/Scripture Union Choruses. No.432.