More about Jesus would I know

A further gospel song in the tradition of 729, this was written by Eliza Edmunds Hewitt of Philadelphia, USA, in 1887. It has become the best-known hymn by this former teacher whose spinal injury and resulting disability had at that time confined her at home in some pain. It was one of many which arose from her own reading of the Bible; the insistent ‘More …’, the initial word which comes 34 times in all as the hymn is sung (most of them starting a line), is a theme recurring in many NT Epistles (Ephesians 3:14ff; Philippians 3:8ff; Colossians 1:10; 1 Thessalonians 4:1, etc). The author may have had Fanny Crosby’s More like Jesus would I be, published 20 years before, in mind as she wrote her words; these can be seen as complementary to the earlier hymn, and have now largely outlived it.

Also in 1887, John R Sweney composed MORE ABOUT JESUS for these words. Together with Wm J Kirkpatrick, he edited Glad Hallelujahs where tune and text were first published together. Linda Mawson made the arrangement used here.

b Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA 1851, d Philadelphia 1920. Raised in a family where the Bible was read daily and gospel songs were sung and learnt, she attended the Girls’ Normal Sch in Philadelphia and spent her life in that city. She trained and worked as a schoolteacher and taught in Sunday School at the Olivet Presbyterian Ch and the Calvin Presbyterian Ch across town. Much of her time was also given to youngsters in the Northern Home for Friendless Children, even when a spinal injury had cut short her main career. Much of her verse was set to music by B D Ackley, C H Gabriel (both qv), J R Sweney (as here) and other evangelical musicians well-known in her N American generation. She sometimes used the pseudonym Lidie H Edmunds; different songs have made an impact on the British and American churches respectively, but her work became well-known in Pentecostal and Salvationist traditions. No.733.