When we walk with the Lord

Although the chorus here is often detached from the stzs (as in CSSM/Scripture Union Choruses 1921 and later editions, as well as some contemporary hymnals, and 441), unlike the earlier text this one is also widely used in full. At an evangelistic meeting conducted by D L Moody at Brockton, Massachusetts, in 1886, a young man came to the front and said ‘I am not quite sure—but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.’ Daniel B Towner, the song leader for the evening, jotted down the words and sent them to his friend John Sammis, who instantly put them into a single 4-line stz; this became the refrain of the hymn he later wrote and published in the 1887 Hymns Old and New in Chicago. The original 2nd stz read ‘Not a shadow can rise,/ not a cloud in the skies,/ but his smile quickly drives it away;/ not a doubt nor a fear,/ not a sigh nor a tear,/ can abide while we trust and obey’. Hidden away there was the truth expressed in the next stz (or more succinctly in 295 2.6). But as it stood it was plainly untrue (to Scripture and experience), and produced either thoughtless singing or needless guilt, as if every cloud or shadow resulted from personal failure or sin. Anne Bronté’s one surviving hymn begins ‘Believe not those who say/ the upward path is smooth …’! Even stz 3, it was felt, could be made more real and intelligible than the negatives of ‘Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow …’ (etc). Taking further risks, the editors judged that we can, after all, ‘prove/ the delights of his love’ while falling short of what another hymn called ‘perfect submission’; what we cannot yet prove is the extent of it (Ephesians 3:18–19), while still using ‘prove’ in the sense of trial rather than legal demonstration. The final stz happily remains, but there is certainly more in an apparently simple hymn than meets the eye, and few texts show more clearly the need to ‘sing with the understanding’.

The inseparable and lilting tune TRUST AND OBEY, composed by Daniel Towner (see above) for the words, can also lull us into enjoying it as a mere jingle unless it is played and sung with care. It appeared with the words in the 1887 book.

b Brooklyn, New York, USA 1846, d Los Angeles, Calif 1919. He moved from New York to Logansport, Indiana, when he was 23, to work in a business which he later relinquished to serve with the YMCA. Already active as a Christian layman, he then trained at the Lane and McCormick Seminaries and in 1880 was ordained to serve in the Presbyterian Ch. He ministered to congregations in Iowa, Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota, and from 1909 onwards taught at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. He wrote over 100 gospel songs, becoming one of many such authors who are known for one worldwide success. No.853.