Lyrics
I will sing of my Redeemer
And His wondrous love to me;
On the cruel cross He suffered,
From the curse to set me free.
Sing, O sing of my Redeemer!
With His blood He purchased me;
On the cross He sealed my pardon,
Paid the debt, and made me free.
I will tell the wondrous story,
How my lost estate to save,
In His boundless love and mercy,
He the ransom freely gave.
I will sing of my Redeemer
And His heavenly love to me;
He from death to life has brought me,
Son of God, with Him to be.
Public domain hymn text and tune (words 1876, tune 1877). Words by Philip P. Bliss; music by James McGranahan.
The Story Behind the Hymn
"I Will Sing of My Redeemer" carries one of the more remarkable origin stories in American hymnody, because its words survived an event its author did not. Philip P. Bliss and his wife were traveling to Chicago on December 29, 1876, to assist at D. L. Moody's Tabernacle, when a bridge collapsed near Ashtabula, Ohio, and their train plunged into the icy ravine below. Bliss reportedly escaped through a window after the fall, then went back into the wreckage to search for his wife; the two died together as the cars caught fire.
Among the baggage later recovered from the wreck was a trunk containing hymn-poems Bliss had written but never set to music. One of them became "I Will Sing of My Redeemer." James McGranahan, deeply affected by his friend's death, composed the tune for it and, not long after, gave up his other musical pursuits to take over Bliss's role as Daniel Whittle's evangelistic song leader — the same partnership that would later produce "I Know Whom I Have Believed."
The hymn first reached print in 1877 in Welcome Tidings, a Sunday school collection compiled by Robert Lowry. It went on to claim an unusual technological distinction as well: it is generally credited as the first hymn ever recorded on the phonograph, sung by George C. Stebbins not long after Edison's invention made such recordings possible.
Sung on its own, the hymn is a straightforward song of gratitude for redemption. Read alongside the circumstances of its discovery — words pulled from a dead man's luggage and given a tune by the grieving friend who succeeded him — its refrain, "paid the debt, and made me free," carries an added weight its author never lived to hear sung.
