Lyrics
Nothing between my soul and the Savior,
Naught of this world's delusive dream;
I have renounced all sinful pleasure;
Jesus is mine, there's nothing between.
Nothing between my soul and the Savior,
So that His blessed face may be seen;
Nothing preventing the least of His favor;
Keep the way clear! Let nothing between.
Nothing between, like worldly pleasure;
Habits of life, though harmless they seem,
Must not my heart from Him ever sever;
He is my all, there's nothing between.
Nothing between, like pride or station;
Self, or friends shall not intervene;
Though it may cost me much tribulation,
I am resolved, there's nothing between.
Nothing between, e'en many hard trials,
Though the whole world against me convene;
Watching with prayer and much self denial,
Triumph at last, there's nothing between.
Public domain hymn text and tune (published 1905). Words and music by Charles Albert Tindley.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Charles Albert Tindley wrote "Nothing Between" in 1905, part of the same remarkably productive stretch of hymn writing that also produced "We'll Understand It Better By and By" and "Stand By Me." By one frequently repeated account of its origin, Tindley was working at his desk on a sermon when a sudden gust of wind blew a stack of his papers across the room, scattering them over his work. As he gathered them back up, the phrase came to him almost as a private resolution before it became a hymn: let nothing come between.
From that small domestic irritation, Tindley built a hymn entirely around the idea of an unobstructed relationship with Christ — not a hymn about a single dramatic sin to be renounced, but about the slow accumulation of smaller, more ordinary obstructions: habits that seem harmless, pride, the good opinion of friends, worldly pleasure. Each verse names something specific enough to have come from real pastoral experience, then insists, in the same closing phrase every time, that it be cleared away.
Tindley, who rose from working as a janitor at Philadelphia's Bainbridge Street Methodist Church to becoming its pastor and eventually the leader of one of the largest Methodist congregations in the country, wrote from within a community that understood the cost of "much tribulation" named plainly in the hymn's third verse — not as an abstraction, but as an accurate description of daily life.
Now well over a century old, "Nothing Between" remains one of Tindley's most frequently sung hymns, its insistent refrain — repeated after every verse, four times reinforcing the same single idea — still functioning exactly as its author intended: as a standing resolution, renewed each time it is sung.
