Lyrics
I am resolved no longer to linger,
Charmed by the world's delight;
Things that are higher, things that are nobler,
These have allured my sight.
I will hasten to Him,
Hasten so glad and free;
Jesus, greatest, highest,
I will come to Thee.
I am resolved to go to the Savior,
Leaving my sin and strife;
He is the true one, He is the just one,
He has the words of life.
I am resolved, and who will go with me?
Come, friends, without delay;
Taught by the Bible, led by the Spirit,
We'll walk the heavenly way.
Public domain hymn text and tune (published 1896). Words by Palmer Hartsough; music by James H. Fillmore.
The Story Behind the Hymn
"I Am Resolved" came about through a request rather than sudden inspiration. James H. Fillmore, of the Fillmore Brothers music publishing house in Cincinnati, had already written a tune he wanted to see reach a wider audience, and he turned to Palmer Hartsough, a staff writer at the firm since 1893, and asked him to provide new words that could carry it further.
Hartsough obliged, and the finished hymn was published in 1896 in The Praise Hymnal. It found its widest early use at a national convention of Christian Endeavor — a large interdenominational youth movement of the era — held in San Francisco. According to one well-documented account, fourteen separate trainloads of delegates, traveling from Ohio all the way to California, sang the new hymn together along the way, turning a cross-country journey into a kind of rolling debut performance. Hartsough is said to have written the words partly as a tribute to Francis Edward Clark, the founder of Christian Endeavor.
The hymn's structure — "I am resolved" opening each verse — casts it less as praise or petition than as a public declaration, a decision announced rather than merely felt, ending with a direct invitation for others to join: "I am resolved, and who will go with me?"
Hartsough went on to write texts for well over a thousand hymns during his years with Fillmore, but "I Am Resolved," carried west by fourteen trainloads of young Christian Endeavor delegates in its very first year, remained one of the most widely sung.
