Lyrics
Hark! 'Tis the Shepherd's voice I hear,
Out in the desert dark and drear,
Calling the sheep who've gone astray,
Far from the Shepherd's fold away.
Bring them in, bring them in,
Bring them in from the fields of sin;
Bring them in, bring them in,
Bring the wandering ones to Jesus.
Who'll go and help this Shepherd kind,
Help Him the wandering ones to find?
Who'll bring the lost ones to the fold,
Where they'll be sheltered from the cold?
Out in the desert hear their cry,
Out on the mountains wild and high;
Hark! 'Tis the Master speaks to thee,
"Go find My sheep where'er they be."
Public domain hymn text and tune (published 1885). Words by Alexcenah Thomas; music by William A. Ogden.
The Story Behind the Hymn
"Bring Them In" was written by Alexcenah Thomas, about whom comparatively little biographical detail survives, and set to music by William Augustine Ogden, a far better documented figure in nineteenth-century American church music. The hymn was published in 1885, part of the same wave of Sunday school-oriented gospel songs that flourished in the decades after the Civil War, when Sunday schools had become a major engine of both childhood religious education and evangelistic outreach.
The hymn takes its central image directly from the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15, recasting the shepherd's search as an active summons to the listener: not simply a story about Christ seeking the lost, but a direct call — "who'll go and help this Shepherd kind?" — addressed to the singer as a potential participant in that same search.
Ogden, who composed the tune, was already well established as a hymn tune writer and music educator by the mid-1880s, and his setting gave Thomas's words a brisk, marching quality well suited to the hymn's central instruction, repeated four times in the refrain alone: bring them in.
Well over a century later, "Bring Them In" remains a familiar staple of evangelical hymnody, particularly in contexts emphasizing outreach and Sunday school ministry, its refrain functioning less as praise or petition than as a standing assignment handed directly to whoever happens to be singing it.
