Lyrics
Face to face with Christ, my Savior,
Face to face — what will it be,
When with rapture I behold Him,
Jesus Christ who died for me?
Face to face I shall behold Him,
Far beyond the starry sky;
Face to face in all His glory,
I shall see Him by and by!
Only faintly now I see Him,
With the darkened veil between,
But a blessed day is coming,
When His glory shall be seen.
What rejoicing in His presence,
When are banished grief and pain;
When the crooked ways are straightened,
And the dark things shall be plain.
Face to face — oh, blissful moment!
Face to face — to see and know;
Face to face with my Redeemer,
Jesus Christ who loves me so.
Public domain hymn text and tune (published 1899). Words by Carrie E. Breck; music by Grant C. Tullar.
The Story Behind the Hymn
"Face to Face" was written by Carrie E. Breck in 1898 and paired, almost by coincidence, with a tune Grant Colfax Tullar had already composed. Tullar, who was assisting with evangelistic meetings in Rutherford, New Jersey, found himself preoccupied one evening with the phrase "all for me." He sat down at the piano and worked out a melody along with a few lines of his own.
The next morning, a letter arrived from Breck containing several of her poems and a request that Tullar set one of them to music. Among them was "Face to face with Christ my Savior" — and its words fit the tune he had composed the night before almost exactly. Tullar set the two together, and the hymn was first sung publicly in 1899 at the First Presbyterian Church in Vineland, New Jersey, not far from where Breck herself had spent most of her life.
Breck, born in Vermont in 1855 and raised from childhood in Vineland, wrote hundreds of hymn texts over her lifetime, but "Face to Face" became by far her best known. Its central image draws on Psalm 17:15 — "I will behold Thy face in righteousness" — and turns the psalmist's confidence into a forward-looking hope: not a partial, veiled glimpse of Christ, but an unmediated encounter, seen and known at last.
The hymn's appeal lies partly in its restraint. It does not describe heaven in detail or dwell on judgment; it simply anticipates one moment, repeated at the end of every stanza — face to face, at last, with the One only dimly seen before.
