304. I Hear Thy Welcome Voice

The Story Behind the Hymn

Lewis Hartsough wrote both the words and music of "I Hear Thy Welcome Voice" in 1872 during a revival meeting in Epworth, Iowa, where he served as minister. The hymn was first published under the title "The Divine Invitation" in the periodical Guide to Holiness, and later that year in the revised edition of The Revivalist, a collection Hartsough himself edited.

A copy of Guide to Holiness reached Ira D. Sankey while he was in England with Dwight L. Moody conducting evangelistic campaigns. Sankey adopted the hymn immediately and included it in his widely circulated Sacred Songs and Solos, which carried it across England and back to America as one of the standard invitation hymns of the era — sung, as its refrain suggests, at the moment a congregation was called to come forward.

Sankey later recorded a story tied to the hymn: during a service in Washington, D.C., a passing merchant who had not entered a church in twenty years stopped to listen as the congregation sang stanza after stanza. He was moved to join the penitents at the altar and was converted that day. The hymn became his favorite, sung at home and in his store. Two weeks later, walking to work, he was overheard singing its refrain — "I am coming, Lord, to Thee" — moments before he slipped on icy pavement and was killed instantly. His wife, who had heard him singing those words as he left, later called the memory a lasting comfort.

Whatever one makes of that account, the hymn itself has endured on its own terms: six stanzas built entirely around a single repeated plea, each one adding a further dimension — cleansing, strength, faith, grace, witness, praise — to the same moment of coming to Christ.