Lyrics
There was a time on earth when in the book of Heav'n
An old account was standing for sins yet unforgiv'n;
My name was at the top, and many things below —
I went unto the Keeper, and settled long ago.
Long ago, long ago,
Yes, the old account was settled long ago;
And the record's clear today, for He washed my sins away,
When the old account was settled long ago.
The old account was large, and growing every day,
For I was always sinning, and never tried to pay;
But when I looked ahead, and saw such pain and woe,
I said that I would settle — I settled long ago.
When in that happy home, my Savior's home above,
I'll sing redemption's story, and praise Him for His love;
I'll not forget that book, with pages white as snow,
Because I came and settled, and settled long ago.
O sinner, trust the Lord, be cleansed of all your sin,
For thus He hath provided for you to enter in;
And then if you should live a hundred years below,
Up there you'll not regret it — you settled long ago.
Public domain hymn text and tune (written 1902).
The Story Behind the Hymn
Frank Monford Graham wrote "The Old Account Was Settled Long Ago" in 1902 at the Oliver Gospel Mission in Columbia, South Carolina. Graham, born in 1859 in Birmingham, Schuyler County, Illinois, was a Wesleyan Methodist minister and song evangelist who spent much of his career helping expand the Holiness movement through the American South, particularly in South Carolina and Georgia. In 1906 he was among the founders of the Wesleyan Methodist Bible Institute in Central, South Carolina — the institution now known as Southern Wesleyan University.
Graham wrote as many as a hundred gospel songs and hymns over his lifetime, publishing several editions of his own hymnal, Songs for Jesus. Of that entire output, "The Old Account Was Settled" became by far his most widely known and lasting contribution — recorded decades later by artists as varied as Johnny Cash, the Cathedrals, the Statler Brothers, and the Booth Brothers.
The hymn builds its entire argument around a single sustained metaphor: sin as a ledger entry, an account standing open and growing in the book of Heaven, settled only through Christ. It is a distinctly commercial image for a Holiness-era gospel song, trading the language of blood and cleansing common to the period for the language of debt, payment, and a clear record — fitting for a hymn written, as its account suggests, out of Graham's own ministry among the poor and struggling at a city rescue mission.
Graham held a striking conviction about his own songwriting: he believed the songs he wrote were gifts from God, and on that basis he refused to copyright any of them, so that anyone, anywhere, could sing them freely. "The Old Account" has borne that decision out, remaining in wide and uncomplicated use more than a century after it was written.
