Lyrics
You have longed for sweet peace,
And for faith to increase,
And have earnestly, fervently prayed;
But you cannot have rest,
Or be perfectly blest,
Until all on the altar is laid.
Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?
Your heart does the Spirit control?
You can only be blest,
And have peace and sweet rest,
As you yield Him your body and soul.
Would you walk with the Lord,
In the light of His word,
And have peace and contentment alway?
You must do His sweet will,
To be free from all ill,
On the altar your all you must lay.
Oh, we never can know
What the Lord will bestow
Of the blessings for which we have prayed,
Till our body and soul
He doth fully control,
And our all on the altar is laid.
Who can tell all the love
He will send from above,
And how happy our hearts will be made;
Of the fellowship sweet
We shall share at His feet,
When our all on the altar is laid.
Public domain hymn text and tune (published 1900), based on Romans 12:1.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Elisha Albright Hoffman wrote both the words and music of "Is Your All on the Altar?" in 1900. Born in 1839 in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, to a minister who served the Evangelical Association for more than sixty years, Hoffman grew up steeped in church life and went on to be ordained a Presbyterian minister himself in 1873 after completing his studies at Union Seminary.
Over the course of his life, Hoffman wrote more than two thousand hymns and edited over fifty hymn and song collections — an output that places him among the most prolific gospel songwriters of his generation. Alongside "Is Your All on the Altar?" his best-known hymns include "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," "Are You Washed in the Blood," "Glory to His Name," and "I Must Tell Jesus" — several of which, like this one, take the form of a direct question posed to the listener rather than a statement of praise.
That questioning structure is central to the hymn's effect. Each stanza builds toward the same refrain, phrased not as an assurance but as an inquiry: is your all on the altar? The image draws on Romans 12:1, Paul's call to present the body as a living sacrifice, and Hoffman's text treats that sacrifice as a precondition for peace rather than a response to it — rest and blessing withheld, in the hymn's own logic, until the whole self is laid down.
Hoffman lived to be ninety, dying in Chicago in 1929, leaving behind a body of hymns still sung today — many of them, like this one, built around the same searching question he clearly returned to often in his own life and ministry.
