Lyrics
Some day the silver cord will break,
And I no more as now shall sing;
But, oh, the joy when I shall wake
Within the palace of the King!
And I shall see Him face to face,
And tell the story—saved by grace;
And I shall see Him face to face,
And tell the story—saved by grace.
Some day my earthly house will fall,
I cannot tell how soon 'twill be;
But this I know—my All in All
Has now a place in heaven for me.
Some day, when fades the golden sun
Beneath the rosy-tinted west,
My blessed Lord will say, "Well done!"
And I shall enter into rest.
Some day: till then I'll watch and wait,
My lamp all trimmed and burning bright,
That when my Savior opes the gate,
My soul to Him may take its flight.
Public domain hymn text (1894). Words by Fanny J. Crosby.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Fanny Crosby wrote 'Saved by Grace' in 1894, late in a songwriting career that by this point already spanned several decades and thousands of hymn texts, and set it to music composed by George C. Stebbins, one of the leading gospel song composers of the era.
Its opening image, 'the silver cord will break,' draws directly on Ecclesiastes 12:6, part of a passage describing the body's eventual decline and death using a series of physical metaphors, a cord, a golden bowl, a broken pitcher, all breaking or failing at life's end.
Crosby, blind since infancy, wrote about death and the afterlife throughout her long career with a notable, consistent calm, and this hymn is no exception, treating the body's collapse almost matter-of-factly before moving quickly to the joy of what follows.
Its central image, an 'earthly house' that will eventually 'fall,' echoes Paul's language in 2 Corinthians 5, which describes the body as a temporary 'earthly house of this tabernacle' contrasted with 'a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'
The hymn's refrain states its central hope in the plainest possible terms, seeing Christ 'face to face' and simply telling 'the story—saved by grace,' condensing an entire theology of salvation into a five-word phrase meant to be sung with total confidence.
Crosby continued producing hymns well into her eighties, and this text, written when she was already in her seventies, reflects the same undiminished clarity and directness found throughout her much earlier, more famous work like 'Blessed Assurance.'
The hymn remained a popular funeral and testimony hymn throughout the twentieth century, valued for approaching death not as a subject to be avoided but as simply the next, expected stage of a story whose ending, in Crosby's own confident telling, was never really in doubt.
