Lyrics
Tell me the old, old story
Of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory,
Of Jesus and His love.
Tell me the story simply,
As to a little child,
For I am weak and weary,
And helpless and defiled.
Tell me the old, old story,
Tell me the old, old story,
Tell me the old, old story
Of Jesus and His love.
Tell me the story slowly,
That I may take it in—
That wonderful redemption,
God's remedy for sin.
Tell me the story often,
For I forget so soon;
The early dew of morning
Has passed away at noon.
Tell me the story softly,
With earnest tones and grave;
Remember I’m the sinner
Whom Jesus came to save.
Tell me the story always,
If you would really be,
In any time of trouble,
A comforter to me.
Public domain hymn text (published 1866). Words by Katherine Hankey.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Katherine Hankey came from a prosperous English banking family and became deeply involved in Sunday school teaching among factory workers and young working-class women in London, later carrying out similar mission work in South Africa — unusual public roles for a woman of her social class at the time.
In 1866, a serious illness left her bedridden for months. She spent much of that time writing a long poem retelling the life of Christ from beginning to end, eventually dividing the finished work into two separate parts.
The first part, titled ‘The Story Wanted,’ became this hymn. It is written from the perspective of someone asking for the familiar gospel story to be told again, simply, ‘as to a little child.’
That framing reflects Hankey’s own experience teaching Bible basics to students with little formal education, for whom plain, repeated retelling mattered far more than theological depth or complexity.
The second part of her original poem, ‘The Story Told,’ later became a companion hymn in its own right: ‘I Love to Tell the Story,’ hymn 67 in this collection, written from the opposite perspective of someone who has heard the story and now feels compelled to retell it to others.
Both hymns emerged from the same sickbed and the same long poem, yet went on to live separate lives, set to different tunes and published years apart from one another.
Together, they capture the full circle Hankey seems to have had in mind from the start: hearing the gospel, and then telling it again, repeated endlessly across generations of believers she would never personally meet.
