Lyrics
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,
Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;
Weep o'er the erring one, lift up the fallen,
Tell them of Jesus the mighty to save.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying;
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
Though they are slighting Him, still He is waiting,
Waiting the penitent child to receive;
Plead with them earnestly, plead with them gently;
He will forgive if they only believe.
Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore;
Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness,
Chords that are broken will vibrate once more.
Rescue the perishing, duty demands it;
Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide;
Back to the narrow way patiently win them;
Tell the poor wanderer a Savior has died.
Public domain hymn text (published 1869). Words by Fanny J. Crosby.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Fanny Crosby wrote this hymn in 1869, after a personal visit to a rescue mission located in a rough, genuinely dangerous, and deeply poverty-stricken neighborhood of New York City.
This type of urban ministry grew rapidly and significantly in scale throughout the later decades of the nineteenth century, as American cities industrialized at enormous speed. Huge numbers of rural migrants and immigrants were drawn into overcrowded urban slums, where many people quickly fell into desperate circumstances — unemployment, addiction, homelessness — with essentially no organized social safety net available to catch them.
During that particular visit, Crosby later recounted, a troubled young man in evident visible distress approached her directly. He told her, apparently unprompted, that he still vividly remembered his own mother’s prayers for him from years earlier, even though his own adult life had since wandered very far indeed from the sincere Christian faith she had once tried so hard to instill in him as a child.
It was a confession Crosby found unexpectedly affecting, given how many such encounters she had already had over years of visiting missions of exactly this kind.
The encounter affected Crosby deeply enough that she wrote this hymn largely as a direct response to it. Its language is notably addressed less to the person already comfortably settled inside the church walls, than outward, urgently, to fellow believers themselves.
It actively urges, and even commands, them to go out and deliberately seek those the wider world might already have quietly written off, or considered too far gone to bother reaching: ‘rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch them in pity from sin and the grave.’
The hymn’s urgent, active, imperative language reflected the broader urban rescue mission movement rapidly gaining momentum across American cities during exactly this period. Crosby herself remained an active, hands-on, lifelong supporter and participant in that movement, rather than merely a sympathetic outside observer.
She continued to personally visit missions, prisons, and hospitals well into her own advanced old age, decades after writing this particular call to action — treating such visits as an ongoing extension of the very hymn she had written to inspire others toward the same work.
