My faith has found a resting place,
Not in device or creed;
I trust the Ever-living One,
His wounds for me shall plead.
I need no other argument,
I need no other plea,
It is enough that Jesus died,
And that He died for me.
Enough for me that Jesus saves,
This ends my fear and doubt;
A sinful soul I come to Him,
He'll never cast me out.
My heart is leaning on the Word,
The written Word of God,
Salvation by my Savior's name,
Salvation through His blood.
My great Physician heals the sick,
The lost He came to save;
For me His precious blood He shed,
For me His life He gave.
Public domain hymn text (published c. 1891). Words attributed to Lidie H. Edmunds.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Unlike most hymns in this collection, the story behind “My Faith Has Found a Resting Place” includes a genuine, unresolved mystery: almost nothing certain is known about “Lidie H. Edmunds,” the name under which the hymn was first published around 1891. No verified biographical record of a hymn writer by that name has ever been established, and hymnologists who have researched the question over the decades since have not reached agreement on who actually wrote it.
Some scholars of hymn history have suggested “Lidie H. Edmunds” may have been a pen name adopted by another writer of the period, though no candidate has been confirmed with certainty, and the matter remains one of the small open questions of American gospel hymnody. It is not an unusual situation for the era: women writers in particular sometimes published under pseudonyms, whether by personal preference, publishing convention, or simply because publishers were cautious about crediting too many songs in a single hymnal to any one name.
What is not in question is the hymn's content and its lasting appeal. Its central claim is a deliberate rejection of relying on theological argument, church tradition, or personal religious credentials as the ground of faith — “not in device or creed” — in favor of a single, simple fact: that Christ died, and died specifically for the individual singer. The refrain, “I need no other argument, I need no other plea,” became one of the most quoted lines in American gospel hymnody, prized for compressing an entire theology of grace into four short lines that required no scholarly explanation to understand.
The tune most commonly paired with the words was composed by William James Kirkpatrick, a prolific Philadelphia-based composer and publisher who wrote or arranged music for a great many gospel hymns during the late 1800s and was a central figure in the gospel song publishing industry of his era. His setting helped the hymn spread widely through gospel song collections and revival meetings even as the identity of the person who wrote its words remained, and remains, uncertain.
