Lyrics
Dying with Jesus, by death reckoned mine;
Living with Jesus, a new life divine;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine,
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.
Moment by moment I'm kept in His love;
Moment by moment I've life from above;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.
Never a trial that He is not there,
Never a burden that He doth not bear,
Never a sorrow that He doth not share,
Moment by moment, I'm under His care.
Never a weakness that He doth not feel,
Never a sickness that He cannot heal;
Moment by moment, in woe or in weal,
Jesus, my Savior, abides with me still.
Public domain hymn text and tune (published 1893). Words by Daniel W. Whittle; music by his daughter, May Whittle Moody.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Daniel W. Whittle wrote "Moment by Moment" in 1893 after a conversation at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. An English preacher named Henry Varley remarked to Whittle that he was not especially fond of the well-known hymn "I Need Thee Every Hour" — not because the sentiment was wrong, Varley explained, but because he felt his own need for Christ was constant, not something that arrived only hour by hour. The comment stayed with Whittle, and he sat down and wrote this hymn in response, narrowing the interval from an hour to a single moment.
The tune was composed not by one of Whittle's usual musical collaborators, James McGranahan or George Stebbins, but by his own daughter, May Whittle. She had studied at Oberlin College and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and this hymn became one of her best-known contributions to gospel song. The year after "Moment by Moment" was written, she married William R. Moody, son of the evangelist D. L. Moody — linking, through that marriage, two of the era's most prominent evangelistic families.
First printed as a leaflet in 1893, the hymn was picked up the following year in Christian Endeavor Hymns and again in 1896 in Sacred Songs No. 1, edited jointly by Sankey, McGranahan, and Stebbins. It became especially popular in England.
Built almost entirely around the repeated phrase "moment by moment," the hymn takes Varley's passing remark and turns it into its central theological claim: not periodic dependence on Christ, but continuous dependence, renewed at every instant rather than merely every hour.
