Lyrics
Down in the valley with my Savior I will go,
Where the flow'rs are blooming and the sweet waters flow;
Everywhere He leads me I will follow, follow on,
Walking in His footsteps till the crown be won.
Follow! follow! I will follow Jesus!
Anywhere, everywhere, I will follow on!
Follow! follow! I will follow Jesus!
Everywhere He leads me I will follow on!
Down in the valley with my Savior I will go,
Where the storms are sweeping and the dark waters flow;
With His hand to lead me I will never, never fear,
Danger cannot fright me if my Lord is near.
Down in the valley, or upon the mountain steep,
Close beside my Savior will my soul ever keep;
He will lead me safely in the path that He has trod,
Up to where they gather on the hills of God.
Public domain hymn text and tune (published 1880-1881), based on Hosea 6:3.
The Story Behind the Hymn
William Orcutt Cushing wrote "Follow On" in 1878, describing later exactly what moved him to write it: "Longing to give up all for Christ who had given His life for me, I wanted to be willing to lay everything at His feet with no wish but to do His will, to live henceforth only for His glory. Out of this feeling came this hymn." He wrote it, he said, with the hope that some heart might be led by it to give up all for Christ.
Cushing himself credited much of the hymn's eventual reach to Robert Lowry, who composed the tune two years later, in 1880, and published it under the title FOLLOW ON in his 1881 collection Good as Gold: A New Collection of Sunday School Songs. Cushing was candid about the collaboration, saying plainly that much of the hymn's power and usefulness was due to Lowry, who "put it into song."
The text draws its scriptural grounding from Hosea 6:3 — "then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord" — a verse about the discipline of pursuing God rather than a single decisive moment of finding Him. Cushing's three verses trace that pursuit through changing terrain: valleys where flowers bloom, valleys swept by storm, and finally mountain heights, with the same resolve carried through each landscape.
Cushing, who wrote a number of well-loved gospel hymns despite being partially paralyzed and largely housebound in his later years, produced in "Follow On" one of his most enduring texts — a hymn less about arriving than about the willingness to keep walking, wherever the path leads.
