Lyrics
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free;
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me.
Underneath me, all around me,
Is the current of Thy love;
Leading onward, leading homeward
To Thy glorious rest above.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Spread His praise from shore to shore;
How He loveth, ever loveth,
Changeth never, nevermore;
How He watches o'er His loved ones,
Died to call them all His own;
How for them He intercedeth,
Watcheth o'er them from the throne.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Love of every love the best;
'Tis an ocean vast of blessing,
'Tis a haven sweet of rest.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
'Tis a heaven of heavens to me;
And it lifts me up to glory,
For it lifts me up to Thee.
Public domain hymn text (1875). Words by Samuel Trevor Francis.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Samuel Trevor Francis, an English businessman and poet, wrote 'O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus' in 1875, in the period shortly after a personal crisis in which he had walked out onto a London bridge over the Thames intending to end his own life, before turning back.
Accounts of his life describe that moment as a genuine turning point, after which Francis devoted much of his remaining time to writing devotional poetry and hymns and to lay preaching, particularly within the Plymouth Brethren movement he became associated with.
The hymn's central image, love as 'a mighty ocean' rolling 'in its fullness over me,' echoes the same oceanic imagery found in the Welsh hymn 'Here Is Love, Vast as the Ocean,' part of a broader nineteenth-century tendency to reach for the sea, rather than smaller or more measurable images, when describing grace too large to fully take in.
Its language of being surrounded, 'underneath me, all around me,' by 'the current of Thy love' pictures divine love as something the singer is fully immersed in rather than something observed from a safe distance, a fitting image given the circumstances that are believed to have prompted the hymn's writing.
The hymn is most commonly sung today to the tune EBENEZER, also called TON-Y-BOTEL, composed by the Welsh musician Thomas J. Williams in 1890, the same widely used Welsh tune paired with 'Here Is Love, Vast as the Ocean.'
Its second verse turns from describing the love itself to describing Christ's ongoing activity on behalf of those He loves, watching over them and interceding for them 'from the throne,' extending the hymn's central metaphor from a single overwhelming wave into a picture of sustained, continuous care.
Given its origins in a moment of genuine personal despair, the hymn has often been noted in hymn history specifically for the contrast between the darkness of its writer's circumstances and the unqualified, hopeful confidence of the text that resulted from them.
