Again, thanks.

Robert

Meanwhile, the Cyber Hymnal has a section called Scripture Allusions that may be of some help. And I have a little book (likely long out of print) called Hymn and Scripture Selection Guide (by Donald A. Spencer, published by Judson Press in 1977). It cross-references 12,000 verses of Scripture with 380 hymns and gospel songs.

The Hymnal for Worship & Celebration (not The Celebration Hymnal, put out by the same publisher) has an Index of Scripture Texts and Adaptations in Hymns. The Hymnal for Worship & Celebration, predates the other book. It was published by Word Music in 1986.

There are a few ideas, anyway. Thanks for the question. It’s got me thinking.

The first two stanzas and the refrain of the song were written in 1917 by Frederick Martin Lehman (1868-1953). He also wrote the melody, and his daughter, Claudia Lehman Mays (1892-1973) added the harmony.

Frederick Lehman emigrated from Germany to the United States with his family, when he was four years old. They settled in Iowa, where he lived through his childhood years. In adulthood, Lehman served with the Church of the Nazarene denomination, sometimes as a pastor, but he was also instrumental in starting the Nazarene Publishing House. And all through his life he wrote many poems and songs.

In 1917, the writer was living in California, and he says that “[financial] circumstances forced us to hard manual labour.” He worked for a citrus fruit packer that moved up to thirty tons of lemons and oranges a day, packing them in wooden boxes for shipment. At a campmeeting some time before, he had heard a soul-stirring message about God’s love, and the theme filled his thoughts one day at work. During a break, he sat down on an empty lemon box, pushed against the wall, and with the stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper, he wrote the lines that are now familiar to us.

When he reached home, he hurried to their old upright piano and created a melody to fit. But the song seemed incomplete. Only two stanzas. He tried to produce another, but somehow the words simply wouldn’t come. It was then he remembered some lines of verse that had been quoted in that sermon he’d heard about God’s love. At the time, little cards had been distributed with the poem printed on them. “Now, if I can just find that card!” Frederick Lehman said. And he did–he’d been using it as a bookmark.

Amazingly, in the providence of God, the words on the card perfectly fit the metre of the poem he had already written. But there is a further unusual story connected with those lines. We have learned that the little poem was found pencilled on the wall of a mental hospital, after the patient had died. At first, it was assumed that the man had written the poem himself, but that was not quite so.

The third stanza of the song, beginning “Could we with ink the ocean fill…” was actually paraphrased from a much longer poem, written by Rabbi Mayer, son of Isaac Nehorai, in the year 1096. Rabbi Mayer was a Jewish cantor in the city of Worms, Germany. (His long poem, called Hadamut, is still read in synagogues at the beginning of the Feast of Weeks, at harvest time.) Whether the unnamed hospital patient had translated the words himself from the original Aramaic, we do not know. But their profound imagery helps us to understand the infinite vastness of God’s love for us.