O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go

“My hymn was composed in the manse of Innellan on the evening of the 6th of June, 1882, when I was 40 years of age. I was alone in the manse at that time. It was the night of my sister’s marriage, and the rest of the family were staying overnight in Glasgow. Something happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering.

“The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression of having it dictated to me by some inward voice rather than of working it out myself. I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high.” – George Matheson

I have a fondness for hymns (which are great for teaching children; I have BSF to thank for that) and their stories. Our church sang the Robbie Seay Band version of O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go on Black Friday and it became the song that stuck with me through that whole period.

George Matheson was born in 1842 in Glasgow, graduating first in his university class in classics, logic and philosophy. Towards the end of that time he learned he was going blind; his fiancée at the time left him, saying she could not go through life with a blind man. He went on to study for and enter ministry as he had resolved to do, with the help and support of his sister, as by his early twenties he had gone completely blind. In 1866 he became assistant pastor in Innellan, where he wrote several works and became a theologian of some repute.

Matheson wrote this hymn in 1882, on the evening of his sister’s marriage, alone while the rest of the family had gone away. Perhaps he saw the dark years stretching out before him without his companion and helper. Perhaps the wedding reminded him of his own failed engagement. He never did marry, but in 1886 moved to Edinburgh, where he became minister of a church for thirteen years.

O Love that wilt not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in thee;

I give thee back the life I owe,

That in thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.

O Light that followest all my way,

I yield my flickering torch to thee;

My heart restores its borrowed ray,

That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day

May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise is not vain,

That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,

I dare not ask to fly from thee;

I lay in dust life’s glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be.