Opening
Hymn for Spirit of Prophecy Sabbath, October 18, 2003
SDAH
#537
CH
#393
“HE
LEADETH ME”
In
the spring of 1862 Joseph Henry Gilmore, a Baptist minister, visited the city
of Philadelphia. During the midweek prayer meeting at the First Baptist church,
he spoke of God’s leadership, using part of the Shepherd Psalm (Psalm
23) as the basis for his talk. He was so impressed by the simple words, “He
Leadeth Me,” that he continued to discuss this theme at the home of his
host, Deacon Watson of Arch Street, Philadelphia. Gilmore’s mind was so
full of the thought of God’s guidance in every phase of life that he wrote
these four stanzas in pencil, and gave them to his wife without comment. Unknown
to her husband, she sent the poem to a religious periodical, The Watchman
and Reflector, in Boston. It appeared in print in the December 4, 1862,
issue, still without his knowledge. Three years later Gilmore preached in the
Baptist church in Rochester, New York. Opening a hymnbook at random, he was
astonished to find his own poem set to music. He did not recognize nor acknowledge
his authorship of the refrain until his wife’s death some years later,
when he discovered his original manuscript among her papers, complete with a
refrain, but of two lines only.
Gilmore
was born in Boston on April 29, 1834, and educated at Brown University and Newton
Theological Seminary. He was ordained into the Baptist ministry in 1862 and
served at Fisherville, New Hampshire, for a year. Then he was private secretary
to his father, the governor of New Hampshire, but after one year he began pastoring
the Baptist church in Rochester, New York. In 1868 he was appointed professor
of logic and English literature at the University of Rochester, a position he
held until he retired in 1911. He died at Rochester on July 23, 1918.
The
tune, sometimes called HE LEADETH ME, or AUGHTON, was composed by William Batchelder
Bradbury (1816-1868), and published in his The Golden Censer, 1864. He
had noticed Gilmore’s hymn in The Watchman and Reflector, enlarged
the refrain, and wrote his tune to fit the words.
BAdapted
from Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, by Wayne Hooper and
Edward E. White, 1988, pp. 511, 512.