Hymn Study: Come to the Saviour

Last Sunday we sang this song at church. It’s been running through my head ALL WEEK LONG so I thought I should share that joy with you. (and yes, it actually HAS BEEN a joy).

So today.. enjoy Come to the Saviour. 

Written by George F. Root, a American man with a love of music.  By age 13 he could play several different instruments, he played organ as an adult, and taught in the New York Institute for the blind.  He wrote both sacred and secular music, both tunes and words.  By the time of his death he had published more than 500 pieces of music.   He sometimes used the German name Wurzel (Also meaning root) in his music.  

Come to the Saviour is a simple invitational hymn.  I read this story over at CyberHymnal 
 
“In 1879 I was as­sist­ing in re­viv­al meet­ings in Dan­ville,
Cal­i­forn­ia,” writes the pas­tor of a Pres­by­ter­ian Church at
Oak­land. “The meet­ings were well at­tend­ed and good in­ter­est was
ex­hib­it­ed, but for a long time there were no con­ver­sions. In the
neigh­bor­hood there was a man who, with his wife and child­ren,
at­tend­ed the church re­gu­lar­ly, and he was one of its lib­er­al
sup­port­ers. They were most ex­cel­lent peo­ple, but could not be
in­duced to pro­fess Christ, and did not call them­selves Christ­ians.
One day, while the men were hold­ing ser­vic­es in the church the wo­men
were hav­ing a pray­er-meet­ing in the manse near by. In the course of
the meet­ing they sang ‘Come to the Sav­iour, make no de­lay.’ The
sing­ing over, they were about to en­gage in pray­er, when the la­dy
above re­ferred to asked them to sing the last verse of this hymn…The
la­dy was great­ly af­fect­ed and when the sing­ing ceased she said with
deep emo­tion: ‘Yes, I will not stay away any long­er.’ The wo­men were
all deep­ly moved, and prayed and praised God with warm hearts. When
the word reached the men they were great­ly en­cour­aged at the good
news. A re­viv­al fol­lowed, …. This hymn seemed to have been the means of
reach­ing the wife’s heart, and of open­ing the way for the bless­ing
which fol­lowed.”
 
I love listening to men singing hymns.  Enjoy this version from Guam.  🙂

Sources: 
Cyber Hymnal
Wordwise Hymns.
Hymnary.
Hymntime. 
PDMusic.