O Love, that wilt not let me go

Love and life anew
In heaven's realm
Of love, peace, joy.
Thank You, Lord!

The lyrics makes you feel the presence of our Lord. And the music is so beautiful. I am in the process of a family tree to see if the Composer is in my family tree.

Albert L. Peace

This is a very special hymn to me. It has gotten me through some of the roughest parts of my life. It reminds me of how God is our love and as our love, He never lets us go, especially during the storm filled moments of our lives. He brings us out of the rain, to shelter, to safety, to complete joy.

Nice song. By George Matheson

History of Hymn

“O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” written on the evening of Matheson’s sister’s marriage. His whole family had went to the wedding and had left him alone. And he writes of something which had happened to him that caused immense mental anguish. There is a story of how years before, he had been engaged until his fiancé learned that he was going blind, and there was nothing the doctors could do, and she told him that she could not go through life with a blind man. He went blind while studying for the ministry, and his sister had been the one who had taken care of him all these years, but now she is gone. He had been a brilliant student, some say that if he hadn’t went blind he could have been the leader of the church of Scotland in his day. He had written a learned work on German theology and then wrote “The Growth of The Spirit of Christianity.” Louis Benson says this was a brilliant book but with some major mistakes in it. When some critics pointed out the mistakes and charged him with being an inaccurate student he was heartbroken. One of his friends wrote, “When he saw that for the purposes of scholarship his blindness was a fatal hindrance, he withdrew from the field – not without pangs, but finally.” So he turned to the pastoral ministry, and the Lord has richly blessed him, finally bringing him to a church where he regularly preached to over 1500 people each week. But he was only able to do this because of the care of his sister and now she was married and gone. Who will care for him, a blind man? Not only that, but his sister’s marriage brought fresh reminder of his own heartbreak, over his fiancé’s refusal to “go through life with a blind man.” It is the midst of this circumstance and intense sadness that the Lord gives him this hymn – written he says in 5 minutes! Looking back over his life, he once wrote that his was “an obstructed life, a circumscribed life… but a life of quenchless hopefulness, a life which has beaten persistently against the cage of circumstance, and which even at the time of abandoned work has said not “Good night” but “Good morning.” How could he maintain quenchless hopefulness in the midst of such circumstances and trials? His hymn gives us a clue. “I trace the rainbow in the rain, and feel the promise is not vain” The rainbow image is not for him “If the Lord gives you lemons make lemonade” but a picture of the Lord’s commitment! It is a picture of the battle bow that appears when the skies are darkening and threaten to open up and flood the world again in judgment. But then we see that the battle bow is turned not towards us – but toward the Lord Himself!

Hi, thank you for re-writing some of the melody for the olden hymns, and it would be nice if you can have someone to show us how to sing the hymns as well, so that we can sing them with the proper melody. Anyway, thanks for the great effort. Blessings, Grace

What a beautiful song! To see life in such a light what a blessing it must be. Lord, may your light follow us all our way. May you keep us every day.

The person who wrote this song must have had a lot of experiance! I went to a funeral once, when they sang this song, I just started crying 'cause it reminded me of that person. PRAISE THE LORD!

Sometimes when i felt that i'm very down, and have no faith also hope. But since i listen to this hymns, the Lord have given me the best answer that is, i still have someone to rely, thus this hymn also touches me and thus some times reminds me, that i've had owed the the Lord has given me the life and thus i must pay back to Him, yet He is also my joy when i feel very unhappy or stressed, yet my inward being is also fell with oy and loght and of couse the Cross that i must carry with Him and thus to enjoy Him to the uttermost...