Frederick M. Lehman, a Nazarene minister, was the author and composer of this well-beloved hymn. Thirty-one years later, in 1948, he wrote a pamphlet entitled History of the Song, The Love of God.
“While at camp-meeting in a mid-western state, some fifty years ago in my early ministry, an evangelist climaxed his message by quoting the last stanza of this song. The profound depths of the line moved me to preserve the words for future generations. Not until we (he and his wife Zelma) had come to California did this urge find fulfillment, and that at a time when circumstances forced me to hard manual labor. One day, during short intervals of inattention to my work, I picked up a scrap of paper and, seated upon an empty lemon box pushed against the wall, with a stub pencil, added the first two stanzas and chorus of the song.”
Since words very similar to the third verse of this hymn were found penciled on the wall of a deceased patient’s room in an insane asylum, it has been thought that the inmate was the original author of the third verse. Actually, the third verse was adapted from a stanza in a very long Jewish poem (Hadamut) written by a German rabbi in the eleventh century:
Were the sky of parchment made,
A quill each reed, each twig and blade,
Could we with ink the oceans fill,
Were every man a scribe of skill,
The marvelous story, Of God’s great glory
Would still remain untold;
For He, most high
The earth and sky created alone of old.
