I need thee every hour

I. Text

In 1872, Annie Sherwood Hawks (1835–1918) and her husband Charles were living in Brooklyn, NY, when she wrote her most famous hymn, “I need thee every hour.” Toward the end of her life, Hawks provided a detailed account of the composition of the hymn and what it meant to her:

Whenever my attention is called to it, I am conscious of great satisfaction in the thought that I was permitted to write the hymn “I need thee every hour,” and that it was wafted out to the world on the wings of love and joy, rather than under the stress of a great personal sorrow, with which it has so often been associated in the minds of those who sing it.

I remember well the morning, many years ago, when in the midst of the daily cares of my home, then in a distant city, I was so filled with the sense of nearness to the Master that, wondering how one could live without Him either in joy or pain, these words “I need thee every hour” were ushered into my mind, the thought at once taking full possession of me.

Seating myself by the open window in the balmy air of the bright June day, I caught my pencil and the words were soon committed to paper, almost as they are being sung today. It was only by accident, it would seem, that they were set to music a few months after and sung for the first time at a Sunday School Convention held in one of the large western cities. From there they were taken farther west and sung by thousands of voices before the echo came back to me, thrilling my heart with surprise and gladness.

For myself, the hymn was prophetic rather than expressive of my own experience at the time it was written, and I do not understand why it so touched the great throbbing heart of humanity. It was not until long years after, when the shadow fell over my way—the shadow of a great loss—that I understood something of the comforting in the words I had been permitted to write and give out to others in my hours of sweet security and peace. Now when I hear them sung, as I have sometimes, by hundreds of voices in chorus, I find it difficult to think they were ever, consciously, my own thought or penned by my own hand.[1]

Regarding the loss she said experienced later in life, her husband died in Brooklyn in 1888 at age 55. They had three children, only one of whom, a daughter, was still living in 1893.

II. Tune & Publication

A few years before writing the words to this hymn, she had established a songwriting connection with composer Robert Lowry (1826–1899), who had been pastor of Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn from 1861 to 1869, but had left to take a professorship at his alma mater, the University of Lewisburg in Pennsylvania. Hawks apparently sent the lyrics to Lowry, and he composed a tune for it (usually called NEED). The song was included in a special collection of hymns prepared for National Baptist Sunday School Convention at Ninth Street Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, November 20–22, 1872, for which William Doane was the music director and Robert Lowry was a guest speaker.[2] The songbook for the convention was called New Sacred Songs, Prepared Expressly for the National Baptist S.S. Convention (Cincinnati, 1872 | Fig. 1), edited by William Doane.

At the convention, Lowry was asked to address the issue of the extent of Sunday School education, which he felt should be available to people of every age:

We take the little folks—the toddlers—in the infant school; we take the young men and the maidens; we take the old men and the old women; we take them all; from the time they can begin to lisp or totter again—this time with gray upon their heads, their whole bodies’ weight upon a staff. Let them come in—all of them; come in—and if the little babe in arms, even, can understand the simple story of how Jesus came into the world to save sinners, even little sinners like that babe in arms, come in![3]

He also called for a reform of Sunday School music:

Lift up the Sunday-school. Let there be a radical renovation of the whole system, and let it extend to the singing. . . . We have a class of hymns that no really intelligent person, who loves his intellectuality, would attempt to sing. More and more we must weed out that miserable stuff. I say to you here, in confidence, upon this platform, that, God sparing and helping me, whatever he permits me to do in that line, I will do for the Sunday-school hymnody.[4]

“I need thee every hour,” it seems, was an important contribution to that end. It was first published broadly in Royal Diadem for the Sunday School (NY: Biglow & Main, 1873 | Fig. 2), in five stanzas.

The hymn was soon after adopted into the evangelistic campaigns of gospel composer and compiler, Ira Sankey (1840–1908). According to his autobiography, he “sang it for the first time at Mr. Moody’s meetings in the East End of London. After that, we often used it in our prayer meetings.”[5] It was included in the first edition of Sankey’s famed Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs (1875) in the U.S., and in the corresponding British series starting with Later Songs & Solos (London: Morgan & Scott, ca. 1877).

III. Analysis

Literary scholar Leland Ryken unpacked the meaning of the hymn this way:

The poem follows two paths of elaboration of its core idea. One is to list specific spheres of life where we need God—in times of temptation, for example, and in joy or pain. Second and more plentifully, we find petitions of God that grow out of our dependence on him. Even the repeated line “I need thee every hour” is not as simple as it may seem. For example, the line states a fact of human existence (human insufficiency), but it is at the same time a confession of faith. And it is a dual confession—not only in our inadequacy in ourselves but also by implication of the sufficiency of God to provide what we need. It is therefore a statement of grateful dependence.[6]

The song resonates with Christians across time and place because it speaks to a deeply rooted need to feel the presence of God in times of distress. It echoes the cries of the Psalms, as in Psalm 22:19, “But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!” The first printing of the song carried the Scripture reference of John 15:5, which says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” In the longer passage, Jesus stressed the importance of relying on him, seeking his love, and keeping his commandments; by doing these things, his followers would bear fruit, see their prayers answered, and experience his joy.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
27 March 2019
rev. 29 September 2022

Footnotes:

1. Charles H. Gabriel, The Singers and Their Songs (Chicago: Rodeheaver, 1916), pp. 38–39.

2. The event is mentioned in Henry Burrage, Baptist Hymn Writers and Their Hymns (1888), p. 477 (Archive.org); the collection, New Sacred Songs, is partially indexed at Hymnary.org (NSSP1872), but no surviving copy could be located by the present editor. The minutes of the convention listed every song presented, but “I need thee” was not named as being performed (PDF).

3. Papers, Discussions, and Resolutions of the Second National Baptist Sunday School Convention and Institute (Philadelphia: Bible & Publication Society, 1873), p. 48.

4. Papers, p. 53.

5. Ira Sankey, “I need thee every hour,” My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1906), pp. 165–166.

6. Leland Ryken, “I need thee every hour,” 40 Favorite Hymns of Christian Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2022), p. 29: Amazon

Related Resources:

Henry S. Burrage, “Mrs. Annie S. Hawks,” Baptist Hymn Writers and Their Hymns (Portland: Brown Thurston, 1888), p. 477–479: Archive.org

Robert Cottrill, “I need thee every hour,” Wordwise Hymns (4 July 2012):
https://wordwisehymns.com/2012/07/04/i-need-thee-every-hour/

J.R. Watson, “I need thee every hour,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/i/i-need-thee-every-hour

“I need thee every hour,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/i_need_thee_every_hour_most_gracious_lor