He Lives!

I serve a risen Savior

with ACKLEY

Alfred H. Ackley (1887–1960) is known mostly for his work in the music industry. He was a musician, composer, and editor. He helped assemble gospel and revival songbooks for the Rodeheaver company in the first part of the 20th century. His older brother Bentley played piano for the revivals of evangelist Billy Sunday. But Ackley was also ordained to preach and pastor in the Presbyterian Church, having attended Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. 

In or around 1933, Ackley had been preaching at a series of revival services, and he noticed a man who had attended several days in a row. This man, who was a Jew, lingered after one of the services to ask Ackley a question: “Why should I worship a dead Jew?” Ackley fervently replied, “He lives! I tell you, he is not dead, but lives here and now! Jesus Christ is more alive today than ever before. I can prove it by my own experience, as well as the testimony of countless thousands.”[1] The experience prompted Ackley to write this hymn, which came together very quickly. It was copyrighted in 1933 and first published in one of Homer Rodeheaver’s songbooks, Triumphant Service Songs (1934 | Fig. 1); from there it was adopted into many other songbooks and hymnals. The original hymn has three stanzas and a refrain. Ackley wrote both the words and the music.

Ackley’s hymn is primarily a testimonial hymn, a hymn describing an experiential faith. It is sometimes criticized by those who see Ackley’s ultimate answer, “He lives within my heart,” as being insufficient for proving the existence of a risen Christ. Others might prefer an appeal to the written Word (the resurrection is written in Scripture), or an appeal to history (the resurrection is a historical event), or an appeal to some other form of logic (the practice of apologetics). A hint of this kind of dissatisfaction is seen, for example, in the Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal (1993):

The couplet [“You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart”] suggests that Christ’s work in the world, e.g., “I see his hand of mercy,” “I see his loving care,” is insufficient evidence of the resurrection until verified by those who claim to have experienced Christ in their hearts. Fortunately, the section of hymns on the resurrection and exaltation of Christ [in the United Methodist Hymnal] provides many alternatives that are more gospel-centered, theologically convincing, and musically substantial.[2]

Coincidentally, the official story of the song published by the Rodeheaver company seems to address this issue when it says about Ackley, “The scriptural evidence, his own heart, and the testimony of history matched the glorious experience of an innumerable cloud of witnesses that ‘He Lives,’ so he sat down at the piano and voiced that conclusion in song.”[3] What Ackley has voiced here is just one component of the Christian experience, and by voicing one he did not negate the other. A careful worship planner will use this song in conjunction with other resurrection songs and Scriptures to give a fuller picture of Christian belief.

Although an experiential defence of the resurrection might not be what some prefer, the Christian faith can and must be experiential at some level. The gospel changes people’s lives, and the Bible tells us how “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17), and the message of Christ is sometimes delivered “not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3). 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

The tune name ACKLEY was assigned by the editors of the Baptist Hymnal (1956). As a matter of performance, the last three phrases (beginning “salvation to impart”) are often slowed to an extended ritardando in addition to the marked fermatas. These same phrases display a strong circle-of-fifths progression of secondary dominant chords, starting with a rare hymnic shift from IV with an augmented sixth to III (V/vi), bringing the melodic climax of the song to the words “He lives.”

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
29 April 2020

Footnotes:

1. George W. Sanville, “He Lives!” Forty Gospel Hymn Stories (Winona Lake, IN: Rodeheaver-Hall Mack, 1943), p. 34.

2. Carlton R. Young, “He Lives,” Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), p. 391.

3. Sanville, Forty Gospel Hymn Stories, p. 34.

Related Resources:

William J. Reynolds, “I serve a risen Savior,” Hymns of Our Faith (Nashville: Broadman, 1964), p. 87–88.

Bert Polman, “I serve a risen Savior,” Psalter Hymnal Handbook (Grand Rapids: CRC, 1998), pp. 564–565.

“I serve a risen Savior,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/i_serve_a_risen_savior