Arabella Katherine Hankey, daughter of a London banker, was a member of the Clapham sect of evangelical Christians. She was not in robust health and had been ordered by her doctor to stay in bed for 12 months or face death. She followed his orders, but while confined to bed in the year 1866 she wrote a 55-stanza poem. She used simple language, for from her own experience she recognized that anyone in a weak state of health is not able to cope with complicated expressions and ideas. The first poem was titled “The Story Wanted” and was completed on January 29, 1866. Part 2 was “The Story Told” and was finished on November 18 in the same year. Both were printed in leaflet form in 1867, but there was no refrain; the stanzas, complete in themselves, had four lines only. The poems were printed in book form in 1868 under the title The Old, Old Story and had very wide circulation, being translated into several languages. The story is of redemption, going back to the Garden of Eden and including Jesus’ birth and His earthly ministry.

Arabella Hankey was born in Clapham, a southern suburb of London, in 1834. As a schoolgirl she taught a Sunday school class. When she was 18 years old, she started a Bible class for shop assistants and forged contacts that lasted all her life. In spite of the doctor’s warning, she went to South Africa in 1866 to nurse an invalid brother. She returned to London with an increased zeal for missionary work, teaching Bible classes and visiting in hospitals. She died in Westminster, London, on May 9, 1911. She also wrote SDAH 457, “I Love to Tell the Story.”

During an international convention of the YMCA held in Montreal, Canada, in 1867, Ira D. Sankey (1840–1908; see Biographies) obtained a copy of the words and sent them to William Howard Doane (1832–1915; see Biographies), who was also a delegate and present at the meeting. While traveling in a stagecoach on a vacation in the White Mountains, Doane composed this tune, EVANGEL, doubling each pair of original stanzas into one stanza and adding a refrain. In a hotel parlor that evening he sang the new composition to the guests; since then the tune has become attached to the words. Hankey had written a tune for her words, and disapproved of a refrain, but this tune with its many intervals of thirds and sixths in the upper parts caught the fancy of congregations.