Grant Colfax Tullar, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church and a public evangelist, was staying in the home of Charles L. Mead, a fellow minister, in Rutherford, New Jersey, while assisting in an evangelistic campaign. At one meal there was a small quantity of jelly left over, and Mead, knowing of Tullar’s fondness for it, promised it all to him. Tullar said, “So this is all for me.” Immediately the last three words registered in his mind as a theme for a gospel song. Forsaking the mundane idea of jelly, he went straight to the piano and began to compose words and music, beginning with the words:

 As for me the Saviour suffered, 
All for me He bled and died.

Telling the story of its spontaneous composition and singing it at the evangelistic meeting that evening, Tullar called it the jelly song. However, he decided to revise the words, felling that they had been rather rapidly written and could be improved. In his mail the next morning he received several poems from Mrs. Frank A. (Carrie Ellis) Breck. One of them, “Face to Face,” was in the exact meter of jelly song. So he set the words to his music, and they have been together ever since.

Carrie Ellis was born January 22, 1855, in Walden, Vermont. She and her husband, Frank Breck, and five daughters were deeply committed Presbyterians. She wrote verse for religious periodicals, and in all wrote about 1,500 hymn texts, in spite of having no sense of pitch. Most of her poems were written while she was engaged in housework. She died in Portland, Oregon, March 27, 1934.

Tullar, born August 5, 1869, at Bolton, Connecticut, was given his Christian names Grant Colfax after the then president and vice president of the United States. He was converted at the age of 19 at a Methodist camp meeting. For 10 years he was the song leader for evangelist Geoge Hilton. In 1893 he founded music published house with Isaac Meredith, and was its president for more than 30 years. He edited many hymnals and gospel songbooks. This hymn, “Face To Face,” which was written in 1898, was published in his sermons in song in 1899. He died May 20, 1950, at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.  Nice job! Keep up the good work.  

 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.