Professor Anthony Johnson Showalter returned one night to his temporary lodging place in Hartselle, Alabama, to find two letters awaiting him, both from former pupils of his in South Carolina. Each letter stated that the writer had lost his wife, and strangely enough, the women had died on the same day. In an effort to sympathize with and console his friends, Showalter turned to the Old Testament and referred to the comforting message of Moses to the children of Israel, “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deut. 33:27). Having finished his two letters of reply, he began to think of others who might be troubled, so he wrote the words and music of the refrain of this song on this night in 1887, and sent them to the prolific hymn writer Elisha Albright Hoffman (1839-1929; see Biographies), of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Hoffman wrote three stanzas and sent them back to Showalter, who then set them to music. This gospel song was first printed in The Glad Evangel for Revival, Camp, and Evangelistic Meetings, published in 1887 by Showalter and two others.

Showalter was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, on May 1, 1858. He taught singing, and worked in the office of a music company in Georgia. Then he founded his own company and published about 60 songbooks, and edited the monthly journal of his company, The Music Teacher. He had studied under George F. Root (see SDAH 88) and others in Chicago, and also spent a year overseas, 1895-1896, in France, England, and Germany. He conducted many singing schools in rural districts in the Southern states, was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and music director in Dalton, Georgia. He died on September 16, 1924, at Chattanooga, Tennessee.

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