Elvina Mabel Hall was a member of the choir of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore. While she was sitting in the choir during a rather long prayer, in the spring of 1865, she jotted down the words of this hymn on the flyleaf of a hymnbook, the New Lute of Zion. After the service she passed them to the minister, the Reverend Shrick, who kept them until he could find a suitable tune. The title of the hymn was “All to Christ I Owe.” There was one more stanza:

4. When from my dying bed
   My ransomed soul shall rise,
   Then “Jesus paid it all”
   Shall rend the vaulted skies.

This was omitted from SDAH because of its teaching on the immediate flight of the soul to heaven after death.

Hall was born on June 4, 1820, in Alexandria, Virginia; she moved to Baltimore, where she was a member of the Monument Street Methodist Church for more than 40 years. Following the death of her husband, she married the Reverend Thomas Myers in 1885. She died on July 18, 1889, at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.

The tune, sometimes called ALL TO CHRIST, was composed by John Thomas Grape, the organist of the same church in Baltimore. He took care of the cabinet organ at home while the church was undergoing alterations, and thus had the opportunity to play and compose in his spare time. He was trying to find a melody for William Batchelder Bradbury’s words “Jesus Paid It All.” His wife considered his effort a good one, but his friends and the choir members thought it rather commonplace. However, the Reverend Shrick coupled Hall’s words with Grape’s tune, and it was well received as a gospel song. It was published in Sabbath Chords in 1868.

Grape was born on May 6, 1835, in Baltimore. He was a coal merchant who was interested in music as a hobby. He directed the choir of the Monument Street Methodist Church and wrote other hymn tunes. He died in Baltimore on November 2, 1915.