The words of this favorite gospel song were written by a successful American evangelist of the late nineteenth century. They are based on God’s promise to Israel through the prophet Ezekiel: “I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing” (Eze. 34:26).

Major Daniel Webster Whittle was born on November 22, 1840, in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. While a young man he moved to Chicago and took a job as a cashier in Wells Fargo Bank. During the Civil War he had the rank of second lieutenant, and was provost marshal on General Howard’s staff during General Sherman’s march to the sea. After losing his right arm at the Battle of Vicksburg, Whittle was taken prisoner by Confederates. He became a Christian after reading a copy of the New Testament given to him by his mother. After the close of the war he was promoted to the rank of major, and that was a part of his name for the rest of his life.

After a short term as treasurer of the Elgin Watch Company, he met the evangelist D. L. Moody and accepted God’s call to devote his life to the winning of souls for God’s kingdom. The success of his work was helped along by three of the most talented singers of that time, Philip Bliss, George C. Stebbins, and James McGranahan, who wrote the music for this text.

Whittle is also the author of SDAH 507, “Moment by Moment,” and of SDAH 511, “I Know Whom I Have Believed.” For many of his song texts, he used the pseudonym El Nathan.

James McGranahan was born July 4, 1840, on a farm near Adamsville, Pennsylvania. From childhood he showed a great talent for music and a desire to go to the city and study. Because he was needed on the farm, his father rejected that idea. But James offered to hire a man to take his place; he went to town, got a job, and was successful in making enough money to care for his own expenses and pay the hired man. Upon this, the father relented.

By age 19 James was already teaching singing classes. After attending William Bradbury’s Normal Music School at Geneseo, New York, he connected with J. F. Towner to conduct musical conventions and singing schools in New York and Pennsylvania from 1861 to 1864. Teachers with whom he studied in New York and Chicago were impressed with his beautiful voice, and advised a career in opera. For three more years he was a teacher in George F. Root’s (see SDAH 88) Normal Musical Institute, gaining a reputation as a cultured musician, soloist, director of choruses, and composer.

Upon receipt of a letter from his good friend Philip Bliss, he was considering giving all this up to enter full-time evangelistic singing when word came of Bliss’s death in a train wreck at Ashtabula, Ohio. Rushing there to see what he could do, McGranahan met Bliss’s partner in work, Major Whittle, whose first thought was: Here stands the man that Mr. Bliss has chosen as his successor. Going back to Chicago together, the two men prayed about it, and James agreed to enter this new work. For 11 years they held great meetings in America and Britain.

McGranahan was a pioneer in the use of male voices for gospel singing. During a meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts, almost all the women singers were unable to sing for a time. Showing his versatility, McGranahan rearranged the music for male voices, and the meetings proceeded with great power. In 1878 he published Gospel Male Choir, No. 1, and in 1883, No. 2. So what began as an emergency stopgap measure became an effective agency in singing the gospel. (George Stebbins had earlier introduced, in 1872, a male quartet singing gospel songs in his meetings.)

He coedited, with George Stebbins and Ira Sankey, Gospel Hymns, Nos. 3–6. It was in No. 4 of this series that “Showers of Blessing” was first printed in 1883. He also published Gospel Choir and The Choice: Harvest of Song.

In 1887 his health broke down, and he retired to his home in Kinsman, Ohio, where he continued to compose music. Some of his best compositions were written during these years. He was not prolific, but a good share of the ones he wrote are still used, bringing blessing to millions. George Stebbins said of him: “The most notable features of his work, as a composer, were originality as expressed in his attractive and flowing melodies, his musicianly skill in the treatment of his themes, and painstaking care in adapting his music to the truth to be sung.” He died at Kinsman, Ohio, on July 7, 1907.

His other tunes in SDAH, all unnamed, are Nos. 207, “It May Be at Morn”; 343, “I Will Sing of My Redeemer”; and 511, “I Know Whom I Have Believed.”