James Milton Black was born on August 19, 1856, at South Hill, New York. After an education in singing and organ, he became a teacher of what was known as a “singing school.” A visiting teacher would come into a community and enroll students for a course in the rudiments of music, including sight and singing, conducting, and choral singing. It usually lasted for a week or two, and at the end a concert was given for the whole community to hear.

Black was editor of a dozen or so books of gospel songs, the best-seller of which was Songs of the Soul, 1894, selling 400,000 copies in two years’ time! He was a Methodist, and served on the Joint Commission for the Methodist Hymnal, 1905, but not one of his own songs was included in that book. His membership for 34 years was at the Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Methodist Church. He died December 21, 1938.

Ira D. Sankey, in his book My Life and the Story of Gospel Hymns, gives Black’s own story of the writing of this song. As a teacher in Sunday school, Black took particular interest in the salvation of a certain 14-year old girl, the child of a drunkard. She joined the young people’s society of which Black was president. At each meeting, members were to answer the roll call by repeating Scriptures texts, but one evening this girl failed to respond. Black spoke of what a sad thing it would be, when the names are called from the Lamb’s book of life, if anyone should be absent. Black cried, “O God, when my own name is called up yonder, may I be there to respond!” On his way home that evening he wished for a song on the subject. The thought came, why don’t you make it? He dismissed the idea at first, but when he reached home his wife asked why he looked so troubled. Then the words of the first stanza came to him, and in 15 minutes he had added two more stanzas. He went to the piano and played the music just as it is now. Black said, “I have never dared to change a single word or note of the piece since.” This song does not appear in many modern-day books, and the committee brought it “back” from Christ in Song, 1908, and Gospel in Song, 1926, both published by Review and Herald Publishing Association.

-from Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White