William McDonald, a Methodist Episcopal clergyman and evangelist, was sitting in his study one day in 1870 in Brooklyn, New York, when a line of thought came rushing into his head. He committed his thought to paper, and in a few minutes the words of this gospel song were written down. He was inspired by the melody of the tune TRUSTING as he wrote the words in 7.7.7.7.meter. The hymn was first sung at a camp meeting in Hamilton, Massachusetts, on June 22, 1870, and it was published in the American Baptist Praise Book, 1871. McDonald was prominent in the National Holiness movement and editor of the Boston Advocate of Christian Holiness. He was in need of a hymn “to aid seekers of heart purity while at the altar.” The hymn therefore was the outcome of his previous thought while occupied with this problem. There in one other stanza, the original fourth: 

In Thy promises I trust,

Now I feel the blood applied:

I am prostrate in the dust,

I with Christ am crucified.

Born near Belmont, Maine, on July 4, 1820, McDonald became a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church at the age of 19. After ordination he served in the Maine, Wisconsin, and New England conferences. He edited and published four gospel songbooks between 1940 and 1874.

The tune, which in unnamed, was composed by William Gustavus Fischer. He also contributed two other tunes, SDAH 318 for the words of “Whiter Than Snow,” and SDAH 457 for the words of “I Love to Tell the Story,” sometimes called HANKEY.

Fischer was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 14, 1835. He worked as a bookbinder in Philadelphia, studying music in the evenings. Later he taught music at a college in that city from 1858-1868. Then he established a retail piano business with John Edgar Gould (see SDAH 551). He wrote more than 200 gospel songs and was choir conductor and song leader for the evangelistic campaign of Moody and Sankey in 1876, as well as for other revivals. He died on August 12, 1912, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.