This hymn is an extensive modification of one written by Thomas Shepherd and printed in Penitential Cries, 1693. Born March 9, 1665, England, Shepherd was a minister of the Church of England and followed his father into the Congregational Church in 1698, ministering in Northampton and in Essex. In Bocking, Essex, he served for almost 40 years and died January 29, 1739. The full poem is entitled “For Universal Obedience,” and consist of five stanzas. It has since been considerably altered. Alterations have been attributed to G. N. Allen, who wrote the tune, and to Charles Beecher (1815-1900), a Congregational minister of Litchfield, Connecticut, and brother of the Famous Henry Ward Beecher. 

     MAITLAND was composed in 1844 by George Nelson Allen especially for these words and was printed in Oberlin Social and Sabbath School Hymn Book, 1844. With the exception of the passing note of C, the second note in lines 1 and 3, the melody is written in the pentatonic (five-note) scale.  The melody of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” is almost exactly the same as this. Allen was born on September 7, 1812, at Mansfield, Ohio. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1838 and stayed on as a faculty member, teaching music and geology. He instituted the choral and instrumental programs of music education that finally developed into the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He retired in 1865 and died 12 years later in Cincinnati, Ohio, on December 9, 1877.

     The tune is named CROSS AND CROWN in Beecher’s Collection, 1855.