These words were written by Robert Robinson in 1758 while he was the preacher at a Calvinistic Methodist church in Mildenhall, Suffolk, England. It expresses his own feelings after his conversion three years previously. Robinson was born in Swaffham, Norfolk, England, on September 27, 1735. When he was 8 years old, the family moved to Scarning, a small town nine miles to the east. His father died shortly after, and the family was left in poor circumstances. His mother wanted him to train for the ministry of the Anglican Church, but they had no money for the expense of study. So when he was14 years old Robinson was apprenticed to a barber in London, but he spent much time in reading and lived a careless life. When he was 17, his conscience was awakened after hearing a sermon by George Whitefield, but he was not really converted until three years after. He continued to attend services conducted by Wesley and others, and in 1758 he was invited to be a preach at a Calvinistic Methodist Church in Mildenhall. Shortly after this, he moved to Norwich and establish an independent congregation. In 1759 there was a vacancy in a Baptist church at Cambridge, and he was invited to be a preacher there. He was baptized by immersion and was so much liked in the church that he was urged to become the pastor, even though he was untrained. In 1761 he accepted this responsibility but managed a farm to balance his expenses. Though uneducated in the schools, he learned French and Latin and wrote four books that were very acceptable to his contemporary preachers. He was an eloquent orator and often wrote hymns to conclude his sermons. He retired to Birmingham in 1790 and died there on June 9 of that year at Showell Green.

NETTLETON is named for Asahel Nettleton of Connecticut, who was an itinerant evangelist but not a composer. He was a Yale graduate (1809) and became a preacher for the Congregational Church. He compiled Village Hymns, 1824, which contained no tunes. The composer of the tune could have been John Wyeth, who included this tune, named HALLELUJAH in his Supplement to the Repository of Sacred Music, 1813. The Repository itself was published in 1810. Wyeth, born March 31, 1770, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was not only a printer but also a music publisher and a musician. He was appointed postmaster of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, by George Washington and edited a Federalist paper, Oracle of Dauphine, for 35 years. He died January 23, 1858, at Philadephia. NETTLETON is a very simple AABA tune, for the first score is repeated in the second and again in the fourth.

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.