The composer of the tune of this hymn, Joseph Philbrick Webster of New Hampshire, was a very sensitive musician, subject to fits of depression in which he would completely ignore even his best friends. He played the violin and other instruments and was a prolific composer of secular songs. An active member of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, in the early 1850s he migrated to Indiana and then in 1857 further west, settling in Elkhorn Wisconsin.

Four years later Sanford Fillmore Bennett (1836-1898), formerly an editor and teacher in Eden, New York, became a medical practitioner in Elkhorn and also pursued his hobby of writing verse. The two men became acquainted and set up a partnership of writing secular songs, but with Bennett’s time fairly occupied in his practice, there were not enough lyrics to keep Webster in full time employment writing the tunes. The enforced idleness accentuated his melancholia. One day in 1867 Webster visited Bennett’s office. He turned his back on his friend and said nothing, not even a word of greeting. Realizing that Webster was in one of his moods of dejection, Bennett asked what was the matter. “Oh, nothing,” was the gloomy reply. “It will be all right and by.”

The answer immediately started a train of thought in Bennett’s mind as he considered the spiritual implications of the remark. “The sweet by and by,” he said. “Wouldn’t that make a good hymn?” He sat down at his table and within half an hour had produced these three stanzas and a refrain. He handed the words to Webster, who brightened up at once, caught the inspiration of the moment, and quickly composed a melody for the words. He played it on his violin and then added the harmony. Meanwhile, two townsmen had come into the office. They joined with Webster and Bennett in singing the new hymn, and it has remained a favorite ever since.

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