Sarah Fuller Flower Adams was a member of a Unitarian congregation in Finsbury, north London. Her minister, the Reverend W. J. Fox, was compiling a collection of hymns for his church members and requested Adams to contribute some of her poems. This hymn was one of 13 that finally appeared in his Hymns and Anthems, 1841. SDAH has her original five stanzas, although the hymn has undergone many changes, mainly because of the fact that as a Unitarian the author did not mention the name of Christ in the hymn. However, she does refer to the cross in the first stanza, and after all, is simply paraphrasing the story of Jacob and his flight from home and his encounter with God. It is said that the title of the hymn, “Nearer to Thee,” was inspired by the story of a Christian martyr who was being mocked by a Roman soldier nailing the sufferer to a cross. “We will lift you a little nearer to your God,” he jeered, only to receive the reply “You are raising me nearer than you think.”

Sarah Flower was born in Harlow, Essex, on February 22, 1805, and married William B. Adams in 1834. She also wrote several other hymns for children and a dramatic poem about a Christian martyr. She died at St. Martin in the Fields, London, on August 14, 1848.

BETHANY was composed in 1856 specifically for these words by Lowell Mason (1792-1872; see Biographies). One night he lay awake, and the melody came to him in the darkness; it was written down and harmonized the next morning. It greatly popularized the hymn, but one wonders why Mason did not name the tune BETHEL, after Jacob’s example, which means “House of God” and is actually mentioned in the fourth stanza.

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