This hymn and the one at SDAH 564 come to us from a little book called Wings. A Book of Dohnavur Songs, With Music, 1960, published in London by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Dohnavur is a village in Madras State, South India, where Amy Carmichael began a work for children. Customs that were legal then, though now outlawed, permitted orphaned children to be first adopted and then later sold for illicit purposes (presumably some kind of temple prostitution). Over the years Carmichael’s work grew to include nursing, caring for retarded children, and education. This was done under the auspices of a fellowship of workers. All work was voluntary, no appeals for funds were made, and the fellowship was interdenominational. It was in these circumstances that these special songs and hymns were written and published.

Amy Beatrice Carmichael was born December 16, 1867, to Presbyterian parents in Millisle, east of Belfast, Northern Ireland; she was educated in Harrogate and Belfast. After gaining experience in evangelical mission work in the latter city and in Manchester, she responded to a call from God to serve overseas and in 1893 was sent by the leaders of the English Keswick Convention as their missionary to Japan. Returning after two years because of ill health, she set out again in 1895 for southern India, which land was to become her home for the remainder of her lifetime-56 years of unbroken service. In 1901 she was made aware of the moral danger to Indian caste children that arose from the Hindu devadasi system and the religious drama companies of that era. She opened a home for their rescue and upbringing as Christians. Under the hand of God, this work prospered until she found herself the “mother” of a large Indian family at Dohnavur. From that beginning sprang a range of evangelistic enterprises that continue to bear fruit. Amy wrote many children’s songs, devotional poems, and some 30 books. She died on January 18, 1951, in Dohnavur, where she had given most of her life in loving service for the Lord. She also wrote SDAH 564, “For Sunrise Hope and Sunset Calm.”

Kenneth Stuart Proctor was born in 1895 in England, and ordained in 1923 to the ministry of the Church of England at Winchester Cathedral. An amateur musician, he was passing through southern India on the way to an appointment in Rangoon in the 1920s when he was inspired by the children of Amy Carmichael’s homes at Dohnavur to compose a number of delightful tunes for their songs and for the prayers of her fellow workers. He now lives in retirement at Torquay, England.

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