Jessie H. Brown was born August 31, 1861, in Hiram, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. She began writing for weeklies while a young girl of 15 years. In 1896 she married John E. Pounds of the Central Christian Church in Indianapolis. In her lifetime she wrote more than 400 gospel songs, nine books, and words for cantatas. She died at Hiram in 1921. This hymn was written in 1886 and published in Hymns Old and New, 1887, to the unnamed tune. Between 1910 and 1920 two other stanzas were added by Helen Cadbury Alexander (1877-?), the wife of the well-known evangelist C. M. Alexander, and daughter of the equally famous Richard Cadbury, Quaker philanthropist. She married Alexander in 1904, and after his death she married Amsji C. Dixon.

The tune, sometimes named SECURITY because of the theme of the words, was composed by Daniel Brink Towner (1850-1919; see SDAH 109). It is mostly in thirds or sixths in the upper parts and based mainly on two chords. Towner also composed SDAH 109, unnamed, and SDAH 590, sometimes called TRUST AND OBEY.