Louisa M. R. Stead was born in Dover, England, about 1850 and was converted at the age of 9. She emigratedto the United States in 1871 and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. At a camp meeting she volunteered to do missionary work in China but was rejected because of ill health. Later she married, but after a few years, while on summer holiday, she witnessed her husband lose his life in a gallant attempt to rescue a boy who was struggling against the undertow off a Long Island Beach. She was left with her 4-year-old Daughter, Lily, without adequate support. On one occasion she was reduced to such impoverished circumstances that there was no food left in the house. Her prayer to the Lord to provide was answered miraculously the next morning when she found a basket of groceries, and money, on her doorstep. This experience led her to write the words of this hymn.

Stead’s early desire was to be fulfilled, for she emigrated to South Africa on her own and was a missionary in Cape Colony for 15 years. In 19000 she married Robert Wodehouse, a South African Methodist minister. However, ill health caused them to go to America, where her husband served as a local Methodist pastor. They were able to return to South Africa and were missionaries in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) until her death at Penkridges, near Umtali, on January 18, 1917.

The tune, unnamed but sometimes called TRUST IN JESUS, was composed especially for these words by William JAMES Kirkpatrick (1838-1921; see Biographies), and appeared in his Songs of Triumph, 1882, compiled by himself and John Robson Sweney (see Biographies).