Words & Music: , 1870.

“In 1879 I was as­sist­ing in re­viv­al meet­ings in Dan­ville, Cal­i­forn­ia,” writes the pas­tor of a Pres­by­ter­ian Church at Oak­land. “The meet­ings were well at­tend­ed and good in­ter­est was ex­hib­it­ed, but for a long time there were no con­ver­sions. In the neigh­bor­hood there was a man who, with his wife and child­ren, at­tend­ed the church re­gu­lar­ly, and he was one of its lib­er­al sup­port­ers. They were most ex­cel­lent peo­ple, but could not be in­duced to pro­fess Christ, and did not call them­selves Christ­ians. One day, while the men were hold­ing ser­vic­es in the church the wo­men were hav­ing a pray­er-meet­ing in the manse near by. In the course of the meet­ing they sang ‘Come to the Sav­iour, make no de­lay.’ The sing­ing over, they were about to en­gage in pray­er, when the la­dy above re­ferred to asked them to sing the last verse of this hymn…The la­dy was great­ly af­fect­ed and when the sing­ing ceased she said with deep emo­tion: ‘Yes, I will not stay away any long­er.’ The wo­men were all deep­ly moved, and prayed and praised God with warm hearts. When the word reached the men they were great­ly en­cour­aged at the good news. A re­viv­al fol­lowed, and at the close of a touch­ing ser­vice a few days lat­er, when a call was made for per­sons to de­sired to unite with the church, this la­dy and her hus­band were the first to re­spond. They were fol­lowed by some of their own child­ren and ma­ny other per­sons—in all twen­ty-one. This hymn seemed to have been the means of reach­ing the wife’s heart, and of open­ing the way for the bless­ing which fol­lowed.”