The following hymn pours out the desire to be nearer – and then still nearer – to the Lord our God. We have nothing to offer Jesus, but must come as we are to the cleansing of his precious blood. The blood-bought sinner’s lifetime desire should be to be brought nearer, still nearer, to our Saviour, till we are brought all the way to the nearness of home and heaven.
The tune is sometimes identified as Still Nearer; the meter is 9.10.9.10. (with the last line of the stanza repeated).
Fold me, O fold me close to thy breast,
Shelter me safe in that “Haven of Rest.”
Naught as an off’ring to Jesus my King;
Only my sinful, now contrite heart,
Grant me the cleansing thy blood doth impart.
Sin, with its follies, I gladly resign;
All of its pleasures, pomp and its pride,
Give me but Jesus, my Lord crucified.
Till all its struggles and trials are past;
Then through eternity, ever I’ll be
Nearer, my Saviour, still nearer to thee.
Lelia Naylor Morris wrote the words and music of this song, Nearer, Still Nearer. She was born in Pennsville, Morgan County, Ohio, on April 15, 1862, the daughter or John T. L. Naylor and Olivia Ellen Coulson. Her father died when she was about 5, and her mother remarried to Archibald Walker. Lelia helped her mother in the millinery shop she started in McConnelsville, learning the skills of the trade. After she professed faith in Christ, she joined a church in McConnelsville and soon after began to play the organ.
Lelia M. Naylor married Charles Hammond Morris in 1881. They had four children. Daughter Mary and husband Frank Cartwright served as Methodist missionaries to China. After their marriage, Lelia and Charles joined the Methodist Episcopal Church in McConnelsville, where they served, as well as participating at the holiness camp meetings in nearby Sebring and Mt. Vernon, as well as Mountain Lake Park in Maryland. It may have been at these camp meetings that she came in contact with the publisher Henry Lake Gilmour.
Some sources say that Lelia wrote her first hymn, “I Can’t Tell It All,” in 1892 at the age of 30, and that this song was published in a song book called Refining Fire. However, Charles H. Gabriel says her first hymn in 1892 was “Refining Fire of God” (The Singers and Their Songs: Sketches of Living Gospel Hymn Writers, Chicago, IL: Rodeheaver Co., 1916, p. 19). Regardless of when it was first written, “I Can’t Tell It All” bears an 1895 copyright in several songbooks in which it is published.[i] Nearer, Still Nearer was probably first published in Pentecostal Praises, For Revival Services, Young People’s Meetings and Sunday-Schools (W. J. Kirkpatrick & H. L. Gilmour, Philadelphia, PA: Hall-Mack Co., 1898, No. 117), as it bears a copyright date by H. L. Gilmour in 1898. It also contains a “salute” to Gilmour’s hymn “The Haven of Rest,” the phrase being mentioned in the last line of the first stanza. The tradition of Lelia Morris beginning to write songs around age 30 seems to be correct, and probably in conjunction with some relgious experience she had at that time. Any songs written around that time were probably copyrighted only after she submitted them to a publisher. The 1910 census lists her occupation as hymn writer (the only one to do so).
She often composed her hymns while sewing or doing housework, and wrote the music for most of them. When her eyesight began to fail she continued to write her hymns on a 28-foot-long blackboard her family prepared for her. Later she learned to type them out on a typewriter. Lelia Naylor Morris died at age 67 on July 23, 1929 at Auburn, Cayuga County, New York, where they had moved to be with their daughter, Frances Morris Lunk. Charles H. Morris died in 1939. He and Lelia are buried at the McConnelsville Cemetery in McConnelsville, Morgan County, Ohio. By the time of her death, Lelia Naylor Morris had written over 1000 hymns, as well as many of the tunes to accompany them.
Mary Ethel Weiss wrote a biography of Mrs. Morris in 1953, titled Singing At Her Work: a Biography of Mrs. C. H. Morris. It does not appear to be readily available, though it can be found in libraries.
[i] I
did not find further information on a songbook called Refining Fire, as to when it was published and by whom, if at all. More likely, some writer mistook the name of her first hymn, “Refining Fire of God,” for the name of a book (see Gabriel, p. 19). A. J. Showalter gives the same information about her first song in his 1904 The Best Gospel Songs and Their Composers.
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