Joseph H. Gilmore (1834-1918)

Music: William B. Bradbury, Golden Censer (New York: 1864) (MIDI, score).

William B. Bradbury (1816-1868)

As a young man who recently had been graduated from Brown University and Newton Theological Institution, I was supplying for a couple of Sundays the pulpit of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia [Pennsylvania]. At the mid-week service, on the 26th of March, 1862, I set out to give the people an exposition of the Twenty-third Psalm, which I had given before on three or four occasions, but this time I did not get further than the words “He Leadeth Me.” Those words took hold of me as they had never done before, and I saw them in a significance and wondrous beauty of which I had never dreamed.

It was the darkest hour of the Civil War. I did not refer to that fact—that is, I don’t think I did—but it may subconsciously have led me to realize that God’s leadership is the one significant fact in human experience, that it makes no difference how we are led, or whither we are led, so long as we are sure God is leading us.

At the close of the meeting a few of us in the parlor of my host, good Deacon Wattson, kept on talking about the thought which I had emphasized; and then and there, on a blank page of the brief from which I had intended to speak, I penciled the hymn, talking and writing at the same time, then handed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it to The Watchman and Reflector, a paper published in Boston, where it was first printed. I did not know until 1865 that my hymn had been set to music by William B. Bradbury. I went to Rochester [New York] to preach as a candidate before the Second Baptist Church. Going into their chapel on arrival in the city, I picked up a hymnal to see what they were singing, and opened it at my own hymn, “He Leadeth Me.”

	中文	英文
一	祂帶領我！此意何美！此言何等滿有安慰！無論何在，無論何作，仍有神手來帶領我；	He leadeth me, O blessèd thought! O words with heav’nly comfort fraught! Whate’er I do, where’er I be Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.
（副）	祂帶領我，祂帶領我，祂是親手在帶領我；無論如何，我都隨著，因祂親手在帶領我。	He leadeth me, He leadeth me, By His own hand He leadeth me; His faithful follower I would be, For by His hand He leadeth me.
二	有時似墮痛苦深淵，有時似在快樂伊甸；或遇靜水，或遭風波，都有神手來帶領我。	Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom, Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom, By waters still, over troubled sea, Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me.
三	主阿，願你緊握我手，永無埋怨隨你而走；苦樂求你為我定奪，我靠你手來帶領我。	Lord, I would place my hand in Thine, Nor ever murmur nor repine; Content, whatever lot I see, Since ’tis my God that leadeth me.
四	等我行完今生路程，靠你憐憫能以得勝；死河寒波我亦不躲，因你至終親手領我。	And when my task on earth is done, When by Thy grace the vict’ry’s won, E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee, Since God through Jordan leadeth me.