Courage and Comfort — 240. Come Unto Me, Ye Weary
William C. Dix, 1837-98
Based on some of the precious promises of Christ, especially Matt. 11:28: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” It may be compared with Bonar’s hymn, “I heard the voice of Jesus say” (142) on the same text.
The author gives the story of the hymn as follows:
I was ill and depressed at the time, and it was almost to idle away the hours that I wrote the hymn. I had been ill for many weeks, and felt weary and faint, and the hymn really expresses the languidness of body from which I was suffering at the time. Soon after its composition I recovered, and I always look back to that hymn as the turning point in my illness.
For comments on the author, William Chatterdon Dix, see Hymn 78.
MUSIC. ICH WEISS AN WEN ICH GLAUBE is taken from the Gesangbuch mit Noten (206) where it is used with a hymn by Ernst Moritz Arndt, beginning with these words.