314 Asleep in Jesus
Margaret Mackay, 1802-87
Written by Margaret Mackay, wife of a distinguished officer in the English army. She composed numerous hymns and poems, but none is so widely known as this tender lyric so often used as a funeral hymn, which she entitled, “Burial of the Dead.” The hymn was suggested by an inscription she saw on a tombstone in the burying ground of Pennycross Chapel, a rural spot in Devonshire:
“Sleeping in Jesus.”
One stanza, the fifth, has been omitted. It reads:
Asleep in Jesus: time nor space
Debars this precious “hiding place.”
On Indian plains or Lapland snows
Believers find the same repose.
The hymn was first published in The Amethyst, 1832, in Edinburgh.
MUSIC. REST. For comments on the composer, William B. Bradbury, see Hymn 103.