"Softly And Tenderly" by Melharmonic Virtual Choir directed by Chibuike N. Onyesoh

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“SOFTLY AND TENDERLY”

“I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Lk. 5:32)

A song which reminds us that we are saved by responding to the call of Jesus in the gospel to repent is “Softly and Tenderly” (#274 in Hymns for Worship Revised, #640 in Sacred Selections for the Church). The text was written and tune (Thompson or Come Home) was composed both by Will Lamartine Thompson, who was born at East Liverpool, OH, on Nov. 7, 1847. His father, Josiah Thompson, was a member of the Ohio State Legislature for two terms. Will was educated at Mt. Union College in Alliance, OH, at the Boston (MA) Conservatory of Music, and later in Leipzig, Germany. His chief ambition was to write music for the people, and in this endeavor he became eminent. His first song was composed in 1863 when he was just sixteen. Ten years later, he came out with “Gathering Up Seashells From The Seashore,” which became such a hit that it swept the nation from shore to shore and gathered a fortune for its youthful composer who became known as the “bard of Ohio.”

However, after a very successful career writing secular and patriotic music, at age forty Thompson turned to composing sacred songs and established the Will L. Thompson Co., a profitable music publishing firm with offices both in East Liverpool and in Chicago, IL. Other well known hymns by Thompson include “Lead Me Gently Home, Father,” “There’s A Great Day Coming,” and “Jesus Is All The World To Me.” In Chicago, he became a personal friend of revival evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody and his chief song director Ira David Sankey. “Softly and Tenderly,” sometimes given the title of “For You and For Me,” was apparently produced and copyrighted in 1880 and was a favorite of Moody’s. It may have first appeared that year in Sparkling Gems, Nos. 1 and 2 Combined, edited by J. Calvin Bushey. It was definitely published in 1882 in Songs of Triumph, edited by J. S. Inskip, and was soon widely used as an invitation song in the great evangelistic campaigns conducted by Moody and Sankey in both the United States and Great Britain.

The story is told that in 1899 Thompson made a visit to Northfield, MA, where Moody was lying on his deathbed. Visitors were forbidden, but when Moody heard that Thompson was there, the dying evangelist ignored doctors’ orders and demanded that his old friend be admitted. Though very ill, Moody greeted the songwriter most cordially, took him by the hand, and feebly whispered, “Will, I would rather have written ‘Softly and Tenderly’ than anything I have been able to do in my whole life.” Some sources have listed Thompson as a hymn writer among churches of Christ, and it is possible that his religious roots were in “the restoration movement,” but it appears that he himself was a member of the Methodist Church. Some confusion may be due to the fact that there was a gospel preacher in Texas named Will M. Thompson. Will L. Thompson, the Ohio musician, died in New York City, NY, on Sept. 20, 1909, after cutting short a trip to Europe on which he became ill and returning home.