He Leadeth Me

This page includes a lyric video, history, sheet music, and other resources for the classic hymn “He Leadeth Me.” Enjoy!

Enjoy this You Tube video, performed by Candi Pearson, with lyrics for “He Leadeth Me”:

History of “He Leadeth Me”

Words by Joseph Henry Gilmore (1834-1918), Published in 1862

Joseph Gilmore was born in Boston in 1834 and was educated at Brown University and Newton Theological Seminary. After his graduation from Newton in 1861, he remained at the seminary to teach Hebrew for a year. He also served as a visiting preacher at various churches before taking a position as the pastor at a Baptist church in New Hampshire. During the Civil War, Joseph also served as a private secretary to his father, the governor of New Hampshire from 1863-1864, and was the editor of the Daily Monitor in Concord.

In 1865, Joseph accepted a pastorate in New York, and was also invited in 1867 to teach Hebrew at Rochester Theological Seminary. The following year, he was offered a position as professor of logic, rhetoric, and English literature at the University of Rochester; he remained in this position until he retired in 1911.¹ In addition to hymn writing, Joseph published academic books on topics of art and literature. According to hymnologist Williams Reynolds, Joseph was “loved and respected in both religious and educational circles.”²

Joseph gives an account of the writing of “He Leadeth Me” in the November 1926 issue of UGI Circle (the United Gas Improvement Company erected a building at the site where the hymn was written, so they published the story of the hymn):

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. 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 in them in a significance and beauty of which I had never dreamed.

It was the darkest hour of the War of the Rebellion [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, 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, who resided next door to the church, kept on talking about the thoughts which I had emphasized; and then and there, on a back page of the brief from which I had intended to speak, I penciled the hymn, handed it to my wife and thought no more about it.

It occurred to her months afterward to send the hymn to The Watchman and Reflector, a paper published in Boston, where it was first printed. In that paper it attracted the attention of William B. Bradbury, who slightly modified the refrain and set the hymn to the music which has done so much to promote its popularity. . .
I did not know until 1865 that my hymn had been set to music. I went to Rochester to preach as a candidate before the Second Baptist Church. Going into their chapel on the day I reached the city, I took up a hymnal to see what they sang, and opened it at my own hymn, “He Leadeth Me.”

Tune “He Leadeth Me” by William Batchelder Bradbury (1816-1868), Published in 1864

William Bradbury first published the music “He Leadeth Me” in his hymn collection titled The Golden Censer, 1864. Bradbury rearranged the lines of Gilmore’s poem to create the refrain, and he added his own original line, “His faithful follower I will be.”³

Because William composed so many of the songs featured on this site, there is a separate page for the Biography of William Bradbury.

Additional Resources for “He Leadeth Me”:

Sheet Music (PDF Compliments of Hymnary.org)

Guitar Chords (Links to Ultimate Guitar)

Visit Hymnary.org or Hymn Time.com for more on this hymn.

See our Hymn of the Week page for a list of the hymns that are included on this site.

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Sources:

¹ Reynolds, William Jensen. Hymns of Our Faith: A Handbook for the Baptist Hymnal. Broadman Press, 1964, p. 300.
² Ibid.
³  Reynolds, pp. 55-56.