Joseph Gilmore

Joseph Henry Gilmore (1834-1918) was a young, newly ordained pastor who was asked to substitute for the pastor at a midweek service at First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. The year was 1862, during the darkest days of the Civil War. Gilmore intended to preach on all six verses of Psalm 23 but never made it beyond the second verse. He said later, “I did not get further than the words, ‘He leadeth me’—those words took hold of me as they had never done before.” After the service, Joseph and his wife Mary joined Dean Watson for refreshments at his home. Joseph kept thinking about the words, “He leadeth me.” As others were talking, he jotted down the words in a hymn arrangement and handed the paper to his wife, thinking no more about it. Three years later, Joseph was a pastoral candidate at Second Baptist Church in Rochester, NY. He wrote of that time, “Upon entering the chapel, I took a hymnbook thinking, ‘I wonder what they sing.’ The book opened at the hymn ‘He Leadeth Me.'” While he was delighted to see his hymn in print, he couldn’t recall sharing it with anyone. He told his wife Mary about it when he returned home, and she confessed to sending it to a Boston newspaper under a pseudonym. She was certain the words would bless people in troubled times. Hymn writer William Bradbury saw the lyrics in the newspaper, edited the refrain, and set the hymn to music. Like many hymns of that era, it uses repetition to reinforce the theme. “He leadeth me” appears 17 times in this four-stanza hymn. The words express trust in God’s guidance even in troubled times (“mid scenes of deepest gloom”). The hymn has a prayer-like quality to it. Use it to pray for God’s leading in your life today: