In the Sweet By and By

“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).

There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

Refrain

In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blessed;
And our spirits shall sorrow no more,
Not a sigh for the blessing of rest.

Refrain

To our bountiful Father above,
We will offer our tribute of praise
For the glorious gift of His love
And the blessings that hallow our days.

Refrain

Mr. Webster, like ma­ny mu­si­cians, was of an ex­ceed­ing­ly ner­vous and sen­si­tive na­ture, and sub­ject to per­i­ods of de­press­ion, in which he looked up­on the dark side of all things in life. I had learned his pe­cul­i­ar­i­ties so well that on meet­ing him I could tell at a glance if he was mel­an­cho­ly, and had found that I could rouse him up by giv­ing him a new song to work on.

He came in­to my place of bus­i­ness [in Elk­horn, Wis­con­sin], walked down to the stove, and turned his back on me without speak­ing. I was at my desk. Turn­ing to him, I said, “Webs­ter, what is the mat­ter now?” “It’s no mat­ter,” he re­plied, “it will be all right by and by.” The idea of the hymn came to me like a flash of sun­light, and I re­plied, “The Sweet By and By! Why would not that make a good hymn?” “May­be it would,” he said in­dif­fer­ent­ly. Turn­ing to my desk I penned the words of the hymn as fast as I could write. I hand­ed the words to Web­ster. As he read his eyes kin­dled, and stepp­ing to the desk he be­gan writ­ing the notes. Tak­ing his vi­o­lin, he played the mel­o­dy and then jot­ted down the notes of the cho­rus. It was not over thir­ty min­utes from the time I took my pen to write the words be­fore two friends with Web­ster and myself were sing­ing the hymn. (Sanford Fill­more Ben­nett)

This song was sung in the Acad­emy Award win­ning mo­vie Ser­geant York (1941).

Words: Sanford Fillmore Bennett Born: June 21, 1836, Eden, New York. Died: June 12, 1898, Rich­mond, Il­li­nois. Buried: Ce­dar­vale Cem­e­tery, So­lon Mills, Il­li­nois. Bennett’s po­e­try be­gan ap­pear­ing in the Wau­ke­gan, Ill­i­nois, Ga­zette in the ear­ly 1850’s, and he at­tend­ed the Wau­ke­gan acad­e­my and Un­i­ver­si­ty of Mich­i­gan. He served as sup­er­in­tend­ent of schools in Rich­mond, Ill­i­nois, for two years, then in 1860 moved to Elk­horn, Wis­con­sin, and be­came as­so­ci­ate ed­i­tor of the Elk­horn Independent. In the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, he served in the 40th Wis­con­sin Vol­un­teers. Up­on re­turn to Elk­horn, he be­gan run­ning a drug­store, and stu­died me­di­cine. Grad­u­at­ing from Rush Med­ic­al Coll­ege in 1874, he worked as a doc­tor for over two dec­ades.

Music: Joseph Philbrick Webster Born: March 22, 1819, Man­ches­ter, New York. Died: Jan­u­ary 18, 1875, Elk­horn, Wis­con­sin. Buried: Ha­zel Ridge Cem­e­te­ry, Elk­horn, Wis­con­sin. Webster com­posed and per­formed pop­u­lar mu­sic. He stud­ied with Low­ell Ma­son and was act­ive mus­ic­al­ly in New York, New Jer­sey and Con­nec­ti­cut, and di­rect­ed a quar­tet com­pa­ny called the “Eu­ter­pe­ans.” In 1851, he moved to Mad­i­son, In­d­i­ana, fol­lowed by Chi­ca­go, Ill­i­nois (1855); Ra­cine, Wis­con­sin (1856); and fin­al­ly Elk­horn, Wis­con­sin (1859). Web­ster wrote over a thou­sand bal­lads and ma­ny hymns dur­ing his life­time.