The first two stanzas are Lehman's own work. The third, by his own account, he heard in a camp meeting sermon. They were apparently lines "found written by a demented man on the wall of his narrow room in the asylum where he died"; those words are a translation of an Aramaic poem, "Haddamut", written ca. 1050 by Rabbi Meir of Worms, Germany. From the Qur'an (31st Sura) from the early 7th century there are these lines:
If all the trees on earth were pens,
and the ocean were ink,
replenished by seven more oceans,
the writing of God's wonderful signs and creations
would not be exhausted;
surely God is All-Mighty, All-Wise.
--based on The Hymn, vol. 64, no. 3, p. 42, in an article on Mennonite hymnody by Ken Nafziger, Professor of Music at Eastern Mennonite University and 101 More Hymn Stories by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985
Frederick Martin Lehman, 1868-1953
Born: August 7, 1868, Mecklenburg, Schwerin, Germany.
Died: February 20, 1953, Pasadena, California.
Buried: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.
Lehman emigrated to America with his family at age four, settling in Iowa, where he lived most of childhood. He came to Christ at age 11, as he relates:
One glad morning about eleven o’clock while walking up the country lane, skirted by a wild crab-apple grove on the right and an osage fence, with an old white-elm gate in a gap at the left, suddenly Heaven let a cornucopia of glory descend on the eleven-year old lad. The wild crab-apple grove assumed a heavenly glow and the osage fence an unearthly lustre. That old white-elm gate with… Go to person page >
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