The Primitive Methodists are the connection between the two variants. The phenomenon of the American rural open air camp meeting was introduced to England in 1805 by American itinerant preacher Lorenzo Dow, who proved wildly popular; two years after landfall and subsequent evangelizing, camp meetings commenced in England and caught on immediately. This occasioned a division among Methodists. Wesleyan congregations refused to admit the supposed rabble of open air converts to their now mature Wesleyan churches, which were ironically founded in just such a movement - prominently and literally a foundry. After four years of unsanctioned camp meetings, the Primitive Methodists separated (1811) and established itinerant preaching circuits of their own and a single transatlantic mission emerged. As the industrial revolution gathered steam, emigrés from England had begun working in American mines and factories, their spiritual needs attended by missionaries from home. An 1819 account two years posthumously of Taylor's contributions to hymn singing noted that it was common for pages to be torn out of the songsters and carried as separate sheets (passage in image below), which might explain one way the hymn might have arrived in England - in the pockets of returning missionaries. It is also entirely possible that Lorenzo Dow, who was known to have brought literature with him, brought along copies of Taylor's Spiritual Songs in his 1805-1807 visit.

Caleb Jarvis Taylor was born 1763 into a Roman Catholic family in Maryland, converted at age 20, and a few years later founded Mount Gilead Methodist Church in what was then a frontier state, the Commonwealth of Kentucky...in Bourbon County, now famed for its whiskey. He is the author of several hymns (Hymnary.org lists 26), many still sung today, including the original. He was highly regarded both as preacher and hymnwriter by the English, and his original version was documented as circulating in England during the period of joint organization. Forty-two years after his death, an 1859 article on the camp meeting songwriters devoted several pages to his biography, noting particularly his poetic contribution.

Winks and Antliff, the publishers who separately produced the 1862 versions with the new incipit, were in friendly competition contemporaneously - not only with their denominational flagship magazines, but with related children's' editions, though Winks' longer version was for an Arminian journal instead, a theological position consonant with Methodists. Since neither provided attribution, we can't be sure that one or the other didn't write both of them, or whether there is a synoptic Q version yet undiscovered, perhaps a submission by a contributor supplying some or all of the fifty-five percent of the hymn not written by Taylor. Though both editors published a great deal of poetry, it can't be said that either was recognized as a poet; however, Antliff to that point had been actively editing poetry and prose. The earlier Winks printing has the feel of a work in progress, the hymn under Antliff's editorship is a finished piece - it is polished, has a clear theological cadence, and matches the version we sing today. Given their shared interest in children's literature, it is reasonable to conclude it might have been intended from the outset for a young audience - this, at least, is how Antliff positioned the work in his two subsequent printings.

With the addition of the young Hurditch to late-career Winks and mid-career Antliff, the evolution of this hymn involved a trio of professional communicators with shared commitments to theological, educational, literary, pedagogical and organizational objectives. In the midst of significant changes in copyright laws, they managed budgets and networks of printers, binders, typographers, and engravers. They were preachers, they founded schools, they led entire organizations - these were talented and enterprising creators.

The authoritative The Dictionary of Hymnology listed "My Jesus I love thee" as anonymous in 1902, but explicitly documented the connection between the Taylor's original and Antliff's unsigned version (see the inset image above). A scan of numerous hymnals through 1909 credits the source as The London Hymn Book exclusively, though in our view, this attribution really belongs to The Primitive Methodist Magazine, or more particularly its editor William Antliff, who published the hymn three times between 1862 and 1864 with 98.6% of our current versification. The London Hymn Book of 1864 makes a final revision of only two words.

Thus, our colophon reads:
Text: composite, ed. William Antliff (1862), after Caleb Jarvis Taylor (1804) and others s.n. | Music: Adoniram Judson Gordon, 1872

© David Maurand. This additional commentary CC BY-SA 4.0