Jesus Paid It All:

(Intro)

I hear the Savior say,

'Thy strength indeed is small!

Child of weakness, watch and pray,

Find in Me Thine all in all".

(Chorus)

Jesus paid it all,

All to Him I owe;

Sin had left a crimson stain--

He washed it white as snow.

Lord, now indeed I find

Thy pow'r, and Thine alone,

Can change the leper's spots

And melt the heart of stone.

(Chorus)

For nothing good have I

Whereby thy grace to claim--

I'll wash my garments white

In the blood of Calv'rys Lamb.

(Chorus)

And when before the Throne

I stand in Him complete,

"Jesus died my soul to save,"

My lips shall still repeat.

~Elvina Mabel Reynolds Hall

(1820 - 1889)

"Come, let us talk this over!" says the Lord; "no matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can take it out and make you as clean as freshly fallen snow.  Even if you are stained as red crimson, I can make you white as wool!  If you will only let Me help you, if you will only obey, then I will make you rich!"   Isaiah 1: 18 - 19

What do you do when the pastor rambles on too long? Elvina Hall wrote a hymn.  Seated in the choir loft at the Monument Street, of Baltimore, she had no paper to write on--only the flyleaf of they hymnal.  There she wrote these stanzas. 

The composer of the well-known tune to this hymn, John T. Grape, was the organist and choir director at the church.  Professionally, he was successful coal merchant, but he "dabbled in music," as he liked to say.  While the church building was being remodeled, he had taken the organ home with him and had come up with this tune "All Christ I Owe."  His wife liked it, but no one else seemed to.

It was the Pastor George Schrick, who put the words and tune together (we don't know how he responded to the fact that Hall had been writing while he was preaching).  Hall's stanzas fit part of Grape's tune, and she probably added the chorus to fit with his tune title.  Three years later, in 1868, the song first appeared in a hymnal.