Develop a Discipleship System
History of Hymns: 'Into My Heart'
By C. Michael Hawn
“Into My Heart”
by Harry D. Clarke
The Faith We Sing, 2160
Into my heart, into my heart,
Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.
Come in today, come in to stay,
Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. *
*© 1952 Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Perhaps you sang the short chorus “Into my heart” during Sunday school or youth group gatherings or as a prayer song at a service of commitment. This was an often-sung chorus during my formative years in the 1950s and early 1960s. The composer, Harry Dixon Clarke (1889–1957), was born in Cardiff, Wales. Orphaned at a young age, he ran away from the orphanage, found his way to London, and went to sea for a decade. With his brother’s assistance, Clarke moved to Canada and then the United States, where he experienced his conversion. After studying at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Clarke became active in music publishing.
Hymnologist Donald Hustad records Clarke’s three volumes of Gospel Truth in Song (Chicago, 1923, 1924, 1925), Songs of Glory (Chicago, 1927), and Songs and Choruses for Fishers of Men, Combined Edition (Chicago, 1928), a compilation of two earlier volumes subtitled, “Excellent for Daily Vacation and Summer Bible Schools.” His Praise and Victory Songs (Chicago, 1932) was released by the noted Chicago publisher, the Rodeheaver-Hall Mack Co. Clarke edited Songs of Blessing (Indiana, 1952) and Songs of Salvation (Lexington, Kentucky, 1955), both published near the end of his life. His copyrights were sold to Hope Publishing Company in the early 1940s.
Clarke served as a song leader for California evangelist Harry W. Vom Bruch (1892–1962) and the famous Chicago-based revivalist Billy Sunday (1862–1935) during the latter years of Sunday’s ministry. Sunday was known for collaborations with publisher and song leader Homer A. Rodeheaver (1880–1955), undoubtedly connecting with Clarke in Chicago through the gospel song publishing industry. Following his ministry as a revival song leader, Clarke founded the Billy Sunday Memorial Tabernacle in Sioux City, Iowa, serving as the pastor until 1945. He continued evangelistic work in Pennsylvania and Indiana for the remainder of his life. Though dying in Lexington, Kentucky, he is buried with his wife Dorothy May Clarke (1912–2007) in Sioux City, Iowa, where he had served as pastor. Though Hustad specifies Clarke’s birth year as 1888, his gravesite indicates 1889. Clarke may have been married earlier during his Chicago years because the name “Mary G. Clarke” appeared in conjunction with the 1928 collection Fishers of Men and as the “owner” of the refrain “Into my heart” in several collections published in the 1930s until Hope Publishing Company purchased Clarke’s songs.
“Into my heart” (1924) is a refrain from a longer gospel song composed three years later by Clarke, “Come into my heart, blessed Jesus.” George Sanville records the following story concerning the origins of the chorus:
During an evangelistic campaign in the Trinity Evangelical Church at Shamokin, Pa. [Pennsylvania], a man obviously under the influence of liquor responded to the altar call. … Good friends of the church prayed for him; they told him of Jesus the Mighty to save, Who came to save sinners, and Who was able to save to the uttermost all who come until Him. Immediately the penitent cried out, “Come into my heart, Lord Jesus, come to stay!” Out of that experience, Harry D. Clarke, the evangelist, wrote this winsome prayer chorus. It is a song of liberation. (Sanville, 1943, p. 62)
The refrain, cited above, appears to have been expanded by Clarke into a gospel song with four stanzas, entitled, “Come into my heart, blessed Jesus,” copyrighted in 1927.
Come into my heart, blessed Jesus,
Come into my heart, I pray;
My soul is so troubled and weary,
Come into my heart today.
Each stanza begins with the same line, followed by a standard gospel song trope of this era:
Come into my heart, blessed Jesus,
I need thee through life’s dreary way,
The burden of sin is so heavy,
Come into my heart and stay.
Come into my heart, blessed Jesus,
And take all my guilt away,
Then spotless I’ll stand in thy presence
When breaks the eternal day.
Come into my heart, blessed Jesus,
O cleanse and illumine my soul;
Fill me with thy wonderful Spirit,
Come in and take full control.
True to gospel song practice, Clarke repeats the song’s hook — “Into my heart” — eighteen times throughout the hymn. Though the Scriptural basis for the chorus is unsure, given its use as a prayer chorus during services of Christian commitment, Romans 10:9 likely undergirds the text: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (KJV) In Scripture, the heart is often the metaphorical place for spiritual transformation. Though numerous passages could be cited, Psalm 51:10, the appointed psalm for Ash Wednesday, states this as clearly as any: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” The heart was often a subject for Charles Wesley. For example, his “O for a heart to praise my God” (1742) is a lexicon of heart postures: “heart to praise” (st. 1); “heart resigned, submissive, meek” (st. 2); “humble, lowly, contrite heart” (st. 3); “heart … full of love” (st. 4).
The earliest publication is unclear, but the refrain without the stanzas appears in Homer Rodeheaver’s Praise and Worship Hymns (Chicago, 1927), with the subtitle “My Prayer,” an inscription rarely used in later publications. The entire hymn was included in several publications the same year, including the Nazarene collection Great Gospel Songs (1929), Songs of Faith and Triumph 1, 2, and 3 Combined (Philadelphia, 1929), published by the influential Rodeheaver Hall-Mack Co. and, concurrently, in the Southern Baptist publication Revival Songs (Nashville, 1929) edited by song leader Robert Coleman* (1869–1946), spreading the song in evangelical circles in both the Southern and Northern United States.
An anonymous second stanza was included in Choice Hymns of the Faith (1944), Emmanuel (Egypt, 1956), a bilingual English/Arabic hymnal, and The Faith We Sing (2001):
Out of my heart, out of my heart,
shine out of my heart, Lord Jesus,
shine out today, shine out always,
Shine out of my heart, Lord Jesus.
Recalling the refrain from my formative years, we did not sing from printed music. I remember singing a musical variation that appears in a few hymnals. The incipit (first line) — “Into my heart” — is set to four F Major chords in the standard version. The version I recall singing used a slight chromatic alteration in the melody, alto and tenor parts on the second syllable — a half-step dip on the word “to” — returning to the F Major chord on “my.” This version appears in a few collections, such as the Chalice Hymnal (1995).
Clarke also composed a popular children’s Sunday School chorus: “I will make you fishers of men … if you follow me,” copyrighted in 1927.
SOURCES
“Harry D. Clarke,” Hope Publishing Company: https://www.hopepublishing.com/993/ (accessed April 18, 2023).
Harry D. Clark, Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/241962517/harry-d-clarke (accessed April 22, 2023).
Donald P. Hustad, Dictionary-Handbook to Hymns for the Living Church (Carol Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing Company, 1978).
C. Michael Hawn is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Church Music at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. He resides in Richmond, Virginia.
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