Nearer My God To Thee Hymn On The Dream Of Jesus

Nearer My God To Thee is a Christian hymn that became popular in the 19th Century. The theme of the hymn is the dream of Jacob as mentioned in the Genesis 28:11-19.The Genesis accounts that Jacob while travelling to far-off lands reached an unknown place. As it was getting dark, he decided to spend the night there. In absence of a pillow, he rested his head on a stone he found nearby. In his sleep he dreamt that a ladder had been fixed between the earth and the heaven for angels to travel easily between the two place. The hymn is based on this fantasy.

The hymn, Nearer My God To Thee, had been penned by Sarah Flower Adams. She was a 1805-born actress, dramatist, and poetess. But she earned her fame in writing Unitarian hymns. She died in 1848. She composed this particular hymn in the year 1841 at her residence in Sunnybank at Essex in England. The hymn, is played mostly in five tunes – Horbury, Bethany, Propior Deo, St. Edmund and Liverpool. In United States the most popular tune to the hymn is Horbury. This particular tune was composed by John Bacchus Dykes in 1861.

But in other countries the hymn, Nearer My God To Thee, is played on the tune known to all as Bethany. This particular tune was composed in 1856 by Lowell Mason. However the tune called Propior Deo is preferred the most by the methodists. This tune was composed in the year 1872 by Arthur Sullivan. Sullivan further tuned a second version of the hymn tagged as St. Edmund. Among other versions of the hymn, another popular tune was Liverpool by John Roberts.

The hymn, Nearer My God To Thee, is associated with the Titanic. It has been found out from survivors of the Titanic that the ship band was playing this particular hymn while the ship was sinking. The band master of Titanic named Wallace Hartley doted upon the hymn so much that his last wish was to get it played at his funeral.

This event was included in most of the versions of Titanic when the great disaster was filmed. In the year 1953, while reeling his film Titanic, Jean Negulesco used the Bethany version of the Nearer My God To Thee. However in 1958, Roy Ward Baker included the Horbury version of the hymn in his movie based on sinking and a tribute to the Titanic, titled A Night to Remember.Nearer My God to Thee