The Story Behind: My Savior’s Love

by Hymncharts Team

Sometime around 1905, a note arrived for a songwriter in Chicago. It came from Elijah P. Brown, founder of a religious magazine called The Ram’s Horn, and it contained only two lines of verse:

“He had no tears for His own griefs,
But sweat drops of blood for mine.”

Brown added a simple suggestion: the thought might make a song. Little did he know that those two lines would become a hymn sung by millions, translated into languages around the world, and cherished for well over a century. The songwriter who opened that note was Charles Hutchinson Gabriel, and the hymn that grew from it was “My Savior’s Love,” known to many as “I Stand Amazed in the Presence.”

Who Wrote “My Savior’s Love”? The Story of Charles H. Gabriel

Gabriel held strong convictions about his craft. A good gospel song, he believed, should state its subject quickly, develop it clearly, and speak to people with troubled hearts. Above all, he insisted that music should be written to serve the words, and he called the chorus the “crowning glory” of a gospel song. These were not idle theories. They were the working principles of a man who would write thousands of songs in his lifetime, and they were about to be put to their finest use.

Two Lines That Inspired “I Stand Amazed in the Presence”

Many hymn stories begin with tragedy. A lost child, a shipwreck, a deathbed farewell; such sorrows have birthed some of our most beloved songs. So what tragedy stands behind “My Savior’s Love”? A bereavement? An illness? A brush with death? No, this hymn was born from nothing more dramatic than a man meditating on Scripture, and that is precisely what makes it remarkable.

When Gabriel read Brown’s couplet, his mind went where the lines pointed: to the Garden of Gethsemane. There, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus prays in such agony that His sweat falls like great drops of blood, while an angel from heaven strengthens Him. Gabriel sat with that scene. He considered a Savior who wept no tears for His own suffering, yet bled in anguish for the sins of others; for sinners like Gabriel himself. Out of that meditation came a hymn that reads less like a history lesson and more like a testimony:

I stand amazed in the presence
Of Jesus the Nazarene,
And wonder how He could love me,
A sinner, condemned, unclean.

Brown’s two lines were not discarded in the writing. Gabriel built an entire stanza around them, placing the singer inside the garden itself:

For me it was in the garden
He prayed: “Not My will, but Thine.”
He had no tears for His own griefs,
But sweat drops of blood for mine.

And then, following his own rule that the chorus is a gospel song’s crowning glory, Gabriel gave the hymn its soaring response. The verses contemplate; the refrain erupts:

How marvelous! How wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
How marvelous! How wonderful!
Is my Savior’s love for me!

How Marvelous, How Wonderful: The Hymn Spreads Around the World

“My Savior’s Love” first appeared in 1905 in a Chicago collection called Praises, edited by E. O. Excell, and within that same year it appeared in two more collections. Such was the demand for Gabriel’s work that the hymn never had a quiet season of obscurity; it entered the great stream of American gospel song almost immediately.

The hymn was not finished growing, however. In 1910, the famed song leader Charles M. Alexander purchased the copyright, and Gabriel added a new stanza, one that has become among the most beloved of them all:

He took my sins and my sorrows,
He made them His very own;
He bore the burden to Calvary,
And suffered and died alone.

Where the original stanzas carried the singer from the garden to glory, this addition brought Calvary itself into full view, completing the hymn’s journey through the Savior’s passion.

Not everyone received every line warmly. One minister once objected to Gabriel’s stanza about the angels, calling the imagery mere allegory. Gabriel stood his ground, for the angel was no decoration; it came straight from Luke’s account of an angel strengthening Jesus in the garden. To soften the Scripture would be to soften the song.

In pity, angels beheld him,
And came from the world of light
To comfort him in the sorrows
He bore for my soul that night.

The decades that followed proved the hymn’s staying power. It rang through the great urban crusades of Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver. It crossed the Atlantic into British hymnals, crossed language barriers into Spanish, Swahili, Korean, and Chinese, and to date has appeared in some 277 hymnals across nearly every Protestant tradition. What began as two lines in the mail was suddenly, and then steadily, the song of the whole church.

Marvelous (I Stand Amazed): A New Melody for a New Generation

Gabriel never treated a melody as an ornament. Music, he said, should be written to serve the words, and it is in that same spirit that Hymncharts arranger Don Chapman has composed a new melody for Gabriel’s classic lyrics. The new version, titled “Marvelous (I Stand Amazed),” carries the century-old text to today’s congregations using the language of modern worship: minor chords, sweeping melodic leaps, and dynamics that rise and fall with the words themselves. You can hear soundclips of both the original melody and Chapman’s new melody at the top of this page; both are available with a Hymncharts subscription.

The new melody follows the emotional shape Gabriel built into the text. The verses sit low and contemplative, the posture of a sinner standing amazed, then leap upward into an explosive chorus of praise. Listen closely and you will catch a unique, diminished chord on the word “wonderful,” a harmonic ache that tugs at the heart in the very moment the lyric marvels at grace.

Gabriel called the chorus the crowning glory of a gospel song, but in “Marvelous (I Stand Amazed),” that honor belongs to the bridge. There, the music opens wide to spotlight the very lines that Elijah P. Brown mailed to Gabriel all those years ago:

He had no tears for His own griefs,
But sweat drops of blood for mine.

The two lines that began the hymn now stand at its summit. It is hard to imagine a tribute Gabriel would have appreciated more.

A Song of Amazement for Every Generation

More than a century has passed since a magazine editor mailed two lines of verse to a songwriter in Chicago, and still the church stands amazed. Whether sung to Gabriel’s 1905 tune or to a new melody written for a new generation, the wonder at the heart of this hymn does not age, for the love it describes does not change. And one day, when we see His face at last, the song will only grow sweeter:

When with the ransomed in glory
His face I at last shall see,
’Twill be my joy through the ages
To sing of His love for me.

“And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Luke 22:43-44 KJV

“Marvelous (I Stand Amazed)” Lyrics Video

Username and password for free downloads are contained in the Hymncharts newsletter. Sign up to receive it instantly:

Download FREE lead / piano sheet music, chord chart, MP3 demo and lyrics text file. Permission granted to make as many copies as you need for your worship team.