Shall We Gather At The River?
1864
Often called the "Good Doctor" Robert Lowry was cheerful man with a big beard and a quick mind. He pastored Baptist churches in the Eastern U.S. during the mid-1800's. One friend said, "Very few men had greater ability in painting pictures from imagination. He could thrill an audience with his vivid descriptions, inspiring them with the same thoughts that inspired him."
But he is best remembered for his hymns. Even in childhood he had composed tunes and as he became acquainted with leaders in America hymnology-- many of them based in New York-- he realized he could reach more people through his songs than through his sermons.
He set many of Fanny Crosby's hymns to music, including the classic, " All the Way My Savior Leads Me." And he wrote both words and music to the popular gospel song, "What Can Wash Away My Sins?/ Nothing but the Blood of Jesus."
The doctor's best known hymn is "Shall We Gather at the River?" Though often used at baptisms, it's actually a song about heaven. It came to Lowry on a mid-summer's day in New York, when in the sweltering heat, he began musing about the cool, crystal river that flows through the city of God as described in Revalation 22.
One afternoon in July, 1864 when I was pastor at Hanson Place Baptist Church, Brooklyn, the weather was oppressively hot, and I was lying on a lounge in a state of physical exhaustion. I felt almost incapable of bodily exertion, and my imagination began to take itself wings. Visions of the future passed before me with startling vividness. The imagery of the apocalypse too the form of a tableau. Brightest of all were the throne, the heavenly river, and the gathering of the saints. My soul seemed to take new life from that celestial outlook. I began to wonder why the hymn writers had said so much about the "river of death" and so little about the "pure water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb." As I mused, the words began to construct themselves. They came first as a question of Christian inquiry, "Shall we Gather?" Then they broke out in a chorus, " Yes We'll Gather." On this question and answer the hymn developed itself, the
music came with hymn.
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