Hymn Writers: Elisha Hoffman – “I Must Tell Jesus”

This post has been sitting in my draft folder for a couple of months now, and I thought it was about time to dust it off and share it. 🙂 At the time I originally wrote it, I was going through something difficult, and the Lord was kind to bring this hymn to my mind, and to then draw my attention to the interesting story behind it!

A Personal Story…

I was driving home from an event one night. It was dark, the hour was late, and I was alone in the car and pretty downhearted about something. The moon seemed to be my only companion, and it looked like something from a storybook with the way it appeared larger than normal and hung in the night sky behind a few wispy gray clouds. As mesmerized as I was by this beautiful scene that God had put in the sky, it couldn’t completely distract me from the hurt I was feeling. And the darkness and the lonely car only magnified the pain. I was pitying myself, because I had no one else to talk to and unburden my heart. Then it hit me, and I smiled as the tears sprung into my eyes and I reminded myself: there WAS Someone with me whom I could tell. I could tell Jesus. As I prayed and told everything to my Heavenly Father, I felt an instant quietness and peace.

Fast forward a few days and I found myself dealing with another difficult situation. As I felt the stress begin to rise, I knew I needed to get alone and talk to God about it. As I was sitting on my bed and being still, the hymn “I Must Tell Jesus” popped into my head. I started singing some of the lyrics, but then had to go look them up because I couldn’t remember all of them. As I was searching for the lyrics on my laptop, I decided to look up the story behind the hymn. I got goosebumps reading it, because it was a story similar to my experience a few days prior.

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Elisha Albright (E.A.) Hoffman was born on May 7, 1839 in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania. He was a Presbyterian minister, composer, editor, husband and father. Hoffman married Susan M. Orwig in 1866 and they had three sons. Susan passed away in 1876, and Hoffman was remarried to Emma Sayres Smith with whom he had one daughter. E. A. Hoffman was a part of the Evangelical Association, and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister at the age of 34. He worked in his denomination’s publishing house, and pastored several churches in Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. He served the longest at First Presbyterian Church in Benton Harbor, Michigan where he was pastor for 33 years. Elisha Hoffman died on November 5, 1929, in Chicago, Illinois at the age of 80.

Hoffman was born to parents Francis A. and Rebecca A. Hoffman, who were both of German descent. His father was a minister in the Evangelical Association for over six decades. Elisha Hoffman was introduced to sacred music at an early age, as the Hoffman family had a daily time of family worship, which included singing hymns. Jacob Hall recounts in his Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers:

“It was their custom, in the hour of family worship, both morning and evening, to sing one or two hymns. The children early became familiar with these hymns and learned to love them and to feel their hallowing and refining power. Their lives were marvelously influenced by this little service of song in the home. A taste for sacred music was created and developed, and song became as natural a function of the soul as breathing was a function of the body.” ¹

(On a personal note, I am so thankful to have been raised in a family where family worship was, and still is, a daily activity, and that has played a big part in my siblings’ and my love of music and the great hymns of the faith.)  

At a young age, Hoffman discovered his gifting from God to write and compose music. With only musical training from home and church, he wrote thousands of songs for congregational singing. He released his first composition at age 18. Over the course of his life, he wrote over 2,000 hymns, among which are the well-known “Are You Washed in the Blood?”, “Down at the Cross”, “Is Your All on the Altar?”, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”, and “I Must Tell Jesus”. I love what Mr. Hoffman writes about what a hymn is. He said that a hymn is: “a lyric poem, reverently and devotionally conceived, which is designed to be sung and which expresses the worshipper’s attitude toward God or God’s purposes in human life. It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it.”²

Many of his hymns were written as a result of his pastoral ministry, such as “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”, which was co-written with a friend to encourage two seminary students who had lost their wives. The story of how the hymn “I Must Tell Jesus” came about, Hoffman recounts in a personal letter to fellow hymn writer, Charles Gabriel:

“While I was pastor at Lebanon, Pa., I called one day at the home of a parishioner and found the lady in great distress and sorrow. Wringing her hands, she cried: ‘What shall I do — what shall I do?’ I replied ‘You cannot do better than to take it all to Jesus — you must tell Jesus.’ For a moment she seemed abstracted in meditation, then her face glowed, her eyes lighted up, and with animation she exclaimed: ‘Yes, I must tell Jesus, I must tell Jesus!’

As I went from that sorrow-filled home a vision walked before me, a vision of a joy-illumined face, of a soul transformed from darkness into light, and I heard all along my pathway the echo of a tender voice saying, ‘I must tell Jesus!'” ³

Dear reader, I pray you are encouraged as much as I was with the reminder from this beautiful hymn that, no matter where we are or what we are going through, we can tell Jesus “all of our struggles”. Even though He already knows our thoughts before we think them (Psalm 139), He tells us to bring Him all our anxieties and requests (Phil. 4:6-7). And in letting Him carry our burdens for us, we receive the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.”

While it is such a simple action to tell Jesus the things we’re dealing with, I know many times I do not, and I try to either carry my burdens on my own, or go and tell everyone else BUT Jesus! He is the ONLY one who can truly give us the help and comfort we need.

“Jesus can help me, Jesus alone.”

“I Must Tell Jesus” by E. A. Hoffman

1. I must tell Jesus all of my trials; I cannot bear these burdens alone; In my distress He kindly will help me; He ever loves and cares for His own.

I must tell Jesus! I must tell Jesus! I cannot bear my burdens alone; I must tell Jesus! I must tell Jesus! Jesus can help me, Jesus alone.

2. I must tell Jesus all of my troubles; He is a kind, compassionate Friend; If I but ask Him, He will deliver, Make of my troubles quickly an end.

3. Tempted and tried I need a great Savior, One who can help my burdens to bear; I must tell Jesus, I must tell Jesus; He all my cares and sorrows will share,

4. O how the world to evil allures me! O how my heart is tempted to sin! I must tell Jesus; He will help me Over the world the vic’try to win.

1. https://archive.org/details/biographyofgospe00hall/page/162/mode/2up ↩︎
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Hoffman#cite_note-Hall,_1914-2 ↩︎
3. https://archive.org/details/singerstheirsong00gabr/page/78/mode/2up ↩︎