“Farther Along” is an American Southern gospel song of disputed authorship. The earliest known print appearance is in the 1911 Church of God hymnal Select Hymns for Christian Worship and General Gospel Service, where it appears with the credit “Arr. B.E.W.” — the hymnal’s editor Barney E. Warren. The song is most commonly attributed today to William B. Stevens, but credible competing claims have been made for W.A. Fletcher, W.E. Lindsay, and W.P. Jay; descendants of more than one of these figures have argued for their relative as the author, and the question is unlikely to be settled.
The version most modern singers know descends from the Stamps-Baxter Music Company’s 1937 inclusion in their Starlit Crown collection, set to a new musical arrangement by gospel publisher J.R. Baxter and credited “as sung by the Burnette Sisters.” That arrangement is the one that travelled through the Southern gospel quartet world into bluegrass.
The lyric works through the perennial Christian theological problem of the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous, with the refrain “farther along we’ll know all about it / farther along we’ll understand why” pushing the resolution to the next world. The Flying Burrito Brothers cut it on Burrito Deluxe in 1970 and the Byrds made it the title track of their 1971 album, both of which helped move the song from gospel quartets into country-rock and bluegrass sets.
