“Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand” is a gospel hymn with words by Jennie Bain Wilson and music by F. L. Eiland. Wilson was born in 1856 in South Whitley, Indiana, and used a wheelchair from childhood after typhoid fever damaged her spine. She wrote thousands of hymns and had hundreds published, and was known as the “Fanny Crosby of the West.” Wikipedia dates this hymn to 1905 and says it was especially popular in the 1910s and 1920s. Franklin Lycurgus Eiland was born in Mississippi in 1860, grew up in Texas, and in 1898 founded the Southern Development Normal, a school of sacred music in Waco; he died in 1909.
The text begins “Time is filled with swift transition, naught of earth unmoved can stand,” and the refrain urges the listener to build hopes on things eternal and hold to God’s unchanging hand. A later verse promises that anyone who has been true to God will find a fair and bright home in glory when the journey is completed.
Jimmy Martin recorded it for Decca at the Bradley studio in Nashville on 17 August 1960, with J.D. Crowe on banjo, Paul Williams singing tenor and Herb Hooven on fiddle. Decca issued it that November as the other side of “Old-Fashioned Christmas,” and it reappeared on his LP Singing All Day and Dinner on the Ground (Decca, 1970). The Stanley Brothers recorded it on 22 November 1964 at Johnny’s Used Cars in Baltimore, with Red Stanley on fiddle, Jack Cooke on guitar and Barry Glickman on bass; it came out in September 1966 on the Wango LP John’s Gospel Quartet. David Grisman recorded it, as “Hold to God’s Unchanging Hands,” at his home in Marin County, California, on 9 January 1976, with Tony Rice singing lead, Ricky Skaggs on tenor, Vassar Clements on fiddle, Bill Keith on banjo and Jerry Douglas on dobro. It appeared on The David Grisman Rounder Album (Rounder, 1976).
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