“Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand” is a gospel hymn whose words were written by Jennie Bain Wilson, an Indiana poet who lived most of her life as an invalid yet produced some two thousand hymn texts and poems. She wrote the lyric in the early 1900s and sent it to the Texas hymn composer Franklin L. Eiland, who set it to music.
The completed hymn first appeared in a gospel songbook in 1906 and became widely loved in the singing-school and gospel-convention tradition of the South over the following decades. Its message — that earthly life is fleeting and uncertain, and that the believer should cling to God’s steady hand — gave it lasting appeal.
The song reached records in the 1920s and passed naturally into bluegrass gospel, where its sturdy melody suited quartet singing.
