Reading the Hymns: Jesus Paid it All

If there’s a hymn that encapsulates the impulse and theology behind the evangelical revivals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “Jesus Paid it All” is it.

But the “Jesus Paid it All” that was brought to prominence by D.L. Moody and others–and which has recently itself undergone a bit of a revival at the hands of Kristian Stanfill–wasn’t the first.  The music of the hymn was apparently a response to an already existing hymn of that name by William Bradbury’s, and the words clearly echo it as well.  Here’s Bradbury’s words:

Nothing, either great or small, remains for me to do;
Jesus paid, and paid it all, All the debt I owe.

Bradbury’s words are a potent affirmation of the utter sufficiency of Christ’s atonement:  “Till to Jesus’ work you cling, alone by simple faith, “Doing” is a deadly thing, all “doing” ends in death.”

This theme is carried over in Elvina Hall’s more famous words: