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A Missionary Cry
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A hymn by Albert Benjamin Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, possibly the first hymn he ever wrote, expressing the missionary urgency he stated in February 1889: "one hundred thousand souls are dying without Christ every twenty-four hours in heathen lands." First published in Simpson's own hymnal, Hymns of the Christian Life (dated 1891 by an Ambrose University Alliance Studies reading and 1890 by Hymnary.org, both recorded here rather than resolved). Long remembered within the Alliance as its own theme song, sung at farewell services for departing missionaries.
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Production
Release YearSourced to the subject's own accountHymnary.org gives 1890; the Ambrose University Alliance Studies reading gives 1891 for first publication in Hymns of the Christian Life. Both sources checked directly; the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved. Primary Artist / ComposerAlbert Benjamin Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance 2 Place of OriginWritten while Simpson pastored in Louisville, Kentucky; first published in his own hymnal, Hymns of the Christian Life. 2 FormatSourced to the subject's own account Subject Matter
Religious Subject MatterThe urgency of global evangelism and missionary sending, the founding conviction of the Christian and Missionary Alliance itself, expressed in the founder's own words as a matter of souls being lost with every passing day. 2 Documented Liturgical UseSung at Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary farewell and commissioning services. 2 Scholarly ReceptionSourced to the subject's own accountRemembered within the Alliance as its own theme song and still included in the denomination's 1992 hymnal edition, over a century after it was written. 1 Learn More
The Founder Wrote His Movement Its Own Anthem
In February 1889, A. B. Simpson stood before a congregation and said something that would not leave him alone: one hundred thousand souls, he told them, were dying without Christ every single day in what he called heathen lands. Simpson had already founded the movement that became the Christian and Missionary Alliance two years earlier. The number he could not stop repeating became a hymn, quite possibly the first one he ever wrote.
He called it "A Missionary Cry," and its opening line, "a hundred thousand souls a day," carries the same arithmetic of urgency that drove him to build a missionary sending organization in the first place. It first appeared in Simpson's own hymnal, Hymns of the Christian Life, sometime around 1890 or 1891, sources disagree on the exact year, and it did not stay a curiosity of its author's private grief. According to the Alliance's own academic partner at Ambrose University, it became "the theme song of the Alliance," sung at farewell service after farewell service as missionaries departed for the fields Simpson had spent his life worrying about.
More than a century later the hymn was still being printed in the denomination's 1992 hymnal. A founder's private arithmetic of loss, worked out in a single verse, outlived him by generations and became the sound an entire movement used to send its own people away.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Written by the tradition's own founder and, in the denomination's own later description, remembered as the Alliance's own theme song; the tradition's own production from its own founding moment.
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