Getting Your Hands on "There Is Not A Friend Like The Lowly Jesus" Lyrics
This is a 19th-century hymn that predates most of the modern worship music people are familiar with today. The lyrics are straightforward, and there are a few versions floating around the internet that claim to be definitive. Most of them are just slightly different transcriptions of the same source material. The original author, William J. Kirkpatrick, wrote it in 1886 and set it to a melody by Philip P. Bliss, who was the same guy behind "It Is Well with My Soul" before he died in a train wreck in 1876. The timeline is a little weird because Bliss actually died before Kirkpatrick wrote those lyrics. What happened is that Kirkpatrick used Bliss's existing melody for a different text at first, then later paired it with this hymn, so you see both names on just about every version. The standard version runs something like this: There is not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
Nothing He will not do;
In all of my burdens He bears them all,
And washes my sins as white as snow.
There is not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
He never changes with time or place.
He loves to be a faithful Friend
From heaven above down here.
That second verse is where the variations show up. Some versions swap "white as snow" for "white as wool," and a few include a third verse about the Savior being your constant companion. You are going to run into these differences no matter where you search, and most of the time it is just a matter of which hymnal or church website pulled the text. When I was compiling lyrics for a Sunday school curriculum back in 2014, I spent about three hours tracking down what I thought was the original print version because different hymnals had altered the meter. The Church Hymnal Corporation edition and the Baptist Hymnal edition differ by a couple of words in the second stanza, and Google's result ordering kept pushing a modern version to the top. I ended up crossing referencing a scanned copy from the 1901 "Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs" collection, which is where Kirkpatrick and Bliss originally published their joint work. That turned out to be the closest to what Kirkpatrick actually wrote, even though Bliss's contribution was purely melodic. If you just want the lyrics quickly without digging through archives, a lot of people grab them from sites like ChristianLyrics.com or Hymnary.org. Those tend to be accurate for most purposes. If you need citation-quality accuracy for publication or a formal service, go straight to a digitized hymnal archive or check the public domain status first. The lyrics are old enough that they are generally in the public domain, but some modern arrangements or chord charts attached to them are not, so read the fine print if you plan to reproduce anything commercially.
Here is one thing beginners keep messing up with this hymn: the meter is 8.7.8.7 with double refrain, which means it does not scan cleanly to just four-line stanzas unless you treat the refrain as separate. People trying to sing it to a different melody often force the syllables and sound awkward. Stick with the original Bliss tune, and it works perfectly. I also ran into a weird case where a church used a copyrighted four-part harmony arrangement from a modern gospel choir version, assuming the lyrics themselves made the whole thing public domain. They got a cease-and-desist. The words are free to use. The arrangement is not. Make sure you are clear on which part you are actually quoting or performing when you pull this one.
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