Come, Come, Ye Saints
30; 326

Text: William Clayton (1814–1879; LDS)
Music: American (ca. 1838)
Tune name: ALL IS WELL

In the minds of many members of the Church, “Come, Come, Ye Saints” is the hymn that more than any other connotes the heritage and spirit of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints. The unforgettable words of this hymn allow us to pay tribute to the unflinching courage of the early Saints and to relate that commitment to our own lives.

William Clayton was a member of the first company of Mormon pioneers to face the westward trek to Utah. Forced to leave Nauvoo before the spring thaw, Clayton and his fellow exiles faced cold, mud, sickness, and hunger. News from loved ones left behind in Nauvoo was slow in coming. For two months William Clayton worried about his wife Diantha, who was still in Nauvoo, pregnant and unable to travel. On April 15, 1846, when word finally reached him of the birth of their son, he was ecstatic. “Truly I feel to rejoice at this intelligence,” he wrote in his journal, “but feel sorry to hear of her [Diantha’s] sickness.” (She was soon to recover.) He then added, “This morning I composed a new song—’All is well’” (William Clayton’s Journal [Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1921], 19).

William Clayton had actually written new words to an already-existing hymn, popular in his day. Also titled “All Is Well,” the first known publication of the text was in 1836. The first verse was as follows:

What! What is this that steals upon my frame?
Is it Death? Is it Death?
That soon shall quench, shall quench this vital flame,
Is it Death? Is it Death?
If this be Death I soon shall be
From every pain and sorrow free:
I shall the King of Glory see:
All is well! All is well!

(Pious Songs: Social, Prayer, Closet, and Camp Meeting Hymns, and Choruses [Baltimore, Md.: Armstrong & Berry, 1836], 451).

The new hymn, known today as “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” quickly became a favorite among the Saints traveling west. A story became popular at a later time that Brigham Young had requested William Clayton to write the hymn, but William Clayton made no note of such a request in his journal, and we have no evidence that this story is true.

The composer of the tune ALL IS WELL is unknown; the 1950 hymnal labeled it “English Tune.” However, recent research by Dr. Wade Kotter has shown that the tune is of American origin, with its first known printing in 1838 in a Pennsylvania newspaper published by the German Reformed Church. Dr. Kotter, who also located the 1836 version of the text quoted above, notes that because both text and tune (and sometimes text alone) appeared thereafter in many hymnals designed for revival and camp meetings, it is possible that William Clayton had one of these hymnals with him on the pioneer trail. However, a second possibility is that Clayton “depended on memory and not on a printed source.” Saints emigrating to Nauvoo came from a variety of religious backgrounds, and since many of them may have known the original hymn, “it is most unlikely that Clayton was the only Mormon in Nauvoo” who was familiar with it (“On the Trail of ‘All Is Well,’” Mormon History Association Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, May 25, 2007).

Oscar Winters, father- in- law of Heber J. Grant, related an incident that illustrates the significance of this hymn among the pioneers:

“One night, as we were making camp, we noticed one of our brethren had not arrived, and a volunteer party was immediately organized to return and see if anything had happened to him. Just as we were about to start, we saw the missing brother coming in the distance. When he arrived, he said he had been quite sick; so some of us unyoked his oxen and attended to his part of the camp duties. After supper, he sat down before the campfire on a large rock, and sang in a very faint but plaintive and sweet voice, the hymn ‘Come, Come, Ye Saints.’ It was a rule of the camp that whenever anybody started this hymn all in the camp should join, but for some reason this evening nobody joined him; he sang the hymn alone. When he had finished, I doubt if there was a single dry eye in the camp. The next morning we noticed that he was not yoking up his cattle. We went to his wagon and found that he had died during the night. We dug a shallow grave, and after we had covered his body with the earth we rolled the large stone to the head of the grave to mark it, the stone on which he had been sitting the night before when he sang: ‘And should we die before our journey’s through, Happy day! all is well!’” (Improvement Era, June 1914, 781–83).

“Come, Come, Ye Saints” has appeared in every Latter- day Saint hymnbook since 1851. Many non- Latter- day Saints have learned to identify it with the Church through recordings, performances, and reprintings. It holds a special place in the hearts of all Latter- day Saints, since all members of the Church are the spiritual, if not the literal, descendants of the pioneers whose devotion is memorialized in the hymn.