My Hope is Built on Nothing Less

My Hope is Built on Nothing Less

Edward Mote was born in 1797 in London to unbelieving parents who pretty much let him go his own way, giving him little in the way of spiritual or moral direction.  He said of his younger years, “So ignorant was I that I did not know that there was a God.”  As a teenager, he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker who introduced Edward to the Gospel.  He responded to the Gospel, was saved, and was baptized when he was 18 years old. 

He worked in the business of cabinetry until he was 50 years of age, then entered the ministry.  He became the pastor of the local Baptist church in Horsham, West Sussex for the last 26 years of his life.  He was loved by his congregation and was offered the church parsonage as a gift.  He declined, saying he would rather have the pulpit, “and when I cease to preach Christ, then turn me out of that.”

Edward wrote some songs for his little church to use in worship.  One day, he had a thought in his head to write a hymn on the ‘gracious experience of a Christian.’  He wrote a chorus based on the Parable of the Builders and used as a chorus “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”  That day he wrote the first few verses.

The fledgling song stayed on the scratch paper in his pocket for quite some time.  Later, he paid a visit to some congregants of whom the wife was critically ill.  She asked for a song and, as he didn’t have a hymnal to sing from, he pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket and sang it with the couple.  The woman asked for a copy of the song, so Edward hurried home and finished the text.  He then sent the song off to a publisher writing, “As these verses so met the dying woman’s case, so my attention to them was the more arrested.”

In the nearly two centuries since, this song has been a hymn of hope and assurance for the Church, regardless of trial and circumstance.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid Rock, I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ the solid Rock, I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

His oath, His covenant, His blood, support me in the whelming flood
When every earthly prop gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.
On Christ the solid Rock, I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

When He shall come with trumpet sound, Oh, may I then in Him be found,
Clothed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne!
On Christ the solid Rock, I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Mote

https://hymnary.org/text/my_hope_is_built_on_nothing_less