LSM Hymn Collection

When Witness Lee came to the United States for the Lord’s interests in 1962, he had the deep sensation that an adequate hymnal that could greatly help the meetings was needed

From 1960 to 1961, Witness Lee was led by the Lord to minister Christ as the life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45b) to the brothers and sisters in Taiwan. However, they were short of hymns on Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church, so in 1961 he spent two months to write eighty-five new hymns on these subjects. A number of these are in the present English translation of Hymns. Hymn #499–“Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace!”; #501–“O glorious Christ, Savior mine”; and #608–“What mystery, the Father, Son, and Spirit” were written in 1961 in Taipei and translated into English in 1964 in Los Angeles. By that time, there were four volumes of hymns.

When Witness Lee came to the United States for the Lord’s interests in 1962, he had the deep sensation that an adequate hymnal that could greatly help the meetings was needed. As he traveled throughout the United States from 1962 to 1964, he reviewed a number of existing hymnals to find hymns suitable for this purpose. He found most of the hymns in the British Keswick Convention hymnal to be useful, so a number of them were included in the present hymnal. From 1963 to 1964, Witness Lee wrote about 200 new hymns which are also included in the current edition of Hymns.

Several alterations were made to the older hymns, except where a copyright had been involved, in order to improve their accuracy in truth and to enrich their spirituality in meaning. In this delicate and difficult work, Witness Lee departed from the meaning and words of the original author only where necessary.

The Living Stream Ministry’s current collection of Hymns includes about 300 new hymns. The other approximately 780 were selected from more than 11,000 existing hymns.