#241 Count Your Blessings

Music & voice:
Download MP3 (Right click, Save Link As…)

Music only:
Download MP3 (Right click, Save Link As…)

Lyrics:

1. When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings; name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

(Chorus)
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your blessings;
See what God hath done.
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your many blessings;
See what God hath done.

2. Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings; ev’ry doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by.

3. When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you his wealth untold.
Count your many blessings; money cannot buy
Your reward in heaven nor your home on high.

4. So amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged; God is over all.
Count your many blessings; angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

Text: Johnson Oatman, Jr., 1856-1922
Music: Edwin O. Excell, 1851-1921

-History: (Source: Wikipedia)

Written By: Johnson Oatman Jr.

Music By: Edwin O. Excell

Edwin Othello Excell (December 13, 1851 – June 10, 1921), commonly known as E. O. Excell, was a prominent American publisher,composersong leader, and singer of music for church, Sunday school, and evangelistic meetings during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the significant collaborators in his vocal and publishing work included Sam P. JonesWilliam E. Biederwolf,Gipsy SmithCharles Reign ScovilleJ. Wilbur ChapmanW. E. M. HacklemanCharles H. Gabriel and D. B. Towner.

His 1909 stanza selection and arrangement of Amazing Grace became the most widely used and familiar setting of that hymn by the second half of the twentieth century.[2] The influence of his sacred music on American popular culture through revival meetings, religious conventions,circuit chautauquas, and church hymnals was substantial enough by the 1920s to garner a satirical reference by Sinclair Lewis in the novelElmer Gantry.[3]

Excell compiled or contributed to about ninety secular and sacred song books and is estimated to have written, composed, or arranged more than two thousand of the songs he published.[4] The music publishing business he started in 1881 and that eventually bore his name was the highest volume producer of hymnbooks in America at the time of his death.[5]

Estimates of the number of songs authored, composed, or arranged by Excell range from two to three thousand. Two that remain well known are his 1909 arrangement of John Newton’sAmazing Grace and the tune he composed for Johnson Oatman’s Count Your Blessings.