I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. ~ John 14:16
Herbert Buffum was born in 1879, in Lafayette, a farming community some 30 miles east of Moline, Illinois. He was a rebellious teen who aspired to be an actor. Because of poor health he moved to southern California. Even though the Buffums were Methodists, and he had attended Wesleyan University in Kansas, he had built up resentment against churches, and particularly, Holiness people. However, in 1897 he agreed to attend a Holiness camp meeting in Long Beach. There he was converted and healed. As a result he gave up worldly ambitions and answered God’s call to Christian service. Herbert got his ministerial training from the Volunteers of America and received credentials to preach in the Church of the Nazarene from Phineas Bresee. In 19012 he and his wife Lillie, a Free Methodist, conducted revivals in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. If there was no local church for their converts to attend they would form a “class” and receive them into membership of Los Angeles First Church. During this time “Pentecostalism” and tongues-speaking was gaining popularity. The Buffums embraced and encouraged the practice. Their stance put them in direct opposition to Bresee and the early founders. As a result, in 1913 they left the Church of the Nazarene and joined the Church of God in Christ. The Assembly of God Church gave Lillie preaching credentials in 1920. However, Herbert declined, saying, “Unless he be excommunicated, he expects ever to be ‘a Nazarene heart and soul’…Some day I may yet prove my devotion to the church that gave me license to preach.”
Even though Buffum had no musical training, he taught himself to play any instrument with strings. He was also a prolific song writer, with 10,000 to his credit; 1,000 actually published. Ripley’s Believe It or Not claimed he once wrote 12 songs in an hour. He sold most of his songs for five dollars or less. When he died the Los Angeles Times called him “The King of Gospel Song Writers. What Stephen Collins Foster did for American folklore; Herbert Buffum did for its homely religious sentiments he expressed in simple musical strains that all could understand.”
Herbert Buffum was 35 years old when he wrote the words to this gospel song. The melody was written by an interesting character, D. M. Shanks. He was also known as Doc McKinley Shanks. He lost an arm in a sawmill accident and lived all of his 104 years in Floyd, Virginia. How in the world he connected with Buffum has been lost to history.
Years on the road as an evangelist took their toll. Herbert Buffum died in 1939, worn out at only 59 years of age. However, for 22 years he had been sustained by his own testimony...
I’m rejoicing night and day
As I walk the narrow way,
For the hand of God in all my life I see.
And the reason of my bliss,
Yes, the secret all is this:
That the Comforter abides with me.
Refrain
He abides, He abides.
Hallelujah, He abides with me!
I’m rejoicing night and day
As I walk the narrow way,
For the Comforter abides with me.
- Herbert Buffum, 1879-1939
Copied from Sing to the Lord © 1993 by Lillenas Publishing Company
Hymn commentary courtesy J. D. Sherrow
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