Take up thy cross and follow me

Take up thy cross and follow me (‘Wherever He leads I'll go’). Baylus B. McKinney* (1886-1952). Written in January 1936 at Clanton, Alabama, during a meeting of the Alabama Baptist Sunday School Convention. McKinney was commiserating with a missionary, Robert S. Jones, who was unable on health grounds to return to the mission field, but who said ‘Wherever he leads, I’ll go’. These words form the first line of the refrain, by which the hymn is sometimes known: Wherever He leads I’ll go,Wherever He leads I’ll go;I’ll follow my Christ who loves me so,Wherever He leads I’ll go. It was published in Songs of Victory (Nashville, 1937), edited by McKinney in his capacity of church music editor...