Horatius Bonar

Horatius Bonar was a Scottish Presbyterian minister, religious writer, editor, and hymn author. Born in Edinburgh in 1808, he was educated at the High School and University of Edinburgh and came under the influence of Thomas Chalmers. After mission work in Leith, he was ordained in 1837 to the North Parish Church at Kelso. At the Disruption of 1843 he left the established Church of Scotland and continued his ministry in Kelso within the newly formed Free Church of Scotland.

Bonar moved to Chalmers Memorial Church in Edinburgh in 1866 and served as Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly in 1883. He wrote extensively in prose and verse, edited religious periodicals, and produced more than six hundred hymns. Other enduring texts include Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face, A Few More Years Shall Roll, and Go, Labor On.

The manuscript of I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say survives among Bonar’s papers. His son Horatius N. Bonar reported in 1904 that it was written around the period of The Bible Hymn-Book of 1845. The text reflects Bonar’s pastoral concern for simple, scriptural Christian song and was later given the title The Voice from Galilee.