We’ll Understand It Better By and By Hymn Meaning, History, and Scripture
"We are often tossed and driven on the restless sea of time"
- Written
- 1905
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- Hymn
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- Standard Tune
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- Public domain
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Story
“We’ll Understand It Better By and By” is Charles Albert Tindley’s 1905 gospel hymn about suffering, incomplete understanding, and trust in God’s future. Originally published in “Soul Echoes” with Tindley’s tune BY AND BY, it later circulated in a substantially revised 1937 form prepared by B. B. McKinney.
Overview
“We’ll Understand It Better By and By” gives voice to faith when explanation is incomplete. Charles Albert Tindley does not treat suffering as an intellectual puzzle that believers can always solve in the present. Instead, the hymn places uncertainty inside a larger confession: God remains trustworthy when circumstances are painful, confusing, or materially difficult, and present partial knowledge is not the measure of God’s final purpose.
That makes the song more than a general hymn about heaven. Its original form confronts storms, deprivation, temptation, and the bewilderment of being led along a path whose meaning is not yet clear. Tindley’s hope is therefore neither denial nor easy optimism. The worshiper is allowed to acknowledge hardship while continuing to trust God’s guidance and future restoration.
Pastorally, the hymn is especially useful in times of grief, economic hardship, disappointment, unanswered prayer, and communal suffering. It can help a congregation resist simplistic explanations for pain while affirming that Christian hope looks beyond what can presently be seen or understood.
Historical Background
Charles Albert Tindley wrote “We’ll Understand It Better By and By” while serving the Bainbridge Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. His route to that pulpit was remarkable: after years of self-education and manual work, including service as a church sexton, he entered the Methodist Episcopal ministry and served several appointments before returning in 1902 as pastor of the congregation where he had once worked in a humble supporting role. Under his leadership the church grew into a major African American congregation and later became known as Tindley Temple.
The hymn first appeared in 1905 in the first edition of Tindley’s “Soul Echoes,” a collection of songs for religious meetings. Tindley created both texts and melodies, but he was not trained in conventional musical notation and depended on colleagues such as Francis A. Clark to put some of his music into written form and prepare arrangements. Later hymnals credit Clark as transcriber or arranger of BY AND BY, the tune associated with this text.
Tindley’s original hymn had four stanzas and a refrain. Its historical importance is partly obscured by a later abbreviated form. The original sequence does not speak only in generalities about adversity; it includes material deprivation alongside storms, uncertainty, temptation, and the struggle to remain faithful. That social realism is consistent with Tindley’s pastoral setting in Philadelphia and with the broader character of his hymnody, which frequently joined heavenly hope to the concrete difficulties faced by African American worshipers and working people.
The tune BY AND BY is also credited to Tindley. Hymnary classifies it as irregular with refrain, and some later hymnals identify Francis A. Clark as the musician who transcribed or arranged the melody. The early form used prominent dotted rhythms that gave the music a firm, forward-moving character. Hymnological scholarship cautions against automatically imposing the later swung gospel style on Tindley’s original setting, which predates the gospel-blues developments associated with the following generation.
A major textual and musical revision appeared in B. B. McKinney’s “Songs of Victory” in 1937. McKinney reshaped the hymn into the form often titled “When Morning Comes,” beginning with material from a later stanza of Tindley’s original. His version reduced and reordered Tindley’s four stanzas, introduced a new middle stanza, altered portions of the text, and simplified some of the earlier dotted rhythmic patterns. As a result, many twentieth-century Baptist and evangelical hymnals transmit a form that is recognizably Tindley’s song but is not identical with the 1905 original.
The original text and tune circulated through African American, Methodist, Baptist, and wider Protestant hymnody, while the McKinney form developed its own substantial hymnal history. The distinction matters for both historical accuracy and copyright. Tindley’s 1905 text and tune are public domain in the United States; later arrangements, edited texts, harmonizations, and recordings may have separate rights.
Biblical Foundations
First Corinthians 13:12 provides the clearest biblical summary of the hymn’s central claim. Christian knowledge in the present is partial; the believer sees imperfectly and waits for fuller knowledge. The hymn turns that limitation into hope rather than frustration, affirming that incomplete understanding is not the same as divine absence.
John 13:7 gives an equally direct pattern: Jesus tells Peter that the meaning of what he is doing is not understood in the moment but will be understood later. The immediate context concerns Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, so the verse should not be treated as a universal promise that every earthly mystery will receive a detailed explanation. It nevertheless establishes a biblical pattern of trusting Christ before his purposes are fully grasped.
Psalm 32:8 and Proverbs 3:5–6 ground the hymn’s language of guidance. God promises instruction and counsel, while Proverbs explicitly warns against making human understanding the foundation of trust. Together they support a spirituality that keeps following God even when the route cannot be fully explained.
Romans 8:18 and Revelation 21:4 place present suffering within the horizon of future glory and restoration. The Christian answer to pain is not that suffering is insignificant, but that it is not ultimate. God’s promised future includes glory beyond present affliction and the end of mourning, crying, pain, and death.
Theological Reflection
The hymn offers a theology of providence without pretending to possess exhaustive explanations for suffering. God is confessed as guide even when the believer cannot interpret every event. This is an important distinction: trust in providence is not the same as claiming to know why each tragedy, disappointment, or deprivation occurs.
Its theology of suffering is correspondingly restrained. Tindley allows hardship to remain hardship. Poverty, temptation, confusion, and loss are not romanticized as automatically good. Christian hope consists in believing that these realities do not exhaust the meaning of the believer’s life and will not have the final word in God’s kingdom.
Eschatology is therefore central. The hymn looks toward a future in which present partial knowledge gives way to greater clarity and the gathered people of God can view their pilgrimage from the perspective of divine fulfillment. The emphasis is not idle curiosity about heaven but perseverance in the present because the future belongs to God.
In its original social setting, that hope also carries ethical weight. Tindley ministered among people who knew racial discrimination and economic need, and his hymn names material deprivation rather than reducing suffering to private emotion. Churches singing it today should therefore let future hope deepen compassion and endurance rather than use heaven as an excuse to ignore preventable suffering in the present.
Church Impact
The hymn became an established part of African American gospel hymnody and also crossed into Methodist, Baptist, Holiness, evangelical, and ecumenical collections. Hymnary indexes the original “We are often tossed and driven” text in more than one hundred hymnals, while the later “Trials dark on every hand” revision has a separate and substantial hymnal history.
Its reception illustrates how a gospel song can develop more than one recognizable textual tradition. Collections preserving Tindley’s four-stanza form emphasize the original sequence, including its explicit attention to material need. Baptist hymnals influenced by B. B. McKinney’s 1937 revision often present the shorter “When Morning Comes” form instead. Both traditions helped keep the song in congregational use, but they should not be treated as textually identical.
The hymn has also remained significant in collections devoted specifically to African American sacred song. “Beams of Heaven: Hymns of Charles Albert Tindley,” published in 2006, restored attention to Tindley’s complete hymn corpus and to his role as an important precursor of later gospel music. The continuing life of this hymn rests in its ability to name uncertainty honestly while sustaining a communal vocabulary of trust and hope.
Musical Notes
BY AND BY is the tune associated with Tindley’s original hymn and is credited to Charles Albert Tindley. Hymnary classifies it as irregular with refrain; later hymnals may describe the meter more specifically, but the gospel-song form does not fit neatly into a traditional hymn-meter label. Francis A. Clark is credited in several hymnals as transcriber or arranger, reflecting Tindley’s practice of relying on musically trained colleagues to put his melodies into notation.
The early form of BY AND BY contains prominent dotted-eighth and sixteenth-note rhythms, giving the melody a firm rhythmic profile. Hymnology Archive notes that the song predates the swung gospel-blues style that later became common in African American church music, so a modern shuffle should not automatically be assumed to reproduce Tindley’s original performance practice.
B. B. McKinney’s 1937 “Songs of Victory” adaptation altered both text and music. His arrangement reduced and reordered the stanzas and removed many of the original dotted rhythmic figures. This later version, often identified by the title “When Morning Comes,” became especially common in Baptist hymnals. Worship leaders should therefore check which form their hymnal prints rather than assuming that every setting of the refrain represents the 1905 original.
Application
- Use the hymn when pastoral care requires hope without pretending to know why a particular loss or hardship occurred.
- When circumstances are confusing, pair prayer for guidance with Proverbs 3:5–6 rather than demanding immediate certainty before obeying what is already clear.
- Recognize economic deprivation as a real form of suffering and let Christian hope lead to practical care for people who lack food, shelter, or security.
- Allow questions and lament to coexist with faith; not understanding an event is not the same as abandoning trust in God.
- Use the promise of future restoration to strengthen perseverance in present discipleship, justice, compassion, and mutual support.
Discussion Questions
- What is the difference between trusting God’s providence and claiming to know why every painful event happens?
- How does 1 Corinthians 13:12 help Christians live faithfully with incomplete understanding?
- Why is it significant that Tindley’s original hymn includes economic deprivation as well as personal trials and temptation?
- How can hope in God’s future strengthen practical compassion rather than encourage passivity toward present suffering?
- What can the differences between Tindley’s 1905 original and B. B. McKinney’s 1937 revision teach us about how hymns change as they move through different traditions?
Teaching Tips
- Present the song first as Tindley’s 1905 four-stanza hymn from “Soul Echoes,” then explain that many singers know a later three-stanza revision from B. B. McKinney’s 1937 “Songs of Victory.”
- Read 1 Corinthians 13:12 and John 13:7 carefully, stressing that Christian faith permits incomplete understanding without requiring simplistic explanations for suffering.
- Use Tindley’s biography to connect the hymn with African American Methodist history, self-education, pastoral ministry, and the emergence of gospel hymnody.
- If possible, compare the rhythmic profile of an early BY AND BY setting with a later McKinney arrangement to show how musical transmission can reshape a hymn.
- When using the hymn in grief or crisis, resist telling sufferers that they will eventually learn a tidy reason for every tragedy; emphasize instead God’s presence, guidance, and promised restoration.
Sources
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Charles Albert Tindley, “Soul Echoes,” first edition, Philadelphia, 1905, original publication of “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.”
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Hymnology Archive, Chris Fenner, “We’ll Understand It Better By and By,” documenting the 1905 “Soul Echoes” publication, Francis A. Clark’s role, musical characteristics, and the 1937 B. B. McKinney revision.
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Hymnary.org, text authority page for “We’ll Understand It Better By and By,” identifying Charles Albert Tindley, the 1905 date, original first line, BY AND BY, and public-domain status.
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Hymnary.org, text authority page for “When Morning Comes” and “Songs of Victory” 1937 no. d88, documenting the later three-stanza revision associated with B. B. McKinney.
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Hymnary.org, Charles Albert Tindley person and tune authority records, identifying Tindley as composer of BY AND BY and Francis A. Clark as transcriber or arranger in hymnals preserving the early setting.
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Ralph H. Jones, “Charles Albert Tindley: Prince of Preachers,” Abingdon, 1982.
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Jon Michael Spencer, “Black Hymnody: A Hymnological History of the African American Church,” University of Tennessee Press, 1992.
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The United Methodist Church, historical resources on Charles Albert Tindley and Tindley Temple.
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Library of Congress, “African American Gospel,” overview of Tindley’s place in the development of gospel music.
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World English Bible, public-domain Scripture text from eBible.org.
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