Friends will be there I have loved long ago; During the early summer of 1900, while bicycle riding with a Chicago publisher [probably E. O. Excell], for whom he was at the time preparing manuscript, he said to his friend: “I’ve got a song that is going to live!” He then gave the title of, and made brief quotations from, “O that will be glory.” He was paid $10.
[2] The inspiration for the song is said to have been a man named Ed Card, superintendent of the Sunshine Rescue Mission[2] in St. Louis, MO.
Then I began to teach it to large audiences, and soon whole towns were ringing with the melody.” Alexander also saw college students in Kansas singing the song as they paraded in the streets, and about 800 people coming to a revival on a chartered train singing the song at the station.
Shortly after that, Alexander teamed with R. A. Torrey for an evangelistic campaign in Melbourne, Australia, and printed several thousand copies of the song for use there.
“The next day, all over the city inquiries were made for the ‘Glory Song.’” He went from Melbourne to Sydney, where the song was equally popular.
Patrick and Sydnor, who do not like “gospel” music and attribute its “low quality” to the pressures of commercial success, comment: “It is difficult to say just where the lowest depth [of gospel song quality] was touched, but probably the so-called ‘Glory Song,’ with its recurring refrain of ‘That will be glory, be glory for me!’ [italics provided by Patrick and Sydnor] reached the ultimate nadir of unevangelical egotism.”[6] The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has recognized the validity of this criticism, and Graham’s song leader, Cliff Barrows has responded, saying that the song must be properly understood within the wider context of Christian theology: No doubt many Christians have a false view of what heaven will be.