My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou; If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

[3] The first two lines of this poem are nearly the same as a hymn written by Caleb J. Taylor, published in 1804; this hymn is used as the basis for the song Imandra by Ananias Davisson in the Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony in 1820, reprinted in Southern Harmony in 1835.

[4][5] There are other similarities between Featherston's poem and camp-meeting songs published in the 1820s onward.

Featherston died at the age of 27, well before his poem had become a well-known inspirational hymn.

According to Tim Challies,[3] The United Methodist Church's Hymns of the United Methodist Church, a guide to the denomination's hymnal, states that Featherstone was 16 years old when he wrote the text in 1864.