Robert Lowery-Baptist Pastor and Hymn Writer

This Day in Baptist History Past



March 12, 1826 – Robert Lowry was born in Philadelphia. Even though his parents were faithful Presbyterians and at 17 Robert came under conviction and was converted to Christ, his study of God’s Word caused him to be convinced of believer’s immersion. Thus, he was baptized on April 23, 1843, by Dr. George B. Ide, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia. Dr. Ide began discipling young Robert and he began helping in a Sunday school in a destitute part of the city. Believing that God had called him to preach he entered the newly formed college at Lewisburg, Penn. (now Bucknell University), and graduated in 1854, as valedictory. Following graduation he was ordained and called to pastor the First Baptist Church of West Chester, Penn. In 1861 he was called to the Bloomingdale Baptist church of New York City. The same year he went to the Hanson Place Baptist Church of Brooklyn. In time he was induced to return to Lewisburg where he accepted a professorship at the college and the pastorate of the Baptist church. After six years he retired to Plainfield, N.J. but he ended up organizing a church there. At each of these churches Dr. Lowry erected new buildings, but his greatest gift was hymn writing. He wrote “We’re Marching to Zion”, “Christ Arose”, “What Can Wash Away My Sin?” and “All the Way My Savior Leads me.” While in Brooklyn he composed his celebrated hymn “Shall We Gather at the River?” It was a hot July in 1864, a very severe epidemic was raging, many were passing over the river of death. The pastor wrote: “Yes, we’ll gather at the river, Gather at the river, That flows by the throne of God” Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 139-40. [C.F: Lewis Edwin Theiss, Centennial History of Bucknell University 1846-1946 (Williamsport, Pa.: Grit Publish Co. Press, 19460, p. 151.]