My faith looks up to Thee

This is my 30th entry in the Lenten Hymn-of-the-Day project. I believe that this one will be known by most of you!

The words were written by Ray Palmer (1808-1887). He at­tend­ed Phil­lips An­do­ver Acad­e­my (where he and Oli­ver Wen­dell Holmes were class­mates) and Yale Un­i­ver­si­ty. Af­ter Yale, he was a teacher before being or­dained as a Con­gre­ga­tion­al min­is­ter, and pas­tored in Bath, Maine, and Albany, New York. Around 1865, he be­came Sec­re­ta­ry of the Con­gre­ga­tion­al Un­ion. Palm­er re­tired in 1878.

Lowell Mason (1792-1872), the compose of the solid tune, "Olivet" showed an in­tense in­ter­est in mu­sic from child­hood. He lived in Sa­van­nah, Georgia, for 15 years, work­ing as a bank clerk, but pur­suing his true love—mu­sic—on the side. He stu­died with F. I. Abel, im­prov­ing his skills to the point where he be­gan com­pos­ing his own music. After see­ing the suc­cess of his work, Mason re­turned to Bos­ton in 1826. He a­lso be­came the di­rect­or of mu­sic at the Han­o­ver, Green, and Park Street church­es, al­tern­at­ing six months with each con­gre­ga­tion. Fin­al­ly, he made a per­ma­nent ar­range­ment with the Bow­doin Street Church, though he still held his job as tel­ler at the Amer­i­can Bank. Mu­sic con­tinued to pull on him, though; he be­came pres­i­dent of the Han­del and Haydn So­ci­e­ty in 1827. It was in Bos­ton that Ma­son be­came the first mu­sic teach­er in an Amer­i­can pub­lic school. In 1833, he co-found­ed the Bos­ton Acad­e­my of Mu­sic; in 1838, he be­came mu­sic sup­er­in­ten­dent for the Bos­ton school sys­tem. Low­ell Ma­son wrote over 1,600 re­li­gious works, and is of­ten called the “fa­ther of Amer­i­can church music.”