Ufford’s message highlights the parallels between life struggles and the Gospel of Christ. People are battling daily struggles, liberal views, and faults. We must offer the lifeline to save them from death. If someone is in danger, we as lifeguards should be prepared to help them by offering them the lifeline. May it be our challenge this next week to “throw out the life line” to someone in need.
Verse: For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke 19:10 KJV
Author: Edward S Ufford (1851-1929)
Hymn History:
Reverend Edward Smith Ufford, was born in Newark, New Jersey, on February 10, 1851. He received his education at Bates Theological Seminary in Maine and Stratford Academy in Connecticut. He became a Baptist preacher in 1878, and the following year began serving with the First Baptist Church in Portland, ME.
Mr. Ufford was inspired to write this well-known hymn after seeing a life-saving exercise at the Point Allerton Life Saving Station in Massachusetts in 1886, where observed workers rehearsing rescue techniques they would employ in the case of a shipwreck. They practiced tossing a lifeline to those who were having trouble in the water as part of one of the drills. As he observed, it came to him that the Christian’s life was similar to saving others in peril. He was greatly affected by the rapid action of the life-saving crew and the exhilarating sight of the lifeline being thrown far out over dangerous water. He went down at the parlor organ as soon as he got home and finished writing both the text and the music.
Ufford produced hymns and published five song collections, including Convert’s Praise, Life-Long Songs, Wonderful Love, Gathered Gems, and Life and Light No. 2. He retired and died in Union, ME on December 8, 1929. The song appeared in various hymnbooks published by the Lord’s church, including Great Songs of the Church No. 2, Christian Hymns, Abiding Hymns, and Christian Hymnal. It is now found in various hymnbooks and collections.
Lyrics:
1 Throw out the lifeline across the dark wave;
There is a brother whom someone should save;
Somebody’s brother, O who then will dare
To throw out the lifeline, his peril to share?
Refrain:
Throw out the lifeline! Throw out the lifeline!
Someone is drifting away;
Throw out the lifeline! Throw out the lifeline!
Someone is sinking today.
2 Throw out the lifeline with hand quick and strong;
Why do you tarry, why linger so long?
See, he is sinking, O hasten today;
And out with the lifeboat, away, then, away! [Refrain]
3 Throw out the lifeline to danger-fraught men,
Sinking in anguish where you’ve never been;
Winds of temptation and billows of woe
Will soon hurl them out where the dark waters flow. [Refrain]
4 Soon will the season of rescue be o’er;
Soon will they drift to eternity’s shore;
Haste then, my brother, no time for delay!
But throw out the lifeline and save them today. [Refrain]
Listen here:
References:
- https://hymnary.org/text/throw_out_the_life_line_across_the_dark_
- https://www.lighthousedigest.com/digest/StoryPage.cfm?StoryKey=376
- https://hymnstudiesblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/quotthrow-out-the-lifelinequot/
- http://barryshymns.blogspot.com/2013/10/throw-out-lifeline.html
