Composition
"His Eye Is on the Sparrow" (1905) was written by Civilla D. Martin (text) and Charles H. Gabriel (music) after Martin visited Doolittle and Ethan Martin, a disabled couple in New York whose exceptional cheerfulness under physical suffering prompted her to ask the secret of their joy. Mr. Martin replied by quoting Matthew 10:29-31: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father... Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." Martin wrote the hymn on the train home that day.
Biblical Text
The governing text is Matthew 10:29-31 (parallel: Luke 12:6-7), where Jesus assures his disciples before sending them on mission that divine providence extends even to sparrows - the cheapest birds sold in the marketplace. Two for a farthing in Matthew; five for two farthings in Luke - meaning one is effectively given away free. The point is the comprehensiveness of divine attention: not even the least valuable creature is outside God's notice. The logical conclusion: "You are worth more than many sparrows" - the argument from lesser to greater.
The hymn's refrain - "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me" - takes the third-person logic of Matthew 10 and applies it personally: not merely that God watches sparrows in general, but that the same attention is now directed at the singer. This personal application is the hymn's theological move: from the general principle of divine providence to the particular assurance of divine care for this person, in this suffering.
Creator
Civilla Durfee Martin (1866-1948) was a prolific gospel hymn lyricist who also wrote "God Will Take Care of You" with her husband W. Stillman Martin. Charles H. Gabriel (1856-1932) was one of the most productive composers in the Moody-Sankey gospel song tradition, contributing tunes to dozens of the period's most enduring hymns. Their collaboration on "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" produced the definitive sacred song of personal assurance in the American gospel tradition.
Legacy
The hymn's cultural afterlife is inseparable from Ethel Waters, the African-American singer and actress who sang it at Billy Graham's crusades beginning in 1957 and titled her 1951 autobiography His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Waters's performances carried the weight of her own extraordinary suffering - poverty, abuse, and marginalization - giving the hymn's assurance a depth of personal testimony that transformed it from a Sunday school song into a testimony of hard-won faith. Her declaration "I sing because I'm happy, I sing because I'm free" became, in her voice and in her life, a statement of theological conviction that suffering had tested and confirmed.