'I Love to Tell the Story' (1866) by A. Catherine Hankey is one of the most direct expressions in Protestant hymnody of the compulsion to share the gospel - not as duty or obligation but as irrepressible delight. Written during a long illness and drawing on the apostolic declaration of Acts 4:20, it gave a name and a melody to a style of personal witness that would shape evangelical culture on both sides of the Atlantic for the following century.
Kate Hankey and Her Illness
Ann Katherine Hankey (1834-1911), known as 'Kate,' was the daughter of a wealthy London banker and a committed Evangelical Anglican. She taught Sunday School classes for working-class girls in London and was closely associated with the Clapham Sect's successor circle. In January 1866, she fell seriously ill and spent several months in bed - a period during which she wrote an extended poem about the life of Christ in two parts: 'The Story Wanted' and 'The Story Told.' 'I Love to Tell the Story' is drawn from the second part, and the famous hymn 'Tell Me the Old, Old Story' comes from the first part, making both hymns from the same 1866 poem. Hankey gave the royalties from all her published hymns to missionary work in South Africa.
The musician William Howard Doane set the refrain and adapted the verses for congregational use, and the complete hymn was first published in 1869.
Biblical Foundation
The primary biblical reference is Acts 4:20 (KJV): 'For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.' Peter and John, brought before the Sanhedrin and commanded to stop speaking about Jesus, offer this response - not defiance exactly, but a statement of incapacity: they cannot stop. The gospel-telling imperative is not external command but internal necessity born of encounter.
1 Corinthians 2:2 - 'For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified' - reflects Paul's similar narrowing of focus to the gospel story as the central content of all proclamation. Luke 24:27 - the risen Christ expounding Moses and all the prophets as testimony to himself - provides the model of the whole Scripture read as the story of Jesus.
The Refrain and Its Rhetoric
The refrain - 'I love to tell the story! 'Twill be my theme in glory, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love' - is remarkable for projecting the love of gospel-telling into eternity. The hymn does not merely claim that sharing the gospel is important or obligatory; it claims that the activity of telling the story of Jesus will continue as the joy of heaven. This eschatological extension of evangelistic impulse is unusual and gives the hymn a scope beyond most evangelical hymnody.
The phrase 'old, old story' recurs throughout. The adjective 'old' is not an apology but a commendation: the story is old because it is foundational, historical, rooted in real events. The repetition 'old, old' performs the quality of satisfied repetition that the hymn is about - the story that never grows stale because the love it tells of never grows old.
Victorian Revival Context
The hymn was widely used at Dwight L. Moody's American revival campaigns and in the British evangelicalism of the 1870s and 1880s. It was a staple of Sunday School meetings, where children would learn it before they fully grasped its adult depths. It was also used at adult evangelistic services, where its simplicity made it accessible to non-churchgoers. Its repeated refrain was designed for congregational singing that gathered participants into a common declaration - 'I love to tell the story' - regardless of their individual experience of the story's content.
General William Booth
The hymn's association with the Salvation Army - General William Booth quoted it in defining the Army's evangelistic purpose - reflects its status as a defining text for the tradition of urban street evangelism. For Booth, to tell the story of Jesus was the entire point of the Army's existence; this hymn gave that purpose a melody.
Legacy
The hymn remains in regular use in evangelical and Baptist traditions worldwide. It is particularly associated with American revivalism and the Sunday School movement. Its combination of personal testimony ('I love to tell'), theological precision ('the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love'), and communal invitation gives it a versatility that has sustained its use across 150 years of changing church culture.