"The song was inspired by the idea of The Book of Life mentioned in the Bible, and by the absence of a child in Black's Sunday school class when the attendance was taken. The idea of someone's being not in attendance in heaven haunted Black, and after visiting the child's home and calling on a doctor to attend her for pneumonia, he went home and wrote the song after not finding one on a similar topic in his hymn collection. The song's lyrics were first published in a [1893] collection titled Songs of the Soul". Warning: template has been deprecated.
