Hastings be­gan hymn writ­ing and preach­ing at age 17, and worked as an evan­gel­ist in var­i­ous parts of Amer­i­ca. In 1866, he es­tab­lished The Christ­ian, a month­ly pa­per, in which ma­ny of his hymns ap­peared. In 1865, he found­ed the Scrip­tur­al Tract Re­pos­i­tory in Bos­ton, Mas­sa­chu­setts. His works in­clude:

• Social Hymns, Orig­in­al and Se­lect­ed (Bos­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts: 1865)
• Songs of Pil­grim­age, a Hymn­al for the Churche­s of Christ, Part 1, 1880
• The Hast­ings Birth­day Book, 1886, ex­tracts from his prose writ­ings

Lyrics

1. Shall We Meet?