The Rev. Dr. Jacob Cham­ber­lain, who for ma­ny years has been work­ing among the Hin­dus, writes as fol­lows re­gard­ing this hymn, long one of the most pop­u­lar child­ren’s songs in the world: “Ma­ny years ago I trans­lat­ed in­to Tel­e­gu the child­ren’s hymn, ‘Je­sus loves me’ and taught it to the child­ren of our day-school. Scarce­ly a week lat­er, as I was go­ing through the nar­row streets of the na­tive town on horse­back, I heard sing­ing that sound­ed na­tur­al, down a side street. I stopped to list­en, cau­tious­ly draw­ing up to the cor­ner, where un­ob­served I could look down the street and see and hear. And there was a lit­tle hea­then boy, with hea­then men and wo­men stand­ing around him, sing­ing away at the top of his voice: ‘Je­sus loves me this I know…’

As he com­plet­ed the verse some one asked the quest­ion: ‘Son­ny, where did you learn that song?’ ‘Over at the Mis­sion­a­ry School,’ was the an­swer. ‘Who is that Je­sus, and what is the Bi­ble?’ ‘Oh! the Bi­ble is the book from God, they say, to teach us how to get to hea­ven, and Je­sus is the name of the di­vine Re­deem­er that came in­to the world to save us from our sins; that is what the mis­sion­ar­ies say.’ ‘Well, the song is a nice one. Come, sing us some more.’ And so the lit­tle boy went on—a hea­then himself, and sing­ing to the hea­then—about Je­sus and his love. ‘That is preach­ing the Gos­pel by proxy,’ I said to my­self, as I turned my po­ny and rode away, well sa­tis­fied to leave my lit­tle proxy to tell his in­ter­est­ed au­di­ence all he him­self knew, and sing to them over and over that sweet song of sal­va­tion.”

In 1891, when my grand­fa­ther, Rev. Har­u­tune S. Je­nan­yan, took his wife and lit­tle daugh­ter on a per­i­lous and dan­ger­ous mis­sion­a­ry jour­ney from Tar­sus, Asia Mi­nor, the ci­ty of St. Paul, to Si­vas in Ar­men­ia, they tra­velled on horse-back through rob­ber-in­fest­ed coun­try for four­teen days. Two of the lead­ing rob­ber chiefs on that ter­ri­to­ry were Chol­lo, whose “name cast ter­ror on ev­ery side” since he had suc­cess­ful­ly evad­ed pur­su­ing Gov­ern­ment forc­es for ma­ny months, and Ka­ra Ag­ha, a fa­mous Koor­ish chief, whose name caused even the fear­some Chol­lo to trem­ble. Har­u­tune took his small par­ty di­rect­ly in­to the heart of Ka­ra Ag­ha’s coun­try, tell­ing those he met en­route that he was go­ing to be Ag­ha’s guest in his own vill­age. When they reached the bri­gand’s head-quar­ters, the mis­sion­a­ry asked that they be re­ceived as guests for the night. The sur­prised rob­ber chief gave them ac­com­mo­da­tions, en­ter­tain­ing Har­u­tune in his own spa­cious tent while his wife, Hel­ene, and their lit­tle daugh­ter, Grace were cared for in ano­ther tent by the wo­men of the vill­age. The next morn­ing, be­fore tak­ing their leave, the mis­sion­ary asked for per­miss­ion to read a por­tion of the Ho­ly Script­ure, and then of­fered a pray­er. See­ing that the chief was some­what af­fect­ed, he then said, “Do you wish to have the lit­tle child sing for you?” The chief re­plied, “Oh yes; can she?” Then lit­tle Grace, on­ly three-and-a-half years old, came for­ward and stood be­fore the tall old man and sang two songs she had re­cent­ly learned in the Sun­day School in Tar­sus, sing­ing them in the na­tive tongue, “Je­sus loves me, this I know” and “I want to be an an­gel”. The chief was so deep­ly touched, that he sent his own son, Bek­keer Ag­ha, mount­ed on a hand­some Ar­a­bi­an steed, to lead the small mis­sion­a­ry par­ty through the rest of his ter­ri­to­ry.

This stan­za from the orig­in­al is com­mon­ly omit­ted in hymn­als:

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