This hymn was written by a man too weak to hold his pen steady. William Chatterton Dix (1837–98) was deep in a long illness, languid and low for weeks together, when he began the text, as he put it, “almost to idle away the hours.” He was so faint that his hand trembled over the paper, and the weariness in the hymn is not a figure of speech but a description of the writer. What makes the story remarkable is what happened next: Dix recovered soon after finishing it, and he told a hymnologist years later that he always regarded writing this hymn as the turning point of his illness. All four of his stanzas survive in our hymnal, and each one opens with a promise spoken by the Lord Himself, beginning with the invitation of Matthew 11:28 to all who are burdened by sin, affliction, or the demands of the Law. Dix originally began the second stanza “Come unto Me, dear children”; the 1889 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern changed it to “ye wanderers,” and the change stuck, aiming the promise squarely at the lost. Our hymnal files it under Sanctification, but it first appeared in 1867 among the Communion hymns of The People’s Hymnal, which suits today exactly: the Lord who bids the weary come also tells them where He may be found.