“I Love to Hear the Truth Proclaimed”

As the Church grew in Britain, many of the converts were young men and women from working-class backgrounds who had already been searching for truth. During the 19th century, the British Mission called many of them to preach alongside the missionaries sent from Church headquarters.

One early convert-turned-missionary was William Fowler. Fowler, whose father was a soldier in the British Army, was born in Australia, spent his early childhood in India and in the West Indies, and then settled in Sheffield. By the time Fowler was 18, both his parents had died. Like Joseph Smith, Fowler began to search for truth and attend Methodist meetings, but he was unsatisfied. Soon a friend invited him to a Latter-day Saint meeting. “I could not rest after until I had given obedience to the requirements of the Gospel,” Fowler wrote. He was baptized on July 29, 1849.

Two years later, at a Church conference, Fowler was called to serve as a missionary. Service could be difficult. Fowler remembered having a “good meeting” in one home while a “mob assembled outside, expecting to pelt us with goose eggs.” He often walked long distances to meet with members or preach in new places, and he composed hymns along the way, which he recorded in his journal. Some of the hymns dealt with missionary work, such as one with the refrain, “I love to hear the truth proclaimed / By the priesthood of the Lord.” Others dealt with topics such as the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and gathering to Zion.

After four years, Fowler was released from his mission, but he continued to be active in local Church leadership as he prepared to immigrate to help build Zion in the American West. President Joseph F. Smith, who served in Sheffield as a young missionary in the early 1860s, remembered Fowler coming to one conference with a new hymn that combined many of the themes of his earlier work and his Church experience. The hymn was “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet.”

Fowler immigrated to the United States in 1863 and settled in Manti, Utah. Long after his death, his hymn continues to be sung by Latter-day Saints around the world.