How Great Thou Art Carl Gustaf Boberg and Stuart K. Hine, 1949

Carl Gustaf Boberg, a Swedish minister, editor and member of parliament, wrote the poem behind this hymn in the summer of 1885. Hymnary.org says the sight of nature and the sound of church bells moved him, and Wikipedia adds a thunderstorm to the account. A local newspaper printed the poem in 1886, and in 1891 it appeared with an old Swedish folk tune. Manfred von Glehn made a German translation in 1907, and Ivan Prokhanoff based a Russian version on it in 1912. Stuart K. Hine, a British missionary in Eastern Europe, learned the Russian version and began to write English words. Hymnary.org says he wrote the first two stanzas in the Carpathian Mountains, the third while evangelizing in villages, and the fourth in England in 1948. The complete English text came out in 1949 in his magazine Grace and Peace. Sources differ on whether Hine was a Methodist minister or a Plymouth Brethren missionary. George Beverly Shea sang the hymn at Billy Graham's 1955 Toronto crusade, and Manna Music issued a US edition that year. Earlier English translations existed, such as E. Gustav Johnson's 1925 version, but Hine's words are the ones that spread through American churches.