Victory in Jesus Eugene M. Bartlett, 1939

Eugene M. Bartlett wrote Victory in Jesus in 1939. He was a Missouri native who trained at the Hall-Moody Institute and William Jewell Academy. He became president of Hartford Music Company, edited many songbooks and the magazine Herald of Song, and worked with the Stamps-Baxter and James D. Vaughan companies, which served rural churches. The Gospel Music Hall of Fame inducted him in 1979. Hymnary.org says he suffered a stroke in 1939 and wrote the song afterward. He died in 1941. Sources disagree on his birth year. One lists 1885, and Hymnary.org's biography gives December 24, 1883, in Waynesville, Missouri.

UM Discipleship says Bartlett drew on images from older hymns that were likely in his memory, and on John 14:2. It describes the song as a product of Southern revivalism and Southern Baptist piety, and says it remains a favorite in many Southern Baptist congregations.

The United Methodist Hymnal included it as number 370 in 1989. Committee member Charles M. Smith introduced it, noting it was the most requested recent gospel hymn in his district. The copyright notice reads 1939, renewed 1967, assigned to Albert E. Brumley and Sons.