Hymn Story: Lead, Kindly Light
John Henry Newman wrote a poem “The Pillar of the Cloud” in 1833. The poem was first published in the British Magazine the following year.
Charles H. Purday’s “Tune” was married to the poem. It then became the hymn we know “Lead, Kindly Light.”
As a young priest, Newman became sick while in Italy and was unable to travel for almost three weeks. In his own words:

Before starting from my inn, I sat down on my bed and began to sob bitterly. My servant, who had acted as my nurse, asked what ailed me. I could only answer, “I have a work to do in England.” I was aching to get home, yet for want of a vessel I was kept 8at Palermo for three weeks. I began to visit the churches, and they calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services. At last I got off in an orange boat, bound for Marseilles. We were becalmed for whole week in the Straits of Bonifacio, and it was there that I wrote the lines, Lead, Kindly Light, which have since become so well known.
Father Newman died on August 11, 1890. In 2019, the Catholic Church canonized him as a saint.
The hymn was sung on the Titanic, at a hymn-sing on Sunday, April 14, 1912 before the ocean liner struck an iceberg. Later, the lifeboat holding Noëlle, Countess of Rothes, spotted the rescue ship Carpathia approaching. The countess suggested they sing the hymn which must have brought great comfort after such a terrible tragedy.

On one occasion in February 1915, “Lead, Kindly Light” was sung by a group of British troops to the accompaniment of nearby artillery fire on the Western Front during the First World War at services held before going into the trenches the following day
“Lead, Kindly Light” was sung by Betsie ten Boom, sister of Corrie ten Boom, and other women as they were led by the S.S. Guards to the Ravensbrück concentration camp during the Holocaust.