Standing on the Promises

Russell Kelso Carter (1849–1928) may have had the most varied résumé in the hymnbook. He graduated in the first class of the Pennsylvania Military Academy, stayed on as a professor — teaching chemistry, natural science, civil engineering, and higher mathematics — spent three years as a sheep rancher in California, became an ordained Methodist minister, wrote novels and textbooks, and finished his career as a practicing physician in Baltimore.

But the turning point of his life came at age thirty, when his heart began to fail.

Carter had struggled with serious heart trouble since his early twenties, and by 1879 doctors considered his case hopeless. As the story is told, he knelt at his parents' home in Maryland and made a consecration that covered everything — he placed his whole life on the promises of God, whatever came, healed or not.

What came was forty-nine more years. Carter recovered, returned to teaching, and in 1886 poured his experience into a hymn — writing both the words and the music while helping compile a songbook with the gospel composer John R. Sweney. The tune, named PROMISES, marches like the military academy where he taught, and the words lean on scripture's 'exceeding great and precious promises' and Paul's command, having done all, to stand.

There is a mature postscript to Carter's story that makes it better, not worse. His later years were not uninterrupted health, and after two decades of watching the faith-healing movement he had joined, he wrote a book candidly admitting that most who sought miraculous healing were not healed. Healing, he concluded, 'is a matter of special favor from God' — not something faith can demand.

He never disowned his own miracle; he simply made room for everyone whose prayers were answered differently. The hymn works either way — because it isn't about being healed. It's about where you stand while you wait.

'Standing on the Promises' became a fixture of gospel songbooks and evangelistic meetings — it has appeared in over five hundred hymnals — but never an official Latter-day Saint one, until it was released as hymn #1023 on February 13, 2025, in the third batch of Hymns—For Home and Church.

The pairing is natural: for a covenant-making people, 'standing on the promises' reads like a description of everyday discipleship. The Tabernacle Choir sang it in general conference that October, marching tune and all. As the Church's hymn resource puts it, 'the cadence and energy of the music inspire feelings of strength, courage, and confidence.'