A little while and every fear

"A little while and every fear" is an early nineteenth-century Christian hymn written by the multitalented Scottish botanist and advocate Dr. Robert Kaye Greville. Intended for private devotional use, the lyric centers on the spiritual comfort of eschatological hope, capturing a sense of patient anticipation.

The hymn was first printed in The Amethyst, an annual religious miscellany published in Edinburgh by Oliphant in 1834. It achieved wider recognition when it was compiled into The Church of England Hymn Book in 1838 as entry number 592. In that volume, it was appropriately assigned the descriptive title "The Believer waiting for the Lord" and presented in three stanzas of eight lines.

In 1863, the hymn was revised and included with textual alterations in Benjamin Hall Kennedy's Hymnologia Christiana as number 783. Despite these attempts to bring the text into mainstream denominational worship, it never attained an extensive footprint in standard church collections throughout Great Britain. Instead, the piece found its primary and most lasting home within the hymnbooks of the Plymouth Brethren, where its focus on the imminent return of Christ and personal assurance matched the theological emphases of the movement.