Julia H. Johnston

Julia H. Johnston (1849-1919) was a Presbyterian teacher, author, and musician who wrote the lyrics to the song, Grace Greater Than All Our Sin.

Julia Harriette Johnston was born in 1849 in Salineville, Ohio but lived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania most of the first six years of her life, while her father pastored a church there. At the age of six she moved with her family to Peoria, Illinois where her father was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Peoria. Her mother and grandmother were poets, and Julia Johnston originally wrote verse under the pen name, "Juniata." In addition to authoring over 500 hymns, Johnston worked as a Sunday school superintendent and teacher for over forty years and served as president of the Presbyterian Missionary Society. Johnston wrote the lyrics to Grace Greater Than All Our Sin and Daniel B. Towner (1850-1919) wrote the music. In 1911 the song was published the lyrics in Hymns Tried and True. The song describes the Christian idea of grace and justification by faith articulated in Paul's Letter to the Romans in Verses 5:1-2 and 14-16. In 1919 she died and was buried in Peoria, Illinois.

Books authored

• School of the Master (1880)
• Bright Threads (1897)
• Indian and Spanish Neighbors (1905)
• Fifty Missionary Heroes (1913)