I believe the original melody was composed by Johann Georg Ebeling and lyrics written by Paul Gerhardt in 1666 in Germany as "Ich bin ja nur ein Gast auf Erden". The song is based on Psalm 39:12 and Psalm 119:19 It possibly shows the German escape to the fledgling America's in that period as there are well documented colonies by the 1670's

here is some evidence https://ccel.org/ccel/hewitt/gerhardt/gerhardt.p2_2.h_284.html

The words have a similar feel to the evolved song It would be interesting in documenting the transition from the 1670's to the published version in the 1840's