And Songs of Gladness Ring

The appointed psalm for the day in my church this morning was Psalm 67. The choir sang it as usual, and later in the service we sang an anthem setting of the text by William Mathias which was written for the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana in 1981.

In some traditions, the psalms are still sung in metrical form, so Psalm 67 can also be shared by the whole congregation in this way.

O God, to us show mercy
And bless us in thy grace;
Forever shine upon us
The brightness of thy face;
That so thy way most holy
On earth may soon be known,
And unto every people
Thy saving grace be shown.

O God, let people praise thee,
Let all the nations sing;
In every land let praises
And songs of gladness ring;
For thou shalt judge the people
In truth and righteousness,
And through the earth the nations
Thy perfect rule confess.

O God, let people praise thee,
Let all the nations sing,
For earth in rich abundance
To us its fruit shall bring.
The Living God shall bless us,
Shall to us blessing send,
And all the earth shall know God
To its remotest end.

The Psalter, 1912; alt.
Tune: LANCASHIRE (7.6.7.6.D.)
Henry T. Smart, 1835

This paraphrase comes from The Psalter (1912), published by the United Presbyterian Board of Publication, a hymnbook which was used by several different Presbyterian subdenominations for many years. A sturdy, familiar tune like LANCASHIRE often works with texts like this, which are not sung often and don't usually rise to the level of anyone's "favorite" hymn.

The Confession of Saint Peter

In many liturgical churches, January 18 marks the Confession of Saint Peter, which commemorates the apostle's declaration of the Godhood of Jesus, as told in Matthew 16:13-20. This is apparently the first time that the followers of Jesus realized exactly who they had been following.

Today's hymn is by the Anglican hymnwriter (and eventually Bishop) William Walsham How, and first appeared in Church Hymns (1871), a hymnal produced by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (still in existence today). How was also the chair of the committee that compiled this hymnal.


“Thou art the Christ, O Lord,
The Son of God most high!”
For ever be adored
That name in earth and sky,
In which, though mortal strength may fail,
The saints of God at last prevail!

Oh,great was Peter blest
With blessedness unpriced,
Who, taught of God, confessed
The Godhead in the Christ!
For of thy Church, Lord, thou didst own
Thy saint a true foundation stone.

Thrice was he put to shame,
Thrice did the dauntless fall;
But, oh, that look that came
From out the judgment hall!
It pierced and broke his fearful heart,
And foiled the Tempter’s sifting art.

Thrice fallen, thrice restored!
The bitter lesson learnt,
That heart for thee, O Lord,
With triple ardor burnt.
The cross he took he laid not down,
Until he grasped the martyr’s crown.

Oh, bright triumphant faith!
Oh, courage void of fears!
Oh, love most strong in death!
Oh, penitential tears!
May all these keep us lest we fall,
And make us go where thou shalt call.

William Walsham How, 1871; alt.

Tune: BEVAN (6.6.6.6.8.8.)
John Goss, 1853

There are not many hymns written specifically for this day, but the theme certainly suggests several general hymns which could be sung.

The Feast of the Epiphany

January 6 is the "official" date for the Feast of the Epiphany, though your church may celebrate it on Sunday. In some parts of the world, it is better known as Three Kings Day, but by any name it marks the visit to the infant Jesus by people of distant countries (whether they were indeed kings, or magi, or whatever), as opposed to the nearby shepherds. It signifies the eventual importance of this baby who was to be known around the world, not just in Bethlehem or Galilee.

This hymn was written by William Chatterton Dix, whose work we have seen before, and appeared in his first collection, Hymns of Love and Joy (1861). Reportedly he wrote it on the feast day, January 6, 1856.

As with gladness those of old

Did the guiding star behold;

As with joy they hailed its light,

Leading onward, beaming bright;

So, most gracious Lord, may we

Evermore be led to thee.

As with joyful steps they sped

To that lowly manger-bed;

There to bend the knee before

Christ, whom heaven and earth adore;

So may we with willing feet

Ever seek the mercy seat.

As they offered gifts most rare

At that manger rude and bare;

So may we with holy joy,

Pure and free from sin's alloy,

All our costliest treasures bring,

Christ! to thee, our heavenly King.

Holy Jesus! every day

Keep us in the narrow way;

And, when earthly things are past,

Bring our ransomed souls at last

Where they need no star to guide,

Where no clouds thy glory hide.

In that heavenly country bright,

Need they no created light;

Thou its light, its joy, its crown,

Thou its sun which goes not down;

There for ever may we sing

Alleluias echoing.

William Chatterton Dix, 1856; alt.

Tune: DIX (7.7.7.7.7.7.)

Conrad Kocher, 1838; adapt. William H. Monk, 1861

This well-known tune was altered slightly from its German original form by William Henry Monk, editor of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), where it was first matched to this text. It was probably also Monk who named the tune for this text's author.

P.S. You may have thought that after three years (beginnning a fourth later this month) that we have run out of familiar hymns, but as you can see we're not done yet.

Three Years Ago: Saw you never, in the twilight

Two Years Ago: Earth has many a noble city

One Year Ago: What star is this, with beams so bright

P.S. You may have thought that after three years (beginnning a fourth later this month) that we have run out of familiar hymns, but as you can see we're not done yet.

Three Years Ago: Saw you never, in the twiligh

Two Years Ago: Earth has many a noble city

One Year Ago: What star is this, with beams so bright

Another Year Its Course Has Run

O God, whom neither time nor space

Can limit, hold, or bind.

Look down from heav'n, thy dwelling place

With love for humankind.

Another year its course has run,

Thy loving care renew;

Forgive the ill that we have done,

The good we failed to do.

In doubt or danger, all our days,

Be near to guard us still;

Let all our thoughts and all our ways

Be guided by thy will.

O help us here on earth to live

From selfish strife set free;

To us at last in mercy give

Eternal life with thee.

Horace Smith, 19th cent.; alt.

Tune DUNFERMLINE (C.M.)

Scottish Psalter, 1615

Three Years Ago: Bessie Porter Head

Two Years Ago: O God, by whom all change is wrought

One Year Ago: Another year is dawning

When Right Shall Triumph Over Wrong

It's a new beginning as we come 'round again to the opening of the church year and the First Sunday in Advent, a time of preparation for the coming Christmas season (four weeks to go!). As usual, we will not see any Christmas carols here until the season of Advent is over. It's our fourth Advent here at CWS, and we have not yet run out of material for the season.

On this first Sunday you may have noticed that the lessons and hymns in your church frequently refer not only to the prophesied birth of a Savior, but also to the Second Coming of Jesus, linking us to both the past and the future.

The King shall come when morning dawns,

And light triumphant breaks;

When beauty gilds the eastern hills,

And life to joy awakes.

Not as of old, a little child,

To bear, and fight, and die,

But crowned with glory like the sun,

That lights that morning sky.

The King shall come when morning dawns,

And earth’s long night is past;—

O, haste the rising of that morn,

That day that e'er shall last.

And let the endless bliss begin,

By weary saints foretold,

When right shall triumph over wrong,

And truth shall be extolled.

The King shall come when morning dawns,

And light and beauty brings;

Hail. Christ the Word! Thy people pray.

Come quickly, King of kings!

John Brownlie, 1907; alt.

Tune: ST. STEPHEN (C.M.)

William Jones, 1789

In many hymnals, this text is said to be originally from the Greek, and translated by John Brownlie, a Scottish Presbyterian. It was first published in his Hymns from the East (1907), a collection of translations. However, no Greek original has ever been identified, and some more modern sources believe that Brownlie wrote the text himself, perhaps using a concept from an older text.

Three Years Ago: Lo, he comes with clouds descending

Two Years Ago: Jesus came, the heav'ns adoring

One Year Ago: Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates

The Feast of All Souls

In some traditions, today is celebrated as All Souls Day, the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed, or the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).  Prayers are offered in remembrance of those who have died.  While it is a separate occasion from All Saints' Day, the two days' proximity on the calendar has blurred their differences in the minds of many.  It's usually the celebration of All Saints that is transferred to the Sunday before or after.

My own church has an annual weekday service for All Souls, where a small choir sings portions of the plainsong chant service Missa pro defunctis and the names of the departed loved ones of the congregation are read.  This hymn is also usually a part of the service.

Jesus, Son of Mary, Fount of life alone, 
Here we hail thee present on thine altar throne. 
Humbly we adore thee, Lord of endless might, 
In the mystic symbols veiled from earthly sight. 

Think, dear Christ, in mercy on the souls of those
Who, in faith gone from us, now in death repose.
Here ’mid stress and conflict toils can never cease;
There, the warfare ended, bid them rest in peace.
:
Rest eternal grant unto them, after weary fight;
Shed on them the radiance of thy heavenly light.
Lead them onward, upward, to the holy place,
Where thy saints made perfect gaze upon thy face. 

Edmund S. Palmer, 1906; alt. 
Tune: ADORO TE DEVOTE (6.5.6.5.D.)
Plainsong Mode V, 13th cent.

Anglican priest Edmund Stuart Palmer was for several years a missionary in Zanzibar.  He originally wrote this text in Swahili (Yesu, Bin Mariamu) and it was published in a hymnal for the Diocese of Zamzibar.  After returning to England, he translated it into English.

Walter Russell Bowie

Walter Russell Bowie was born today in 1882 in Richmond, Virginia.  He was educated at Harvard University (where he co-edited the Harvard Crimson newspaper with Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and the Virginia Theological Seminary.  In 1909 he was ordained in the Episcopal Church.

Following two years at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Greenwood, VA, he became the rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, where he had been baptized in 1883.  During World War I he took a leave of absence from that church to serve as a Red Cross hospital chaplain in France, then returned to Richmond until 1923, when he went to Grace Church in New York City.  After sixteen years at Grace he served as Professor of Practical Theology and later Dean of Students at Union Theological Seminary.

Bowie was a renowned preacher who is still referenced in most histories of preaching.  A series of his sermons from 1935 at the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale University was published as The Renewing Gospel, only one in a long series of books he published in his lifetime.  He was also on the editorial committee for the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

He was a strong proponent of the social gospel, which applies Christian ethics to the problems of the world. The first of his hymn texts to receive wide publication is still one of the great social gospel hymns of the twentieth centtury: O holy city, seen of John, which was written at the request of Henry Sloan Coffin for inclusion in Hymns of the Kingdom of God (1910). Coffin and his co-editor, Ambrose White Vernon, were looking for texts that would demonstrate that signs of the reign of God could be brought forth here on earth, and were not just something to be hoped for in the life to come.

Bowie naturally supported many other social causes and was active in promoting them. In the 1920s he joined the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, which opposed the racist immugration laws that were being passed at that time. This was not a new cause for him, as this hymn from 1913 shows.  Since immigration is still a prominent topic in our national discussion it seems appropriate for today.

God of the nations, who from dawn of days,
Hast led thy people in their widening ways, 
Through whose deep purpose seeking thousands stand
Here in the borders of our promised land.

Thine ancient might rebuked the Pharaoh’s boast.
Thou wast the shield for Israel’s marching host,
And, all the ages through, past crumbling throne
And broken fetter, thou hast brought thine own.

Thy hand has led across the hungry sea
The eager peoples flocking to be free,
And, from the lands of earth, thy silent sway
Fashions the nation of the broadening day. 

Then, for thy grace to grow in unity, 
For hearts aflame to serve thus cause for thee, 
For faith, and will to win what faith shall see, 
God of thy people, hear our cry to thee. 

Walter Russell Bowie, 1913; alt. 
Tune: SUMMERFORD (10.10.10.10.) 
John T. Grimley, 1887 

Bowie would have been familiar with The New Colossus, the famous poem by Emma Lazarus that was written for the Statue of Liberty; this hymn follows a similar theme.

There is not a great number of hymn texts by Walter Russell Bowie, but they surely still .do merit our consideration.  I also like this prayer he wrote for a united world made stronger by the gifts of God.


O God, out of all the world you let us find one another and learn together the meaning of love.  Let us never fail to hold love precious.  Let the flame of it never waver or grow dim, but burn in our hearts as an unwavering devotion and shine through our eyes in gentleness and understanding. Teach us to remember the little courtesies, to be swift to speak the grateful and happy word, to believe rejoicingly in each other’s best, and to face all life bravely because we face it with united heart….Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

Labor Day

The secular holiday we celebrate today in the US has no specific religious counterpart, but it still may have been commemorated in some way in your own worship service yesterday.

The Episcopal Church has a collect (opening prayer) for the day in the Book of Common Prayer which begins Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives. A broader concept of labor which is linked to the common good of all has been a focus of many churches over the past century or so.

Jesus, thou divine Companion,
By thy lowly human birth

Thou hast come to join the workers,

Burden bearers of the earth.

Thou, the carpenter of Naz'reth,

Toiling for thy daily food,

By thy patience and thy courage,

Thou hast taught us toil is good.

All who tread the path of labor

Follow where thy feet have trod;

May we work for good of others,

Do the holy will of God.

Thou, the peace that passeth knowledge,

Dwellest in the daily strife;

Thou, the bread of heaven, broken

In the sacrament of life.

Every task, however simple,

Sets the soul that does it free;

Every deed of love and kindness

Done to each is done to thee.

Jesus, thou divine Companion,

Help us all to do our best;

Bless in our daily labor,

Lead us to our Sabbath rest.

Henry Van Dyke, 1909; alt.
Tune: PLEADING SAVIOR (8.7.8.7.D.)
The Christian Lyre, 1830

The Macalester Plymouth United Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, has for many years sponsored searches for new, contemporary hymn texts on social justice topics. Their 2010 contest sought texts for use on Labor Day (or at least, the day before). The winning text (God, bless the work your people do) was submitted by the Reverend Dr. John A. Dalles, who has a blog where you can read his new hymn for the day.

Three Years Ago: Amy Beach

Two Years Ago: Amy Beach

One Year Ago: Thy grace impart! in time to be

William Hiley Bathurst

William Hiley Bathurst, born today in 1796, was ordained in the Church of England in 1819 following his graduation from Oxford, and served as the rector of a Yorkshire church for thirty-two years.

He was a fairly prolific hymnwriter, though not many of his texts are known today. In 1831 he published Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Use, which collected more than three hundred of his hymns and psalm paraphrases (only 18 texts in the book, all psalm paraphrases, are not by Bathurst).

He left the Anglican Church and retired from his parish in 1852 because he had developed doubts about the rites of the church as laid out in the Book of Common Prayer for baptism and burial.

O for that flame of living fire,
Which shone so bright in saints of old!
Which bade their souls to heav’n aspire,
Calm in distress, in danger bold.

Grant us that Spirit, God, which dwelt
In Abram’s breast, and sealed him thine,
Which made Paul’s heart with sorrow melt,
And glow with energy divine.

That Spirit which eternally,
Proclaimed thy love, and taught thy law?
Led to Christ's tomb those women three
And changed their sorrow into awe.

Is not thy grace as mighty now
As when Elijah felt its power;
When glory beamed from Moses’ brow,
Or Job endured the trying hour?

When Miriam, faithdul unto death,
Led Israel's children through the wild,
Or Sarah and Elizabeth
Received a long-awaited child?

Remember, God, the ancient days;
Renew thy work; thy grace restore;
As still today our hearts we raise,
On us thy Holy Spirit pour.

William Hiley Bathurst, 1831; adapt. C.W.S. 1993
Tune: HERR JESU CHRIST (L.M.)
Pensum Sacrum, 1648;
harm. J.S. Bach, 18th cent.

As you probably noticed, this text is not exactly as Bathurst wrote it. Like most of the hymns we know which talk about people from the Bible, his text included only men. (There were older hymns written about the women of the Scriptures, as we have seen here and here, among others, but these texts have not survived in modern hymnals.) My revision replaced Isaiah and David in stanza three and added the new stanza five, reminding us that God's Spirit was poured on several women as well.


Two Years Ago: Ira David Sankey

In Tempests As They Blow

It's been raining here for the last few hours, with much more predicted to come overnight and into tomorrow. Hurricane Irene has already caused death and destruction with more to come, probably, as it approaches New York City. Many churches in the Northeast have cancelled services tomorrow as the storm is predicted to be at its height during the morning hours, so don't forget to pray for those affected as you worship tomorrow in other places.

Looking around the internet today I came upon this blog post from several years ago by the Reverend Scott Wells, a Christian Universalist minister who writes at Boy in the Bands. I had been thinking about Eternal Father, strong to save but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. This, too, isn't quite what we might sing today but it has some interesting ideas (I especially like the final stanza). Given that the East Coast felt an earthquake this week too (small though it was), the first line of the second stanza jumped out at me too.

Amid surrounding gloom and waste,
From nature’s face we flee;
And in our fear and wonder haste,
O nature’s Life, to thee!
Thy ways are in the mighty deep;
In tempests as they blow;
In floods that o’er our treasures sweep;
In lightning and the snow.

Though earth upon its axis reels,
And heaven is veiled in wrath;
Not one of nature’s milling wheels
Breaks its appointed path;
Fixed in thy grasp, the sources meet
Of beauty and of awe;
In storm or calm, all pulses beat
True to the central Law.

Thou art that Law, whose will be done,
In seeming wreck or blight,
Sends the calm planets round the sun,
And pours the moon’s soft light.
We trust thy love; thou best dost know
The universal peace;
How long the stormy force should blow,
And when the flood shall cease.

And though our path around some form
Of mystery ever lies,
And life is like the calm and storm
That checker earth and skies
Through all its mingling joy and dread,
Permit us, Holy One,
By faith to see the golden thread
Of thy great purpose done.

Edwin Hubble Chapin, 1871
Tune: THIRD MODE MELODY (C.M.D.)
Thomas Tallis, 16th cent.

Universalist minister Edwin Hubble Chapin was one of the editors of Hymns of Christian Devotion (1871), where some of his other hymn texts appeared with this one.


Two Years Ago: Thomas Gallaudet