Sometimes the most obvious choice for the hymn of the day is the best one. Reginald Heber wrote this hymn to be sung on Trinity Sunday, where he placed it in his own hymnal, Hymns Written and Adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the Year (published posthumously in 1827, you may recall). Much of the imagery comes from the beginning of the fourth chapter of the Book of Revelation.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee. Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity.Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;Cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,Which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.Holy, holy, holy! Though the heavens hide thee,Though the eyes of humankind thy glory may not see,Only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,Perfect in power, in love, and purity.Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!All thy works shall praise thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity. Reginald Heber, 1826; alt.Tune: NICAEA (Irregular)John Bacchus Dykes, 1861NICAEA was composed for this text by John Bacchus Dykes when it appeared in the first edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern in 1861, and has accompanied it in nearly every hymnal where it has appeared since (hundreds, at least). It's named for the First Council of Nicaea (now a city in Turkey), perhaps the first ecumenical church council, where Christian bishops gathered in the year 325 and formulated the doctrine of the Trinity, as well as the Nicene Creed still widely used today.The hymn is no longer limited to Trinity Sunday but is used as a general hymn of praise, considered so significant that many hymnals place it first, at #1. One dissenting voice was the hymnologist W. Garrett Horder, who postulated in The Hymn Lover (1905) that hymns should not attempt to teach doctrine, and that Heber's hymn was the chief offender. No one else seems to have listened.
One Year Ago: Trinity Sunday
I've talked about evening hymns before (since my church does evening worship regularly) but not about morning hymns. They're probably more useful because nearly every church has some kind of morning worship. Usually, (in my experience) a hymn about the morning will be the opening one in the service. There are quite a few of them out there; I'm not sure that anyone is really looking for more, but this is one that I've liked for a long time.Bring, O morn, thy music! Night, thy starlit silence!Oceans, laugh the rapture to the storm winds coursing free!Suns and planets chorus, thou art our Creator,Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!Life and death, thy creatures, praise thee, mighty Giver!Praise and prayer are rising in thy beast and bird and tree:Lo! they praise and vanish, vanish at thy bidding,Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!Light us! lead us! love us! cry thy myriad nations,Pleading in the thousand tongues, but naming only thee,Weaving ever out thy holy, happy purpose,Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!Life nor death can part us, O thou Love eternal,Shepherd of the wandering star and souls that wayward flee!Homeward draws the spirit to thy Spirit yearning,Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be!William Channing Gannett, 1893; alt.Tune: NICAEA (12.13.12.10)John Bacchus Dykes, 1861William Channing Gannett was a nineteenth-century Unitarian minister who served in many different places, including Rochester, NY, where Susan B. Anthony was one of his congregants. Together they helped raise money to send women to the University of Rochester, only a small part of Gannett's work in support of women's rights. Before his ordination he had spent four years helping freed African-American slaves in South Carolina.The prolific Victorian composer John Bacchus Dykes wrote this very familiar tune for the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, usually sung to an equally well-known text.
Lead us, great Creator, lead us
O'er the world's tempestuous sea;
Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us,
For we have no help but thee;
Yet possessing ev'ry blessing
If our God our comfort be.
Savior, breathe forgiveness o'er us;
All our weakness thou dost know;
Thou didst tread this earth before us,
Thou didst feel its keenest woe;
Lone and dreary, faint and weary,
Through the desert thou didst go.
Spirit of our God, descending,
Fill our hearts with heav'nly joy,
Love with ev'ry passion blending,
Pleasure that can never cloy;
Thus provided, pardoned, guided,
Nothing can our peace destroy.
John Edmeston, 1821: alt.
Tune: DULCE CARMEN (8.7.8.7.8.7.)
An Essay on the Church Plain Chant, 1782
This is not the grandest of Trinitarian hymns, but I still want to post it here today. I bind unto myself today may be about the longest (in English, at least), and Holy, Holy, Holy may be the most familiar (it's even the first hymn - #1 - in some hymnals). But this is the one that I always think of first. There's a story behind it that I've known for many years.
Back in the Presbyterian church my family attended when I was in high school and college, there was a family from New Zealand, here for a few years on assignment from one of those big multinational companies. They were active members in the church, he in the choir and she in a weekly Bible study group; probably in other areas I don't remember any more.
One Sunday before we sang this hymn, our pastor told a story about it. This couple had attended seminary together (they may have met there; I don't recall) and at some point, this hymn became "theirs." They often sang it together, and over many years, if they were apart, there was a particular time of day when they would go off alone and sing it, feeling connected by the hymn regardless of the physical distance between them. Back then I was sitting in the back of the choir loft, familiarizing myself with the indexes in the back of the hymnal during the sermon (not always...), developing this interest of mine, but this was the first time I had encountered the idea that you could have "your own" hymn. After that, the story would be mentioned whenever we sang this (maybe 3 times a year or so); everyone knew the story. I thought it was soooo cool.
A year or two later, the husband was killed in a car accident. Of course we sang this hymn at his funeral and the story was told again. The family moved back to New Zealand after that and most of us lost touch with them over the years, but the story lived on and was retold for years to come. There's a new pastor there now (I guess he's been there several years now, but he's still new to me) and I hope he knows the story -- it became a part of that congregation. And I always think of Mr. and Mrs. C. when this hymn comes to mind.
You may have a hymn story of your own, or one from your church - please consider sharing it. I'm sure psychologists can tell us why and how music can bring memories back to us, but whatever it is, if you're reading this you probably know that the convergence of music and Spirit, combined in a hymn or song can revive a story you haven't thought about in ages. I have other stories, of course, or I probably wouldn't be writing this blog. There's one in particular (actually, it's a hymnal story) about Christmas Eve but I probably can't tell it here - I wouldn't be able to see the screen as I was typing. But it comes to me every year.
