Knowing You Are On Your Way

Another year in the church's calendar begins today, with the first Sunday in Advent.  These four Sundays before Christmas serve as a time of waiting and expectation as the commemoration of the birth of Christ approaches.  We have seen many Advent hymns over the last five years here at the blog, and they aren't used up yet.

Emily May Grimes (May 10, 1864 - July 9, 1927) was born in England but went to South Africa as a missionary in 1893.  In 1903, she married Dr. T. W. W. Crawford, another missionary in the Anglican church who was stationed in Africa.  Many of her hymns (such as today's) were written before her marriage and were attributed to 'E. May Grimes.'

Her texts seems to have appeared in more and more hymnals as the twentieth century progressed, unlike many of her contemporaries, though this is probably largely due to her most well-known hymn, Speak, Lord, in the stillness.

In the Advent light, O Savior,
We are living day by day;
Waiting, working, watching ever,
Knowing you are on your way.

In the Advent light rejoicing!
Songs of praise along the road
Seem to make the journey shorter,
Mounting upward to our God!

So from glory unto glory,
Gladdened by the Advent ray;
All the path is growing brighter,
Shining unto perfect day.

Christ is coming! Christ is coming!
Pass the heavenly watchword on!
Go we forth to meet the Savior
Hail! the heavn'ly promised one!

E. May Grimes, 1902; alt.
Tune: RESTORATION (8.7.8.7.)
The Southern Harmony, 1835



Five (Liturgical) Years Ago: Lo! Christ comes with clouds descending

Four (Liturgical) Years Ago: Jesus came, adored by angels

Three (Liturgical) Years Ago: Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates

Two (Liturgical) Years Ago: The King shall come when morning dawns

One (Liturgical) Years Ago: Once he came in blessing

Another Anniversary Today: World AIDS Day

Like Comets Through the Sky

Today's well-known and well-loved hymn was sung today in my own church. It's appropriate for Lent based on its first stanza, though it is sung at many other times of year in different churches.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To lay aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
To lay aside his crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb who is the great I AM;
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing;
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on.

Then friends shall meet again, who have loved, who have loved,
Then friends shall meet again, who have loved;
Then friends shall meet again, in Jesus' presence, when
We'll meet to part no more, who have loved, who have loved,
We'll meet to part no more, who have loved.

Ye winged seraphs, fly! Bear the news, bear the news.
Ye winged seraphs fly! bear the news;
Ye winged seraphs fly! Like comets through the sky,
Fill vast eternity with the news, with the news,
Fill vast eternity with the news!

Anonymous; composite; 19th cent.
Tune: WONDROUS LOVE (6.6.6.3.6.6.6.6.6.3.)
American folk tune; The Southern Harmony, 1840


The earliest appearances of this text were in two different hymnbooks published in 1811, A General Selection of the Newest and Most Admired Hymns and Spiritual Songs Now in Use, edited by the Reverend Stith Mead, published in Virginia, and Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Original and Selected, edited by the Reverend Starke Dupuy, published in Kentucky. A later edition of the latter book is downloadable here.

The two versions are similar but not identical. Later printings of the hymn over the next fifty years or so also reveal slight variations in the text and the number of stanzas. In this version, the fourth stanza above was added about twenty years ago when I was doing research for our hymnal project. We were always looking to restore "lost" stanzas, and this one had particular significance in our churches at the time (and still today). I still remember the slight shock I felt at finding it, and people at the time assumed that we, the editors, had written it ourselves. Google now tells me that this stanza is apparently adapted from one in a different hymn, Saints Bound for Heaven (Our bondage, it shall end, by and by).

The unusual meter is sometimes called the Captain Kidd meter, named for an English ballad about the pirate captain Robert Kidd, but used in dozens of folk songs, many with similarly repetitive lyrics.

The tune for this hymn, adapted from an earlier folk tune, was first printed in the second edition of William Walker's The Southern Harmony (1840), in three-part harmony (and with only one stanza of the text). There have been many different arrangements of the tune since then, not only in hymnals but also as choral anthems and instrumental pieces.


P.S. (March 2016) Welcome to all who followed a Facebook link to get here!  Please follow this blog on FB at 'Conjubilant W. Song' for more inclusive/expansive language hymnody (including most of the old MCC Hymnal Project material).

Four Years Ago: The Feast of the Annunciation

Three Years Ago: Godfrey Thring

Two Years Ago: The Feast of the Annunciation

James Montgomery

Hymnwriter James Montgomery was born on November 4, 1771 in Ireland. His parents were missionaries in the Moravian Church, and when James was very young they were sent to the Caribbean, leaving him behind in a Moravian comunity. Both parents died within a few years without returning to their son. Montgomery was raised and educated by the Moravians, but left the church in young adulthood.

Unsuccessful at various occupations, he eventually found some measure of success as the editor of a newspaper, the Sheffield Iris, though he was imprisoned twice for publishing articles that were considered inflamatory. He later published Prison Amusements, a book of his poetry written while in jail. He continued to write poetry and also became an abolitionist duroing this time.

At the age of 43 he applied to the Moravians to be readmitted to their fellowship, including this poem with his appeal:

People of the living God,
I have sought the world around,
Paths of sin and sorrow trod,
Peace and comfort nowhere found.
Now to you my spirit turns--
Turns a fugitive unblest;
Brethren, where your altar burns,
O receive me into rest.

Upon rejoining the church, he bacame an active member of the Bible Society and supporter of mission work. He wrote more than 400 hymns (many still familiar today), published in three volumes: Songs of Zion: Being Imitations of Psalms (1822), The Christian Psalmist (1825) and Original Hymns for Public, Private and Social Devotion (1853). This short hymn sung by many denominations is from Psalm 27, not a full paraphrase but using the same theme.

God is my strong salvation:
What foe have I to fear?
When fearful of temptation,
My light, my help is near.
Though hosts encamp around me,
Firm in the fight I stand,
What terror can confound me,
With God at my right hand?

Place on our God reliance,
My soul, with courage wait,
God's truth be thine affiance,
When faint and desolate.
God's might thy heart shall strengthen,
God's love thy joy increase,
Mercy thy days shall lengthen;
For God will give thee peace.

James Montgomery, 1822; alt.
Tune: WEDLOCK (7.6.7.6.D.)
Southern Harmony, 1844

We have seen another well-known Montgomery hymn here. Another of his hymns is very similar to Who are these like stars appearing (derived from the same passage in Revelation), though ultimately not as satisfying, I think.

Montgomery died on April 30, 1854, having overcome the difficulties of his earlier life and gained the affection of his adopted hometown of Sheffield, which honored him in a number of ways after his death. Once asked which of his poetic works would be remembered, he replied "None, sir, nothing except perhaps a few of my hymns."

Beside the Living Stream

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is also known as Good Shepherd Sunday in some traditions. Readings include the Twenty-Third Psalm and other references to Christ as Shepherd. There are plenty of appropriate anthems and hymns that follow this theme. You could have all five (or four, or three?) of the hymns in your worship service be different paraphrases of Psalm 23, all in different musical styles. I'll choose just one for today, an English text from the eighteenth century joined with an American Southern Harmony tune from the nineteenth.

My Shepherd, you supply my need,
Redeemer is your name;
In pastures fresh you make me feed
Beside the living stream.
You bring my wand'ring spirit back
When I forsake your ways;
And lead me, for your mercy's sake,
In paths of truth and grace.

When I walk through the shades of death
Your presence is my stay,
One word of your supporting breath
Drives all my fears away.
Your hand, in sight of all my foes,
Will still my table spread;
My cup with blessings overflows,
Your oil anoints my head.

The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days;
O may God's house be my abode,
And all my work be praise.
There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come;
No more a stranger, nor a guest,
But like a child at home.

Isaac Watts, 1719; alt.
Tune: RESIGNATION (C.M.D.)
Southern Harmony, 1855

It's actually a little odd to use a psalm paraphrase by Isaac Watts, as Watts believed that hymns shouldn't be exclusively drawn from the psalms and from Scripture, as they had been in the Calvinist tradition. When he expressed this opinion to his father, he was challenged to write something better.

So he did.

Now, not all of his approximately 750 hymns (697 listed at cyberhymnal.org) are better than the earlier psalm paraphrases, but just about any hymnal index you examine will still contain a good number of his texts, more than 200 years later. The good stuff endures.
As I said, there are plenty of other good hymns and anthems for today. A less appropriate musical selection would be Handel's All we like sheep from Messiah, which does not actually refer to Christ as Shepherd but concludes with "And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." Have not Lent's long shadows departed? But that's what we're singing today. Guess it seemed like a good idea last summer when the music for the year was being chosen.


Baaaaaaaa.