Dressed in Living Green

The Jordan River, seen above, sometimes appears in the hymns about heaven that we've seen. The applicable metaphor derives from the story of the Israelites, having escaped from Egypt and spent forty years in the wilderness, finally crossed the Jordan into the land of Canaan, already established in the Old Testament as a place of abundance. Moses, their leader, had seen this promised land across the Jordan (Deuteronomy 34: 1-5) but did not survive long enough to get there.

This text by Isaac Watts draws from that story. It's said to have been inspired partly by a view of green fields over the estuary at Southampton, where Watts often walked. This hymn ranked at #30 in The Best Church Hymns (1899) and still appears in some hymnals, though it might not be quite so highly ranked today. More than one source I consulted called it one of the most beautiful of Watts's hymns.

There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides,
And never with'ring flowers:
Death, like a narrow sea, divides
This heav’nly land from ours.

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green:
So to God's people Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.

But timorous mortals start and shrink
To cross this narrow sea;
And linger, shivering on the brink,
And fear to launch away.

O could we make our doubts remove,
Those gloomy thoughts that rise,
And see the Canaan that we love
With unbeclouded eyes!

Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o’er,
Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood,
Should fright us from the shore.

Isaac Watts, 1707; alt.
Tune: ROCHESTER (C.M.)
Aaron Wiliams, 1764

Some hymnals have omitted the third and fourth stanzas about doubt, but certainly that was more or less the point for Watts. In his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, where this text was first published, it was titled A Prospect of Heaven Makes Death Easy.

Two hundred years after Watts, Alma White (who would certainly have known this hymn) wrote her own crossing-the-Jordan hymn which we have already seen. Doubt was not a part of her text either, but it doesn't seem that White ever had much to do with doubt, at least in her public persona.

Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Unitarian hymnwriter Frederick Lucian Hosmer was born today in 1840. It was during his years at Harvard Divinity School that he met William Channing Gannett, and the two of them remained close friends for the rest of their lives. They worked together on two influential collections, Unity Hymns and Chorals (1880) and The Thought of God In Hymns and Poems (1885) and worked over the years on several updated editions of these books. This collaboration was often compared to that of Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson, lifelong friends who met in seminary and also produced two important hymnbooks for Unitarians and Universalists a generation earlier.

Hosmer's hymns spread to other denominational hymnals, particularly in the early years of the twentieth century after he was praised by John Julian in his monumental Dictionary of Hymnology (1907) and by Percy Dearmer, who used a number of Hosmer's texts in the British Songs of Praise (1925).

One thought I have, my ample creed,
So deep it is and broad,
And equal to my every need—
It is the thought of God.

Each morn unfolds some fresh surprise,
I feast at life’s full board;
And rising in my inner skies
Shines forth the thought of God.

I ask not far before to see,
But take in trust my road;
Life, death, and immortality
Are in my thought of God.

To this their secret strength they owed
The martyr’s path who trod;
The fountains of their patience flowed
From out their thought of God.

Be still the light upon my way,
My pilgrim staff and rod,
My rest by night, my strength by day
O blessèd thought of God.

Frederick L. Hosmer, 1880; alt.
Tune: ROCHESTER (C.M.)
Aaron Williams, 1764

Hosmer successfully pastored Unitarian congregations across the country, and moved to California in 1900, intending to live in retirement. However, he then agreed to serve as the interim minister of the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, and ended up staying until 1904. During that time he established a strong musical tradition there which is still upheld today. A pipe organ was installed, the organist's salary was competitive, and the choir gained paid section leaders. Following his second retirement he was appointed minister emeritus by the congregation, which paid him a monthly stipend until his death in 1929.


One Year Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer