After a couple of weeks off, the Thursday Hymn Sing is back. We continue to feature hymn stories, each week having a different hymn story about the song’s composition and the author. We hope you enjoy learning more about these songs of our faith!

Mark 10:27 – “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With humans this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”

---

For “littles” and “young at heart”

Prayer for Christian Living:

(Feel free to say each line and have your child repeat what you say or say it as you pray together.)

Dear God,
Help me to give and not just to take.
Help me to do nice things for others.
Help me to talk to you and to work hard.
Help me to love my family and others.
Thank you God for loving me.
Amen

---

The B-I-B-L-E

---

Onward Christian Soldiers
Lyrics: Sabine Baring-Gould

Hymn Background:

“Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” Timothy 2:3

This 19th-century English hymn was written in 1871. Lyrics were written by Sabine Baring-Gould who was ordained as a clergyman in the Church of England with the music composed by Arthur Sullivan. Sullivan named the tune “St. Gertrude” after a friend’s wife since he was living in their country home while he wrote it. This is Sullivan’s most popular hymn. The Salvation Army adopted the hymn as its favored processional.

The hymn’s theme is taken from references in the New Testament to Christians being a soldier for Christ. Baring-Gould arranged a hike from his own church to a nearby village for the children of his parish. Knowing that children like to march, and also how difficult it is for their elders to keep them together unless they were marching, he created one. Baring-Gould never thought that his stanzas would ever be misconstrued as a hymn of war. It was never intended as a crusader’s hymn but some modern Christians feel the text represents militancy which is an unhealed wound for many. This may be one reason why it is no longer sung or in hymn books.

When Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met in August 1941 on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to agree on the Atlantic Charter, a church service was held for which Churchill chose the hymns. He chose this hymn and explained why in a later radio broadcast:

“We sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and I felt that this was no vain presumption, but that we had the right to feel that we were serving a cause for the sake of which a trumpet has sounded from on high. When I looked upon that densely packed congregation of fighting men of the same language, of the same faith, of the same fundamental laws, of the same ideals…it swept across me that here was the only hope, but also the sure hope, of saving the world from measureless degradation.”
–Winston Churchill

Even though it is not in our current hymnal I recall fondly singing it every summer at Bible School as we marched into the sanctuary for daily worship along with “I’m in the Lord’s Army”. I’m guessing many of our congregants grew up singing this hymn.

Largely because of its association with missionaries, the song was featured in many movies and tv programs such as: ‘Elmer Gantry’, ‘A Canterbury Tale’, ‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Reds’, ‘Little House on the Prairie’, and ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’.

Baring-Gould lived to be 90 years old and wrote over 85 books before his death in 1924. He is remembered most as the author of one of the loveliest evening hymns and the most recognized marching hymn in all Christendom.
In 2016 The Stream, a Christian-oriented website, published new words to the hymn created by Brian McLaren which highlights Christian peacemaking and Christ’s love.

LYRICS – TRADITIONAL