Hymns: Marching On in the Light of God

I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the old hymns.

Today’s song is Marching On in the Light of God.

I have a great affection for today’s hymn, which I rarely hear nowadays. When I committed my life to Christ back in 1980, I initially attended a Pentecostal church in Cork, here in Ireland. Then, after a couple of months, I started attending Cork Baptist Church. It was equally evangelical, but I sometimes found the Pentecostal scene a bit intense or loud. Yet, for the next few years, I spent much time with Pentecostals. This was well before the modern worship songs. You had a mix of traditional hymns and some of the newer charismatic choruses. And I saw this one as a traditional hymn. I never remember singing it in the Baptist church, but it did feature in the Redemption Hymnal Pentecostal hymnbook.

But it’s actually a Salvation Army hymn from the 19th century. We had a senior citizens luncheon club when I worked at Covent Garden Christian Centre in London back in 1982. One of the elderly ladies liked it because the tune reminded her of “knees up Mother Brown” 😀. This is the part that sounds a little like that song:

For Jesus is my Saviour, he’s washed my sins away,
Died for me on Calvary’s mountain;
I’m happy in his wondrous love, singing all the day,
I’m living, yes, I’m living in the fountain.

I still find the song exhilarating to hear. I’d like to attend a church that sing it sometime. But there’s nothing stopping me from playing it on my keyboard at home – or singing it to myself as I march around my estate on my fast walks.

Here are a few other versions that I found on the YouTube – it seems to be quite popular in Africa:

And here are a couple of other “Marching hymns”