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 I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say from the mid‑1840s.
1. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, O weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast.”
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary, and worn, and sad;
I found in him a resting-place,
And he has made me glad.
2. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Behold, I freely give
The living water; thirsty one,
Stoop down, and drink, and live.”
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quench'd, my soul revived,
And now I live in him.
3. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“I am this dark world’s Light;
Look unto me, your morn shall rise,
And all your day be bright.”
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In him my Star, my Sun;
And in that Light of life I’ll walk,
Till trav'ling days are done.
Matthew 11:28
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
John 4:10
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
John 8:12
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
It’s a very poetic hymn that uses poetic licence 😀. You do sometimes meet people who claim to have heard Jesus speaking directly to them. I don’t believe them. It’s true that we pray for guidance, but there’s always an element of uncertainty about how God replies, though I do believe Scripture itself is verbally inspired. And I’ve added some verses on which the hymn is built. The writer, Horatius Bonar, is probably meditating aloud on how these verses touched him.
In Ireland, because its tune is also the tune of the folk song, Star of the Country Down, some think of it as an Irish hymn.
But Horatius Bonar was Scottish. And many believe the tune is an English folk tune. I have known people who desperately want to make Irish evangelical churches more “Irish”. But that’s getting more difficult nowadays. There was a time when everyone thought of Roman Catholicism as Irish and Protestantism (including evangelicalism) as English. So it made us feel a little awkward being seen as something less than Irish because we weren’t Roman Catholic.
In more modern times, people saw evangelicalism as American. But nowadays, Irish evangelical churches comprise people from all over the world as do Irish Roman Catholic churches. And a time will soon come when you’ll get more evangelicals in countries in distant continents than you’ll get in European counties and America, if this isn’t already the case.
Just for fun, I asked Microsoft Co-pilot for some statistics. Here’s what it told me about the number of evangelical Christians in various regions. It did point out that these are merely estimates
- Africa 185 million
- Asia 145 million
- South America 123 million
- North America 99 million
- Europe 19 million
- Oceania 7-8 million
- Ireland 52,000–88,000
I regularly meet people in church from all these regions. So, like heaven itself, Irish churches have become more international. So, while it’s nice to sing an “Irish” hymn now and then, we shouldn’t be obsessed with making Irish evangelical churches more “Irish”. Most Irish people are happier to sing international songs.
Here are some other versions of today’s hymn:
Hibernia Gospel 