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 Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken from 1779.
1 Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God.
He whose Word cannot be broken
formed thee for His own abode.
On the Rock of Ages founded,
what can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation's walls surrounded,
thou may'st smile at all thy foes.
2 See, the streams of living waters,
springing from eternal love,
well supply thy sons and daughters
and all fear of want remove.
Who can faint while such a river
ever flows their thirst to assuage?
Grace, which like the Lord, the Giver,
never fails from age to age.
3 'Round each habitation hov'ring,
see the cloud and fire appear
for a glory and a cov'ring,
showing that the Lord is near.
Thus deriving from their banner
light by night and shade by day,
safe they feed upon the manna
which He gives them on their way.
4 Savior, since of Zion's city
I through grace a member am,
let the world deride or pity,
I will glory in Thy name.
Fading is the worldling's pleasures,
all his boasted pomp and show;
solid joys and lasting treasures
none but Zion's children know.
I used to love opening our church service with this one back in the 1980s. Looking at the lyrics now, I wonder how much I understood them back then 😀. Sometimes, with hymns, I just focus on feeling that I’m in God’s presence rather than on the specific lyrics.
It’s a very poetic hymn. Jerusalem, or Zion, was one of the places where God manifested His presence in the Old Testament. Then, when Jesus came, He Himself was like a temple – He was God manifested as a Human. Then, he died, rose, and ascended into heaven and sent ths Holy Spirit, who dwells in us and is present where God’s people meet.
So I think this poem is about the church – an idealized picture of it. Currently, we aspire to be our heavenly selves, but in practice, we’re a mixed bag 😀. Church life doesn’t always feel very heavenly. But the New Testament constantly urges us to look to the future and to bring a little, or a lot, of it into the present; thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.
John Newton wrote this one. He was a reformed slave trader, who also wrote Amazing Grace. And the tune is Austria, which is also used for the German national anthem. As a child, I remember having an LP record at home of various national anthems. It would be an interesting challenge to write a hymn to all of these tunes.
Here are a few other versions of the hymn:
Hibernia Gospel 