Arranged by June C. Montgomery
Alfred, 1999, 4 pages
Brand new.
From UMC Discipleship:
This hymn was published in 1879 in three eight-line stanzas in Sunday Afternoon, a magazine prepared by the Washington Gladden, under the title “Walking with God.” C.H. Richards discovered the poem and included it in his 1880 hymnal, Christian Praise, without the original second stanza. The remaining two eight-line stanzas were placed into four four-line stanzas and paired with the durable Victorian tune Maryton. The hymn has become one of the most significant devotional hymns of this era.
Gladden was a native of Pennsylvania, and served churches in New York and Massachusetts before accepting a call to First Congregational Church, Columbus, Ohio, a parish he served for 32 years. Educated at Owego Academy and Williams College, he was the moderator of the National Council of Congregational Churches from 1904-1907. He served as one of the editors of the Pilgrim Hymnal (1904).
As editor of the Independent, he made important contributions to the cause of social justice. While a pastor in Massachusetts, Gladden began preaching about labor-management problems, encouraging cooperation between employers and employees. Hymnologist Albert Bailey notes that “he found his fellow-clergymen without courage to follow him, for heresy trials were beginning in the Congregational Church.”
This hymn is a paradox. Few singers realize that behind the relatively peaceful words of Gladden’s poem, sung to a placid Victorian melody, one can find the witness of a champion for social justice.
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