Simply put, this might be the most beautiful hymn in the English language.
It’s still commonly sung by our friends across the Atlantic. Too bad they had the misfortune of ranking it their second most favorite hymn behind How Great Thou Art. And while it’s no insult to that fine tune to say that few songs approach “Dear Lord’s” in loveliness, I must point out the suspect nature of that poll–it listed the grating “Shine, Jesus, Shine” as tenth!
But despite the fact it was written by an American poet–the words are John Greenleaf Whittier’s–it has been neglected by evangelicals. It is included, on the other hand, in both Episcopalian and Presbyterian hymnals (not to mention in a moving sequence in the overly-pretty Atonement).
The poem is worth reading in its entirety. Whittier, a Quaker, has strong words for those who attempt “by music, incense, vigils drear” to bring heaven down to them, or themselves up to heaven. While it’s tempting, oh so tempting to read soma as the Greek for body, it was instead a hallucinogenic. The words that have made it into the hymn stand as the corrective to this bawdy, bacchic spirit that Whittier thinks has even made into the Christianity of his time.
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