Christ is risen! Hallelujah!

Compared with John S B Monsell’s best-known work (194 and 883; also 651) this resurrection hymn appears in only a few books. This was noted by The Baptist Hymn Book Companion (1962) which called it ‘one of the best of Easter hymns, and full of triumphant confidence’; Cliff Knight makes a similar comment (1993). But baptist books have generally included it, as more recently has MP; it was first published in Hymns of Love and Praise in 1863. The opening line is similar to the beginning of many more recent texts, and needs careful indexing; the final one repeats the summons of 1 Corinthians 5:8. Stz 2 originally had ‘… of his earthly life is o’er … to life once more’, then, ‘He doth rise … on his steps … glory round’. Stz 3 began ‘… henceforth never/ death or hell shall us enthral’.

MORGENLIED (‘Morning Song’) is the generally agreed and highly appropriate tune for these words; composed for them by Frederick C Maker, it appeared in the 1881 Supplement to The Bristol Tune Book in the key of B flat. Some books have also used it for Ellen Fowler’s Now the year is crowned with blessing (1901).

b St Columb’s, Co Derry, Ireland 1811, d Guildford, Surrey 1875. Trinity Coll Dublin (BA 1832, LLD 1836); ordained (Ch of Ireland) 1834, becoming chaplain to Bp Mant (No.193), then Chancellor of the diocese of Connor and Rector of Ramoan. His Hymns and Miscellaneous Poems were published in 1837, and Parish Musings, or Devotional Poems, 1850. He came to England in 1853 as a Surrey incumbent, at Egham from 1853 to 1870, then at Guildford. 9 further books of verse and some prose followed between 1857 and 1873; including The Beatitudes, Our New Vicar, and Spiritual Songs for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year (1867), arranged according to the church calendar, but where congregational hymns still merge with more meditative and sermonic poems and versified narrative. The 91 texts in this work are thoughtful, Scripture-based though touched by ritual; one for the 17th Sunday after Trinity powerfully celebrates the Christian Sabbath. The verse-forms range from actual limerick to stzs modelled on Geo Herbert. The author says they were written ‘among the orange and olive groves of Italy during a winter spent (for the sake of health) upon the shores of the Mediterranean Sea’. In all he wrote nearly 300 hymns, 5 of which appeared in The Public School Hymn Book in 1919. Julian’s characteristic verdict is that they ‘are as a whole bright, joyous and musical; but they lack massiveness, concentration of thought, and strong emotion’. Ellerton found his ‘warm and loving devoutness so often counter-balanced by his incorrectness’. During the rebuilding of St Nicholas’ Guildford he either fell from the roof he was inspecting, or was hit by falling masonry, and died shortly afterwards. His final poem was ‘Near home at last’; but Fight the good fight has passed in to the common currency of speech among many who know little more of the hymn and nothing of its biblical origins. Nos.194, 455, 651, 883.