Jesus Christ is risen today

For many non-Methodists, this anonymous item is the hymn par excellence for Easter; see the notes to 457 and 458. Frank Colquhoun confesses that the words ‘make no pretensions to greatness’ and ‘would scarcely have survived’ without their original tune, but commends the appeal of their simplicity, directness, and truth. Even more striking is the fact that 6 of the 12 lines are concerned not with the resurrection but the cross, as its meaning and purpose are stated in each of the 3 stzs. Of the remaining 6 lines, only the first states that Christ is risen; 2.1–2 concern our resulting praise and joy, and 3.3–4 celebrate his ascended kingship. But the clarity of thought expressed here has reached us by a far-from-simple route. An original Lat ‘Easter carol’, Surrexit Christus hodie, dates from the 14th c. By 1708 an unknown hand had rendered this into the English version found in one surviving copy in the British Museum, in Lyra Davidica: or a Collection of Divine Songs and Hymns, part newly composed, partly translated from the high German and Latin hymns and set to easy and pleasant tunes (a title suggesting some 18th-c pressure to be more user-friendly than others). The first complete line ended ‘Halle-Halle-lujah’, and Hallelujahs apart, only lines 1, 2 and 4 of the first stz survive from that text, whose 2nd stz began ‘Haste ye females from your fright …’ (in some later adaptations, ‘Haste, ye Maries …’). The more familiar form came with Arnold’s Compleat Psalmodist in 1741; a later revision by Reginald Heber, published posthumously with his hymns, led some to regard him as the author. Stz 3 is attributed to Charles Wesley, as is a 4th which is now rarely printed but which is retained in GH and can be most effective: ‘Sing we to our God above … Praise eternal as his love … Praise him, all ye heavenly host … Father, Son and Holy Ghost …’ In stz 2, the 1741 text had ‘Hymns of joy … unto Christ …’.

The ‘authentic tune’ for this text has to be EASTER HYMN, which Colquhoun calls ‘magnificent’, but this is often commandeered (except by Anglicans) for the Wesley hymn; see 458. It was attached to the older text in Lyra Davidica, which titled it ‘The Resurrection’. Its lively arrangement there was modified to its present form in the 3rd edn of Arnold’s 1753 book which had helped to shape the words. LLANFAIR is also in wide use, as here; for notes on this tune, see 457.

The title could mean ‘David’s Lyre’ or ‘David’s Song’. The book was an anonymous London collection of mainly English versions of Latin or German hymns. At least 4 texts and one tune have proved popular with hymn-book editors and congregations for 3 centuries. The tune has since been simplified, and was (and usually still is) matched with the words of 470, but Methodists have borrowed it for the Wesley text to which it is set here. No.458.