The Lord is risen indeed

In Luke 24:34, on the evening of the first day of the week in Jerusalem, the eleven remaining disciples greet Cleopas and his companion, just returned from Emmaus, with the words ‘The Lord is risen indeed …’ This phrase which has become a traditional Easter greeting is the basis of this hymn by Thomas Kelly, published in his Collection of Hymns and Psalms in 1802. It is a straightforward rather than exuberant text, which is often true of Short Metre verses; Anglicans seem to have taken to it more than others—though it does come in GH. A&M made changes to Kelly’s text in 1861, and again later books have continued the process. The first stz here is often omitted; it formerly read ‘… And are the tidings true?/ Yes, they beheld the Saviour bleed/ and saw …’ Lines which have been dropped include ‘attending angels, hear!/ Up to the courts of heaven with speed/ the joyful tidings bear’; and ‘Then take your golden lyres’.

Several tunes seem equally popular, and suitable, for this hymn, including ST THOMAS (93), ST MICHAEL and the suggested alternative SILCHESTER (189). Charles Steggall’s DAY OF PRAISE, like 475, first came in R Brown- Borthwick’s Supplemental Hymn and Tune Book, 1868/69. Its name derives from its association with John Ellerton’s Our day of praise is done; it has also been set to other texts.

b Stradbally (Kellyville), Queen’s County, Ireland 1769, d Dublin 1855. Trinity Coll Dublin. Although trained in law and intending to follow his father in a legal career, he was converted from carelessness and self-righteousness, and in 1792 he was ordained in the Ch of Ireland. But because of his evangelical convictions, preaching, and indirect association with Lady Huntingdon’s circle, he was inhibited by Archbishop Fowler of Dublin from preaching in his diocese; Rowland Hill (qv) came under the same ban. Kelly then became an independent minister and established his own network, starting at Athy, Portarlington and Wexford, and building a series of chapels from his own resources, which survives in a form akin to the Christian Brethren gospel halls. He was a skilled linguist, and a biblical scholar whose practical concern for his sometimes desperately poor neighbours became a byword, especially in the famine years. A Collection of Psalms and Hymns appeared in 1800, closely followed by Hymns on Various Passages of Holy Scripture. This latter and more ambitious book enjoyed several (and growing) edns between 1804 and 1853, by which time the total of hymns had reached 765. Being also a musician, he published in 1815 a companion volume containing his own tunes for every metre represented by the book of texts. While his finest work is in CM and LM, he seemed specially drawn (like the great Welsh hymnwriters) to the 87 87 77 metre, rhyming ABABCC. Routley rates much of his writing as doggerel (a comparative term in the century of the Wesleys etc) but his best work ‘magnificent’, even unsurpassed; Julian saw his own late-19th-c contemporaries as ‘being apparently adverse to original investigation’ of Kelly’s many other ‘hymns of great merit’—a situation which has not greatly changed. GH has 17 of his hymns; CH, 14 (9 in its 2004 edn); and Christian Worship (1976), 13. Nos.443, 447, 476, 493, 498.