You are the way: From sin and death

One of the disciple Thomas’s many crucial utterances, ‘How can we know the way?’ was answered by the even more famous ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:5–6). As the Scripture Index shows, many hymns (notably 676 and 720), draw on that text; this one is constructed around it. George Washington Doane published it in his native N America in a booklet of Songs by the Way in 1824, when in his mid-20s. It was one of the first American hymns (some say the best) to become firmly established in British hymnals. Edward Bickersteth introduced it in 1833 in his Christian Psalmody, and in 1861 it was one of only 2 transatlantic texts in the first A&M. It may be said to succeed where Joseph Hart’s 4 earlier SM stzs I am, saith Christ, the way does not; and retains a place of honour, and use on some formal occasions like Commemoration Day at the University of Glasgow whose motto is ‘Via, Veritas, Vita’.

In view of Thomas’s question, it is unlikely that in Jesus’ original claim, way, truth and life are 3 equally-weighted nouns, as the stzs suggest here. Whether or not he intended something like ‘the true and living way’ (which was seen as a possible opening phrase for the HTC version) Donald A Carson says that ‘way gains a little emphasis over truth and life … truth and life enjoy a supporting role’. At least the final stz brings together what the first 3 appear to separate. The first originally began ‘Thou art the Way;/ to [by] thee alone/ from sin and death we flee/ … must seek him, Lord, by thee’. (HTC rendered this ‘… from sin and death we run/ … must seek him through the Son.’) 3.1 had ‘the rending tomb’ (HTC ‘open’), and the HTC version of stz 4 is used here, adapted from ‘… that way to know … whose joys eternal flow.’ A text raising similar questions of meaning divided by stzs is 758.

The much-adapted tune ST JAMES (933) was chosen for A&M and has usually accompanied these words. NOX PRAECESSIT (‘First came the night’ or ‘The night is far spent/nearly over’?) was John Baptiste Calkin’s tune for Edward Denny’s words Bride of the Lamb, awake, awake; it was set to them in The Christian Hymnal: Five Hundred Hymns for the Church and Home in 1875. It has since been used for many other texts, appearing 3 times in CH.

b Trenton, New Jersey, USA 1799, d Burlington, NJ 1859. Union Coll, Schenectady, New York State, where he read Law. After enrolling as one of the General Theological Seminary’s first students, he was ordained in 1821 in the Protestant Episcopal Ch; he served at New York’s Trinity Ch from 1821 to 1824, then spent 4 years as Prof of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Trinity Coll, Hartford, Conn. After a further 4 year spell as Rector of another Trinity Church, in Boston, Mass, he was consecrated as the second Bishop of New Jersey in 1832. Among several educational initiatives he founded St Mary’s Hall for women, and Burlington Coll for men. In sympathy with the (Oxford) tractarian movement in England, he edited a N American edn of John Keble’s The Christian Year. In the year following his death at the age of 59, his hymnwriting son William Croswell Doane (1832–1913) edited his complete works in 4 vols (1860). He and C W Everest (qv) were the only American writers represented in the first edn of A&M in 1861; his own contribution, now featured in many mainstream UK books, coincidentally takes a more positive view of John 14:6 than an earlier text by J Hart. The 18th-c Englishman says, ‘all other paths must lead astray…all besides is death’ (etc); the 19th-c American prefers (in his original text, now modernised), ‘by thee alone…thou only’. No.678.