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Hymns of hope (3) It is well with my soul
Horatio Spafford's moving hymn, When peace, like a river, is somewhat marred by a line in a verse that apparently was not in the original version or even the original (?) published version:
But, Lord, ’tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul!
(I'd be interested to know where that verse came from: leave a comment below if you know.)
I've taken to singing "The earth, not the grave is our goal", because the Christian hope is ultimately not to stay in heaven (the sky?) for ever, but for the Lord to return, for the dead to be restored to bodily life, and for the meek to inherit... the sky?
But perhaps better would be to miss out that verse altogether, and to stick with Spafford's final verse, which is much richer:
And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
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I live in York and I'm a research fellow in 
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about 2 months ago
I can cope with "the sky not the grave" in that they are both temporary - i.e. "the sky" in terms of "we shell meet him in the air" ... oh yeah!
I think the hymn is a wonderful testimony of the peace that passes understanding that the writer experienced in face of extreme personal trials, but I don't think that means we should sing it today.
Is it only me that finds "My sin! Oh the bliss of this glorious thought!" amusing? All rather gushing, and open to naughty punctuation
about 2 months ago
'For me be it Christ' is, apparently, not 'original' by your standards either; but I don't hear you complain about that one.
Nevertheless, I wondered what you were thinking of that as we sang it! But it's hard to contrast 'the earth' with 'the grave', isn't it? Sometimes, it's almost used as a synonym; never, to my memory, as an antonym. 'The sky' is our goal in the 1 Thess 4:17 sense: we meet him in the clouds to return to the renewed creation. (I always try to find an orthodox way to take the words if at all possible. This is not always successful, of course.)
Though if you dropped the apparently non-original verse for the original you mention but no-one ever sings, I would hardly complain! While we're at it, can we lose that inane 'When we've been there ten thousand years', which is not original to 'Amazing grace' and often displaces 'The earth shall soon dissolve like snow'.
about 2 months ago
Non-original or altered words are fine in hymns, in my opinion. I'd been using Praise! for a few years in Brighton, and usually liked it. One change made in Spafford's hymn is "My sin - oh the bliss of this glorious thought!" becomes "The joy, oh the joy of this glorious thought!" or something like that...
"Life" might be better than "the sky" or "the earth" as an antonym for "the grave", but it doesn't have enough syllables... Not sure 1 Thess 4:17 fits with the sense of the verse, which seems to be that we'll stay in the sky for ever (a "goal" being where you end up, presumably).
I'd be very happy to lose "When we've been there", and if it was replaced with Newton's verse, we'd have no less (sic) verses to sing. It's certainly more poetic, but will the earth dissolve like snow? I'm not sure.
about 2 months ago
Phil #1 - it thought you were spam, just rescued you! Again, "goal" doesn't sound temporary to me. Otherwise the grave is also our "goal" on the way towards resurrection... "The grave then the sky are our intermediate goals"?
Right, my soul, time to prepare thy suit...
about 2 months ago
'New life, not the grave, is our goal'? It feels a bit clunky somehow: the contrast is rather too obvious.
Praise! is usually good. I would say that: I was the one who introduced it at YBC. I find though that it often needs to be read alongside an original, or at least older, version to be confident that they've not done something totally bonkers. Their revisions occasionally need reversion!