Our Easter continues through April 15th, with 20% off all upgrades, gift, and new subscriptions at Word & Song. May God bless you all during the coming week and through Eastertide.
The year is 1759, and that means that the French and English are at war. It does seem sometimes that for any year from William of Normandy’s conquest in 1066 to Waterloo in 1815, you could flip a coin and if it came up heads, the French and the English, close cousins as they are, would be fighting. In America, we call its outgrowth the French and Indian War, meaning, of course, that British subjects were fighting against the French and the Indians, who were allies. That’s not surprising, when you consider that the French had been marrying with the Indians in Canada for a long time. In any case, a young man named Samuel Medley, who left his apprenticeship at age 14 to join the Royal Navy, has been badly wounded in the leg in the naval Battle of Lagos, and while he’s recuperating — remember, these are the times before antibiotics, when the best antiseptic people commonly used was alcohol — he writes what has come to be a most beloved Easter hymn, “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.”
Medley would eventually become a schoolmaster and then a Baptist minister, doing a lot of his work in Liverpool. His son Samuel was an artist, whose first commissioned work was a Last Supper; and he was one of the founders of University College, in London. That’s a bit of a strange connection; the devout son of an enthusiastic and warm-hearted preacher, hanging about with number-crunching and soul-chewing Utilitarians, like Jeremy Bentham, but philanthropy can make strange bedfellows. Samuel the elder seems to have been less of a theologian than a man who could grab you by the collar and say, “Listen to the good news I have to give!” Not a bad thing, either. I’m looking at the first stanza of the first hymn in his 1789 collection, and it breathes an air of confidence and love:
My God! Jehovah! Father! Friend! On my poor heart thy spirit send; Help me to touch the tuneful string, While, trembling, I adore and sing.
Now, what is the most important thing we can say about Jesus during Eastertide? Nothing political, certainly. I wonder sometimes, and I’m guessing that many of our readers have had the same feeling, why the gospel writers didn’t include every little thing they saw Jesus do after he rose from the dead. Well, if you are going to make up a fable, you overdo it, and the evangelists can hardly be accused of that. We get the sense instead that they hardly knew what was happening to them during those forty days. Jesus is here; then he is somewhere else; the apostles see him, but not all; then Thomas sees him; they meet him at the shore of the Sea of Galilee in the dim early morning, and they don’t recognize him at first; the disciples on the road to Emmaus spend the whole afternoon with him, with their hearts burning and their eyes somehow shut. No, the evangelists, if anything, keep their hearts fixed upon the main thing. Jesus lives.
“But people don’t rise from the dead!” our beloved pastor Rev. Richard Bucci once heard an unbeliever object. “Sir,” he replied, “I believe that was the point.” Jesus is alive. He is, as he himself said, the rising and the life. It isn’t just that he happened to rise and he happened to live. He is himself the rising, he is himself the life. Then we can say with the good old preacher, himself echoing the words of Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives!” Since that is true, we need no more.
We have two versions of our hymn today. The first is by Craig Williams, a fine organist at the West Point Cadets Chapel. Mr. Williams shows us how the organ can and should be used in congregational settings. We could only wish that the recording included the cadets singing!
The second version is performed a cappella by the Beyond the Walls Choir and gives us a simple but beautiful harmony which can and should be sung in small choirs, particularly in settings with no organist. . (Try to pretend you don’t hear that one singer who veers off key here and there in an otherwise lovely recording!)
I know that my Redeemer lives; What comfort this sweet sentence gives! He lives! he lives! who once was dead; He lives, my everlasting head. He lives to grant me rich supply, He lives to guide me with his eye; He lives to comfort me when faint, He lives to hear my soul's complaint. He lives to silence all my fears, He lives to stop, and wipe my tears; He lives to calm my troubled heart, he lives all blessings to impart. He lives my kind wise heavenly friend, He lives, and loves me to the end; He lives, and while he lives I'll sing; He lives, my prophet, priest and king. He lives, and grants me daily breath; He lives, and I shall conquer death; He lives my mansion to prepare; He lives to bring me safely there.
In Memoriam: Fr. Richard Armand Bucci, 1947-2024, (1 Corinthians 15).
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. Learn more about our subscription tiers by clicking the button below.
Here I am going through some older posts, but I'm happy to see one of my favorite hymns and learn a little about the history behind it. Thanks!
Sometimes, the good old hymns hit the spot😌