Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus

George Duffield, Jr., 1858

The year was 1858, the place was Philadelphia, and a young minister, Dudley Atkins Tyng, was delivering a sermon before five thousand men. It was a meeting of the recently formed Young Men’s Christian Association, back in the days when every word in that title meant a great deal. The Reverend Tyng, an Episcopalian, had been drummed out of his parish in Philadelphia because of his vocal condemnation of slavery. Note it well: people can grow quite comfortable in an ambience of great evil, and they do not like to be reminded of it. But Tyng organized another congregation straightaway. He and his friend and fellow minister, George Duffield, Jr., the author of our Hymn of the Week, were working together for a Christian revival in Pennsylvania. When Tyng ended his sermon, he uttered these words: “I would rather this right arm be amputated at the trunk than that I should come short of delivering to you God’s message.” This was his decision, walking in the footsteps of Saint Paul. Note the deliberate and bold play on words. If anything should be cut short, says the minister, let it be my right arm and not the word of God!

That was in March. A few weeks later, his words would be made manifest in a most terrible way. Here is the account from the Delaware [Ohio] Gazette: “Rev. Dudley A. Tyng, of the Episcopal Church, a young man of the highest order of talents, formerly Rector of Trinity Church, Columbus, and known to most of our church going citizens, met with a serious accident at his residence in Pennsylvania last week, which has since resulted in his death. While witnessing the operation of a threshing machine, the sleeves of his loose wrapper caught in the cogs of a revolving wheel and drew in his arm, which was terribly lacerated. Mortification having commenced, the arm was amputated near the shoulder, but the unfavorable symptoms still continued, and death ensued in a few days after the operation had been performed."

These were his dying words, to his father: “Tell my brethren of the ministry, wherever you meet them, to stand up for Jesus.”

Duffield would later recall the death of his friend, saying that his absolutely final words were, “Tell them to stand up for Jesus. Now let us sing a hymn.” He wrote that those words seemed to have a special application for the young Tyng, “as if he had said, Stand up for Jesus in the person of the downtrodden slave.” Duffield himself was a tireless crusader against what he believed were America’s great national sins: slavery, intemperance (with alcohol, that is), polygamy among the Mormons, and the shabby treatment of Mexicans and American Indians. When it came to the Christian congregations themselves, he believed, and he preached, that the Protestants should emphasize what the various denominations had in common, and that they should treat Catholics as brother Christians. That was a part of the YMCA movement, after all. Unity in love makes for harmony in action, and there was a lot of hard work to be done.

Duffield was himself a writer of hymns, and he composed this one in the days between the death of his friend and the memorial service over which he presided. His text was from Saint Paul: “Stand firm, wearing the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:14). That whole armor is Greek panoplia — our English word panoply derives from it. It is all of what a Greek foot soldier would wear: an infantryman, marching in phalanx with his comrades, each man’s shield, carried in the left hand, protecting the man beside him. At the end of his sermon, Duffield recited the new poem he had written to honor the young Reverend Tyng. The poem, set to an earlier melody we name for its composer, (George Games) Webb, soon became one of the most popular hymns in America.

In 1990, the Presbyterian Church of America struck the hymn from its hymnal, on the grounds that it might hurt the feelings of crippled people who cannot stand up. That’s absurd, of course. No more did it hurt the feelings of the women in the days of Duffield and Tyng, who did not literally march off to battle. Saint Paul was not speaking to soldiers, but to everyone. We either stand for something, or we don’t. The point of standing here is that you put everything on the line. You say, “I have decided, and I will not go back.” Even children can say so, and so did Dudley Tyng, when he lay dying and would never again rise from his bed — not in this world would he rise; but he stood and he fought to the end.

Click on the image above to hear a beautiful rendition of today’s hymn by the Choir of The Abbey School, Tewkesbury, UK.

Stand up! Stand up for Jesus!
Ye soldiers of the Cross;
Lift high his royal banner,
It must not suffer loss.
From vict'ry unto vict'ry
His army he shall lead,
Till every foe is vanquished
And Christ is Lord indeed.

Stand up! Stand up for Jesus!
The trumpet call obey,
Forth to the mighty conflict
In this his glorious day.
Ye that are men now serve him
Against unnumbered foes:
Let courage rise with danger,
And strength to strength oppose.

Stand up! Stand up for Jesus!
Stand in his strength alone;
The arm of flesh will fail you,
Ye dare not trust your own.
Put on the Gospel armor,
Each piece put on with prayer;
Where duty calls or danger
Be never wanting there!

Stand up! Stand up for Jesus!
The strife will not be long;
This day the noise of battle,
The next the victor's song.
To him that overcometh
A crown of life shall be;
He with the King of Glory
Shall reign eternally.