The Holy City

Frederick Edward Weatherly

In yesterday’s discussion of fancy, the Word of the Week, I didn’t mention that the ancient root of the word, quite productive across our big family of languages, had to do with shining and splendor: English beacon is one of the descendants, as is Greek phos, light, from which we’ve coined all kinds of words for things that bring light or that catch light, like photon and photograph. It’s also related to the Greek word we’ve borrowed for our phenomenon, which originally denoted something that suddenly shines out in glory, or something that startles us with its presence, like a comet, or a bolt of lightning, or a blaze of fire.

So when I was considering what would be the Hymn of the Week, I first thought I’d go for some musical fanciness, turning to my copy of Alexander’s Male Choir, scored for four male voices, with the second from the top, the tenor, carrying the melody, and often breaking out into a sort of round for the refrain, with one voice singing the verse in regular time while the other three sing it several beats later, or sing only a part of it, as a kind of refrain inside the refrain. Someday I’ll get you something out of that extraordinary book, but let me tell you, it is not easy to find any clips of men singing those melodies in that fancy way. What was once a very common thing isn’t so any longer. Then I thought I’d turn not to the music but to the theme of the hymn: What stretches the human imagination to its limit if not the world to come? What else, if not that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him? And that led me to this rousing song, which I’ll admit I’ve never sung, because I don’t have the music for it in any of my hymnals, and maybe it’s really not a hymn for a church service, but a grand song to be sung at a big celebration sponsored by your church — a song to be sung by a lot of people at once, under the stars. And I’ll wager that some of our readers here have sung it, and not just under those imagination-beckoning lights in the night sky.

The author of our hymn, Frederick Weatherly, was a prolific author and lyricist and raconteur, a lawyer by trade, who also wrote several books on formal logic. We don’t make men like this anymore, and in Weatherly’s case perhaps I’ll shrug and admit that he was not the most virtuous fellow in the world. You’ll all know one of the popular songs he wrote, setting it to that fine old Irish melody: Danny Boy, which Debra has featured in Sometimes a Song — so we can say that an Irish air, a British lawyer and logician, and a Lebanese comedian (Danny Thomas, who used a jazzed-up version of the melody as the theme for his show, Make Room for Daddy), have something in common. But in “The Holy City,” I’ll take Weatherly at his word and trust that he had the words not only on his paper but in his heart.

There are three long verses. In the first, the speaker dreams of children singing about the holy Temple, in the city of Jerusalem, the city of old. He imagines that he hears the angels from Heaven responding to the song, and surely we can feel in them the great ardor of the psalmist, who says, “I rejoiced when I heard them say, Let us go up to the house of the Lord,” or the delight of the verse that moves me more now that I’m old than it ever did before, “I shall go in unto the altar of God, of God, who brings joy to my youth.” But in the second stanza we do not go to the destruction of that Temple, either by the Babylonians or by the Romans. We go to Christ on Calvary, for He is the Temple, to be destroyed and to rise up again. The third stanza takes us not to the first Easter on earth, but to the eternal resurrection, the Holy City of God, the new Jerusalem, which the apostle sees coming down out of heaven like a bride to meet the bridegroom. No more do we need the light of the sun or the moon, and no more will darkness claim to sway. The Lamb is the light; he is the true morning star that never sets.

André Rieu & His Johann Strauss Orchestra performing The Holy City live in London, featuring the Platin Tenors.

Last night I lay a sleeping,
There came a dream so fair,
I stood in old Jerusalem
Beside the temple there.
I heard the children singing,
And ever as they sang,
Methought the voice of angels
From Heav’n in answer rang;
Methought the voice of angels
From Heav’n in answer rang —
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Lift up your gates and sing,
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna to your King!

And then methought my dream was changed,
The streets no longer rang,
Hushed were the glad hosannas
The little children sang.
The sun grew dark with mystery,
The morn was cold and chill,
As the shadow of a cross arose
Upon a lonely hill,
As the shadow of a cross arose
Upon a lonely hill.
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Hark! how the angels sing,
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna to your King.

And once again the scene was changed,
New earth there seemed to be;
I saw the Holy City
Beside the tideless sea;
The light of God was on its streets,
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter,
And no one was denied.
No need of moon or stars by night,
Or sun to shine by day,
It was the new Jerusalem,
That would not pass away,
It was the new Jerusalem,
That would not pass away.
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Sing, for the night is o’er!
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna for evermore!
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna for evermore!

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