On this day in churches around the world, by countless believers and in countless languages, the centuries-old refrain will be shouted: “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” And in churches beyond number, Charles Wesley’s glorious Easter hymn will be sung: Christ, the Lord, Is Risen Today, often with combined choirs, organ and brass, leading congregations in jubilant musical praise.
The earliest forms of the hymn can be traced back to a Latin text from the 14th century. In 1708 the four Latin stanzas (not Wesley’s) were translated into English and published by J. Walsh in Lyra Davidica under the title “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.” A few decades later, in 1739, a modified version was published by John and Charles Wesley in Hymns and Sacred Poems under the title “Hymn for Easter Day.” It is this version, later shortened and supplemented with the “Alleluia” refrain, that has become the hymn that remains so popular today.
John and Charles Wesley were among the eighteen children of an Anglican priest. Both went to Christ Church College of Oxford University to train for the ministry. Along with the great evangelist, George Whitefield, they were part of a group of students known as “The Holy Club” in which they cultivated spirituality through a strict regimen of disciplined prayer, fasting, Bible study, communion, and charitable works.
John’s story is best-known. After their ordination, he travelled to colonial America where he sought to achieve assurance of a right relationship with God through his efforts to attain a high standard of personal godliness. He would later write of that time, I went to America to convert the Indians, but oh, who should convert me? While on board a ship returning to England, during what must have been a hurricane, he was terrified of dying. He saw amazing calm in the hearts of a group of Mennonite missionaries, and arrived in England deeply shaken by his lack of assurance of salvation.
Soon after, he was in what amounted to a home Bible study in London near St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1738. On that evening John was confronted by the realization that he had been trusting all along in himself and his religious deeds. In his diary he wrote these famous words:
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.
Three days earlier, the same transfer of trust from self to Christ had taken place with his brother, Charles. In his case, during a time of illness, he was studying Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians. He wrote in his diary, “I labored, waited, and prayed to feel ‘who loved me and gave Himself for me”. Shortly afterward he journaled, “now found myself at peace with God, rejoice in hope of loving Christ”.
In the years that followed, their open-air preaching was the instrument that God used to bring countless tens of thousands to saving faith in Christ. They preached in fields and streets and independent chapels, since most Anglican bishops refused to allow them to preach in Anglican churches, branding them with the derogatory term of being “enthusiasts!” It’s estimated that John travelled over a quarter of a million miles on horseback to spread the gospel, and preached 40,000 sermons, averaging fifteen each week!
While Charles was also a preacher, telling people that being a church member wasn’t enough, they needed to be born again, he is best remembered for his hymn-writing. He was a phenomenally gifted poet. He has left us nearly 9000 hymns and compiled 56 volumes of hymns, spanning the entire range of Christian doctrine and experience. They are to be found in every hymnal in the world. They include Hark! The Herald Angels Sing; Jesus, Lover of My Soul; Love Divine, All Loves Excelling; Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending; And Can It Be; Rejoice, the Lord Is King. A year after his conversion, he wrote the 18 stanzas of O, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing to celebrate that anniversary.
On a trip to Wales in 1747, the adventurous evangelist, now 40 years old, met 20-year-old Sally Gwynne, whom he soon married. By all accounts, their marriage was a happy one. While the Wesleys did not “found” the Methodist church, it was their gospel focused, Christ-centered, conversion-oriented preaching that led to that denomination’s organizing in succeeding years.
Charles continued to travel and preach, sometimes creating tension with John, who complained that “I do not even know when and where you intend to go”. His last nationwide trip was in 1756. After that, his health led him gradually to withdraw from itinerant ministry. He spent the remainder of his life in Bristol and London, preaching at Methodist chapels. Born in 1707, about the same time that Isaac Watts had begun writing hymns, he died in 1788. While Watts may have earned the title of “The Father of English Hymnody,” none excelled Wesley as deserving the title of “The World’s Greatest Hymn Writer.”
Here is the hymn as performed at Ft. Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church on Easter Sunday, 2007.
And as a bonus, here is a link to the new Easter song from Keith and Kristyn Getty, based on the text of the wonderful first question in the Heidelberg Catechism: “What is your only hope in life and death?”
Below are the original eleven stanzas composed by Wesley, without the “Alleluias” that were added later by another writer. The five stanzas most often used today are highlighted in bold print. As is typical of Wesley’s hymns, this is filled with Scriptural allusions. One hymnodist has written that if all the Bibles in the world were lost, we could almost reconstruct one from Wesley’s hymns!
- “Christ the Lord is ris’n to-day,”
Sons of Men and Angels say!
Raise your Joys and Triumphs high,
Sing ye Heav’ns, and Earth reply. - Love’s Redeeming Work is done,
Fought the Fight, the Battle won,
Lo! our Sun’s Eclipse is o’er,
Lo! He sets in Blood no more. - Vain the Stone, the Watch, the Seal;
Christ hath burst the Gates of Hell!
Death in vain forbids his Rise:
Christ hath open’d Paradise! - Lives again our glorious King,
Where, O Death, is now thy Sting?
Once He died our Souls to save,
Where thy Victory, O Grave? - Soar we now, where Christ has led,
Following our Exalted Head,
Made like Him, like Him we rise:
Ours the Cross; the Grave; the Skies. - What tho’ once we perish’d All,
Partners of our Parent’s Fall,
Second Life we All receive,
In our Heav’nly Adam live. - Ris’n with Him, we upward move,
Still we seek the Things above,
Still pursue, and kiss the Son,
Seated on his Father’s Throne; - Scarce on Earth a Thought bestow,
Dead to all we leave below,
Heav’n our Aim, and lov’d Abode,
Hid our Life with Christ in God! - Hid; ’till Christ our Life appear,
Glorious in his Members here:
Join’d to Him, we then shall shine
All Immortal, all Divine! - Hail the Lord of Earth and Heav’n!
Praise to Thee by both be giv’n:
Thee we greet Triumphant now;
Hail the Resurrection Thou! - King of Glory, Soul of Bliss,
Everlasting Life is This,
Thee to know, thy Pow’r to prove,
Thus to sing, and thus to love!