How many hymns (or sermons, for that matter) have you heard about hell? Probably not many! Why is that? It may be that our church culture has grown accustomed to wanting only themes that are happy and pleasant … and positive. There are many who just don’t want to think about this, burying their head in the sands of blissful thinking. The only thing happy and pleasant about the Bible’s teaching concerning hell is that those of us who belong to Christ can be positive that we will never go there! Part of the reason for that scarcity of attention is almost certainly that in our time fewer and fewer people even believe that there will be a hell. They have become so indoctrinated with the lie of universalism that has invented a non-existent god of peoples’ own imagination, one who loves everyone and would never send anyone to hell, even if it did exist.
But what about heaven? We do have a number of good hymns about our eternal abode, but we don’t actually hear as many sermons about heaven as we should. After all, it’s not only where God sits enthroned right now, with Jesus at His right hand. It’s also where we who belong to Christ will spend eternity, not because of anything we have done for ourselves, but only because of what He has done for us. In the midst of so much sadness and trouble and disappointment in this life, shouldn’t we think more often about the incredibly glorious future that awaits us just beyond the grave, or at the imminent return of the Lord Jesus? What joy that could bring into our day if we started our thinking about that rather than the latest disaster broadcast in the morning news report!
The materialism, secularism, and frankly brutality, of modern culture have so affected our eschatology that fewer Christians now attach any specific meaning or images to the concept of heaven (or so sociologists tell us). There is even a sense that caring about it is irresponsible, that longing for heaven leads to neglect of this world. That is certainly not how the Bible presents it! It is not surprising to find this to be true in liberal Protestantism today, where preached messages and ministries are almost exclusively horizontal (toward one another), and minimally vertical (toward God). The old nineteenth century social gospel has come back to replace the biblical gospel. Those who seek to speak much about heaven will frequently be ridiculed.
There is certainly plenty of information in the Bible to supply the preacher (and the hymn writer) with ample material to fill messages and lyrics about our heavenly home. There is much we won’t know until we get there: information about its appearance, and how we will occupy our eternal days, and what kind of memories of this life will remain with us, and how we will interact with those who have gone before us. But though many of the details revealed in the book of Revelation are symbolic, even those symbols are thrillingly beautiful and wonderful. And if the symbols, given to us in finite human descriptions, are so breathtakingly magnificent, how much more thrilling will be the reality when our eyes are opened to see that realm, and our ears are opened to hear its music? (Check out Randy Alcorn’s book, “Heaven.”)
The Letter to the Hebrews, for example, teaches that courage to live faithfully in this life comes from seeking a city that is to come (11:14–16; 13:14). Christians need to be telling each other, and the world, the whole story. We must no longer be shy about describing just what the gospel promises, what the Lord has in store for His saints. Will the city’s streets be paved with gold? Modernity’s preaching and teaching, and even its hymnody and sacramental texts, hastened to say, “Well, no, not really.” And having said that, it has no more to say. In modern Christianity’s discourse, the gospel’s eschatology died the death of a few quick qualifications. The truly necessary qualification is not that the City’s streets will not be paved with real gold, but that gold as we know it is not real gold, such as that City will be paved with. What is the matter with gold anyway? Will goldsmiths who gain the Kingdom have nothing to do there? To stay with this one little piece of the vision, our discourse must learn again to revel in the beauty and flexibility and integrity of gold, of the City’s true gold, and to say exactly why the world the risen Jesus will make must of course be golden, must be and will be beautiful and flexible as is no earthly city.
The hymn “Jerusalem the Golden” builds on that image of the streets of gold. It is based on a poem by the 12th century Bernard of Morlaix, more often known as Bernard of Cluny (not to be confused with the better-known Bernard of Clairvaux). Though born in France, he was an Englishman by extraction, both his parents being natives of this country. Little or nothing is known of his life, beyond the fact that he entered the Abbey of Cluny, founded in 910, of which at that time Peter the Venerable, who filled the post from 1122 to 1156, was the head. There, so far as we know, he spent his whole life thereafter, and there he probably died, though the exact date of his death, as well as of his birth is unrecorded. The Abbey of Cluny was at that period at the zenith of its wealth and fame and power. Its buildings, especially its church, was unequalled by any in France, being the largest and most magnificent in the entire country. The services therein were renowned for the elaborate order of their ritual. Its community, the most numerous of any like institution, gave it a position and an influence, such as no other monastery, perhaps, ever reached. Everything about it was splendid, almost luxurious.
It was amid such surroundings that Bernard of Cluny spent his leisure hours in composing his wondrous satire against the vices and follies of his age, which has supplied, and it is the only satire that ever did so, some of the most widely known and admired hymns to the Church of today. His poem “De Contemptu Mundir” remains as an imperishable monument of an author of whom we know little besides except his name. Bernard’s poem was based on Revelation 21:1-2 and 18. As published in 95 lines by Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench, it was originally a 3000-line poem describing the peace and glory and beauty of heaven in contrast to the suffering and corruption of life in this present fallen world. It was written in a difficult dactyllic hexameter, with a complicated rhyming scheme.
As with many ancient Latin hymn texts, modern translations involve a significant re-casting in order to flow smoothly in the English language. The version almost exclusively used today is that written in 1851 by John Mason Neale (1818-1866). He is remembered for his part in the Oxford Movement that drew the Church of England back toward “high church” Anglo-Catholicism, especially in liturgical dimensions. Many Anglicans in those days were very suspicious of Neale and some accused him of effectively being an agent of the Vatican. During his years he was subjected to many verbal threats but was also physically attacked on numerous occasions. Bert Polman (part of the team that compiled the CRC “Psalter Hymnal”) summarizes Neale’s life and significant hymnological contributions this way.
John M. Neale’s life is a study in contrasts: born into an evangelical home, he had sympathies toward Rome; in perpetual ill health, he was incredibly productive; of scholarly temperament, he devoted much time to improving social conditions in his area; often ignored or despised by his contemporaries, he is lauded today for his contributions to the church and hymnody. Neale’s gifts came to expression early–he won the Seatonian prize for religious poetry eleven times while a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, England. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1842, but ill health and his strong support of the Oxford Movement kept him from ordinary parish ministry. So Neale spent the years between 1846 and 1866 as a warden of Sackville College in East Grinstead, a retirement home for poor men. There he served the men faithfully and expanded Sackville’s ministry to indigent women and orphans. He also founded the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, which became one of the finest English training orders for nurses.
Laboring in relative obscurity, Neale turned out a prodigious number of books and artic1es on liturgy and church history, including “A History of the So-Called Jansenist Church of Holland” (1858); an account of the Roman Catholic Church of Utrecht and its break from Rome in the 1700s; and his scholarly “Essays on Liturgiology and Church History” (1863). Neale contributed to church music by writing original hymns, including two volumes of “Hymns for Children” (1842, 1846), but especially by translating Greek and Latin hymns into English. These translations appeared in “Medieval Hymns and Sequences” (1851, 1863, 1867), “The Hymnal Noted” (1852, 1854), “Hymns of the Eastern Church” (1862), and “Hymns Chiefly Medieval” (1865). Because a number of Neale’s translations were judged unsingable, editors usually amended his work, as evident already in the 1861 edition of “Hymns Ancient and Modern;” Neale claimed no rights to his texts and was pleased that his translations could contribute to hymnody as the “common property of Christendom.”
Among Neale’s translated hymns in common use today, in addition to “Jerusalem the Golden,” are these: “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” “Good Christian Men, Rejoice,” “All Glory Laud and Honor,” “Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain,” “The Day of Resurrection,” “O Sons and Daughters, Let Us Sing,” “Lift Up, Lift Up Your Voices Now,” “Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation,” “Let Our Choir New Anthems Raise,” “Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid,” and “Christian, Dost Thou See Them.” Few people can understand how difficult it is to make a good translation of poetry from one language to another. One can’t simply translate the lines word-for-word. The rhyme of the syllables and sounds just won’t match. And then there’s the matter of preserving the beauty and imagery from one to the other. But Neale has done so, in most instances, by virtually re-writing the text, following the basic themes of each phrase and stanza. He enriched English hymnody with many ancient and mediaeval hymns translated from Latin and Greek. More than anyone else, he made English-speaking congregations aware of the centuries-old tradition of Latin, Greek, Russian, and Syrian hymns. As is evident above, his most enduring legacy is probably the contribution to the church’s Christmas repertoire.
The text of “Jerusalem the Golden” expresses a passionate longing for heaven, something that ought to be common in every believer’s heart. It is unique in that the words are addressed not to the Lord directly, but to Jerusalem. That, of course, is biblical imagery for the church, the new Jerusalem, the holy city that Revelation 21:2 describes. “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Many have criticized the medieval monks’ vision of heaven and viewed it as only escapism from the harsh realities of the dark ages. But while there is much about monasticism which can be rightly criticized, it is clear that the monks often drew their thoughts about heaven directly from the figures used in Scripture. And since the Bible plainly says that we should set our affections on things above rather than things on this earth, there is certainly nothing wrong with thinking about and longing for “Jerusalem, the Golden.”
The hymn text is filled with biblical phrases and allusions. Here is how one writer has made the connections with specific scriptures.
In stanza 1, we sing about Jerusalem, the holy city, an imagery for the church.
Jerusalem the golden (Gal. 4:26; Rev. 21:18),
with milk and honey blest (Ex. 3:8; Josh. 5:6),
Beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed (Rev. 22:8).
I know not, oh, I know not (1 Jn. 3:2),
what joys await us there (1 Cor. 2:9),
What radiance of glory (Rev. 21:11, 23),
what bliss beyond compare (Ps. 137:6).
In stanza 2, we sing about the halls of Zion, anther image for the church as well as heaven.
They stand, those halls of Zion (Ps. 87:1; Jn.14:2),
all jubilant with song (2 Chron. 30:21; Isa. 26:1; 35:10),
And bright with many an angel (Heb. 12:22-24; Rev. 5:11; 6:9),
and all the martyr throng (Rev. 20:4).
The Prince is ever in them (Ezek. 34:24; Rev. 1:12-17),
the daylight is serene (Rev. 7:16; 21:23);
The pastures of the blessed (Ezek. 34:14; Rev. 7:17) are decked in glorious sheen.
In stanza 3, we sing about the throne of David, and David’s greater Son.
There is the throne of David (Isa. 9:7; Rev. 3:7, 21); and there, from care released,
The song of them that triumph (Rev. 15:2-3),
the shout of them that feast (Isa. 25:6; Matt. 8:11; Rev. 19:6-9).
And they who with their leader have conquered in the fight (Rev. 21:1-14).
Forever and forever are clad in robes of white (Rev. 7:9, 13-14).
In stanza 4, we sing about that sweet and blessed country where we are bound.
O sweet and blessed country, the home of God’s elect (John 15:19; 1 Peter 1:1)!
O sweet and blessed country that eager hearts expect (Heb. 11:14-16; 13:14)!
Jesus in mercy bring us to that dear land of rest;
Who are with God the Father and Spirit, ever blest.
Here is a complete metric translation of the entire hymn, not found in hymnals today.
Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest,
Beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed.
I know not, O I know not, what joys await us there,
What radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare.
They stand, those halls of Zion, all jubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel, and all the martyr throng;
The Prince is ever in them, the daylight is serene.
The pastures of the blessèd are decked in glorious sheen.
There is the throne of David, and there, from care released,
The shout of them that triumph, the song of them that feast;
And they, who with their Leader, have conquered in the fight,
Forever and forever are clad in robes of white.
O sweet and blessèd country, the home of God’s elect!
O sweet and blessèd country, that eager hearts expect!
Jesus, in mercy bring us to that dear land of rest,
Who art, with God the Father, and Spirit, ever blessed.
Brief life is here our portion, brief sorrow, short lived care;
The life that knows no ending, the tearless life, is there.
O happy retribution! Short toil, eternal rest;
For mortals and for sinners, a mansion with the blest.
That we should look, poor wanderers, to have our home on high!
That worms should seek for dwellings beyond the starry sky!
And now we fight the battle, but then shall wear the crown
Of full and everlasting, and passionless renown.
And how we watch and struggle, and now we live in hope,
And Zion in her anguish with Babylon must cope;
But he whom now we trust in shall then be seen and known,
And they that know and see Him shall have Him for their own.
For thee, O dear, dear country, mine eyes their vigils keep;
For very love, beholding, thy happy name, they weep:
The mention of thy glory is unction to the breast,
And medicine in sickness, and love, and life, and rest.
O one, O only mansion! O paradise of joy!
Where tears are ever banished, and smiles have no alloy;
The cross is all thy splendor, the Crucified thy praise,
His laud and benediction thy ransomed people raise.
Jerusalem the glorious! Glory of the elect!
O dear and future vision that eager hearts expect!
Even now by faith I see thee, even here thy walls discern;
To thee my thoughts are kindled, and strive, and pant, and yearn.
Jerusalem, the only, that look’st from heaven below,
In thee is all my glory, in me is all my woe!
And though my body may not, my spirit seeks thee fain,
Till flesh and earth return me to earth and flesh again.
Jerusalem, exulting on that securest shore,
I hope thee, wish thee, sing thee, ad love thee evermore!
I ask not for my merit: I seek not to deny
My merit is destruction, a child of wrath am I.
But yet with faith I venture and hope upon the way,
For those perennial guerdons I labor night and day.
The best and dearest Father Who made me, and Who saved,
Bore with me in defilement, and from defilement laved.
When in His strength I struggle, for very joy I leap;
When in my sin I totter, I weep, or try to weep:
And grace, sweet grace celestial, shall all its love display,
And David’s royal fountain purge every stain away.
O sweet and blessèd country, shall I ever see thy face?
O sweet and blessèd country, shall I ever win thy grace?
I have the hope within me to comfort and to bless!
Shall I ever win the prize itself? O tell me, tell me, Yes!
Strive, man, to win that glory; toil, man, to gain that light;
Send hope before to grasp it, till hope be lost in sight.
Exult, O dust and ashes, the Lord shall be thy part:
His only, His forever thou shalt be, and thou art.
The tune EWING was written in 1853 by Alexander Ewing (1830-1895). He was a musician, composer, and translator in addition to being a career officer in the British Army. He was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and studied Music and German at Heidelberg University and Law in Aberdeen. He was regarded as an extraordinarily talented young musician and was also a member of the Aberdeen Harmonic Choir and the Haydn Society of Aberdeen.
In 1853 Ewing composed this tune for Neale’s hymn “For Thee, O Dear, Dear Country,” which was first performed by the Aberdeen Harmonic Choir. While he was serving overseas with the army, his relative, the Bishop of Argyle and the Isles, submitted the music to the editor of “Hymns Ancient and Modern,” where it appeared in 1861 as the tune for “Jerusalem the Golden.” The hymn became very popular, but because the Bishop’s name was also Alexander Ewing, he was generally believed to have written the tune.
In 1855 Ewing joined the British Army’s Commissariat Department and served in Constantinople during the Crimean War. From 1860 to 1866 he served in China, returning to England in 1866, and was with the army in Ireland during the 1867 Fenian Rising. He married the popular children’s author Juliana Gatty on July1,1867, and the following week they left England for Frederickton, New Brunswick. Captain Ewing’s arrival occurred a few days after the British North America Act came into effect to create the Dominion of Canada, of which New Brunswick was one of the four constituent provinces. He was stationed in Fredericton until September,1869, three months after the last British troops had left the former colony of New Brunswick.
On their arrival in Fredericton the Ewings were befriended by Bishop John Medley and his wife. Ewing played the organ and sang in the choir at Christ Church Cathedral, where his wife wrote in a letter to her family, “the choir generally are quite as much edified and charmed to see the author of ‘Jerusalem’ & quite as much astonished to find (& still a little skeptical) that Argyll and the Isles is not the composer – as if we were all living in a small English watering place.” Ewing also composed hymns for the cathedral choir.
On his return to England, Ewing was stationed at Aldershot Garrison. In 1870 he transferred from the Commissariat to the Army Pay Department. While stationed at Aldershot, Ewing gave music lessons to the seventeen year old Ethel Smyth, who later became a notable composer. Her father was the commander of the Royal Artillery at Aldershot. He strongly disapproved of his daughter’s musical aspirations but Ewing, having heard her play some of her own pieces, called her a “born musician who must begin her formal training at once.” Ewing taught Smyth harmony, analyzed her own compositions, and introduced her to Wagner’s operas. In her memoirs she described him as “a real musician” and “one of the most delightful, original, and whimsical personalities in the world.”
In 1879 Ewing was posted to Malta and subsequently served in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) before returning to England. He spent the last six years of his career in Taunton and retired in 1889. Juliana Horatia Ewing died in 1885 and Ewing was married a second time to Margaret Elizabeth Cumby (1842–1930). He died in Taunton in 1895. In 1899, a stained glass window created by Charles Eamer Kempe in memory of Alexander and Juliana Horatia Ewing was installed in All Saints Church in Trull, overlooking their graves.
Here is a link to those four stanzas of the hymn as sung in morning worship.