It would be hard to find a hymnal that does not include this hymn in the section on the Trinity. “Holy! Holy! Holy!” was first published in 1826, the year of the death of the author, Reginald Heber, at that time Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, and only 42 years old. It was one of the hymns Heber composed for the church year, being a High Church Anglican. Among his 57 compositions, several are still in use today: “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning,” “God, That Madest Earth and Heaven,” “Bread of the World in Mercy Broken,” “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” and “The Son of God Goes Forth to War.”
Reginald Heber (1783 – 1826) was the son of a rich British landowner and cleric. He gained fame at Oxford University as a poet, and that ability is quite evident in the literary beauty of his hymns. After graduation he made an extended tour of Scandinavia, Russia and Central Europe. Ordained in 1807, he took over his father’s old parish, Hodnet, Shropshire. It was during those years that he wrote all of his hymns.
He was consecrated Bishop of Calcutta in October 1823, and died just three years later. He travelled widely and worked diligently to improve the spiritual and general living conditions not only of his flock, but also for the people of the country in which he served. As Bishop of Calcutta, he oversaw a large area that included not only most of India but also of Australia and parts of South Africa. Arduous duties, a hostile climate, and poor health led to his collapse and death, caused by the shock of plunging into cold water on an extremely hot day. Memorials were erected there and in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
The Scripture on which the hymn text is based is found in both Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8. These passages give us a glimpse into the courts of heaven, where seraphim are calling out ceaselessly before the throne of God, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come! These angelic beings will apparently continue singing this song into eternity, not mechanically, never growing tired of the repetition, since each round impresses them that He is even more holy than they had previously sung moments before.
As with each of God’s attributes, His holiness is infinite, incomprehensibly glorious and beautiful and complete as a summary of all of the dimensions of His divine majesty. That was the theme of R. C. Sproul’s most popular book, one of his first, “The Holiness of God,” first published in 1985. He described how God’s holiness is not one of His attributes, but rather the sum total of all of His attributes. It is the one word that best binds together His grace, love, mercy, patience, justice, wisdom, kindness, wrath, knowledge, power, faithfulness, jealousy, truthfulness, and aseity (now there’s one that I bet you didn’t think of!).
In addition to the holiness of God, Heber’s hymn also points us to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. After all, Heber wrote it for Trinity Sunday in the liturgical calendar. The doctrine of the Trinity is not a minor truth in Christianity. It is clearly biblical, as we see, for example, in the Great Commission in Matthew 28, where we are told to bring new converts to be baptized into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We sing of it in the Gloria Patri. It’s evident at Jesus’ baptism as the Father spoke from heaven at the same moment that Jesus, the Son, was in the river, and as the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove. And in Ephesians 1:3-14, Paul roots our salvation in the fact that we were chosen by the Father before the foundation of the world, redeemed by the Son through His shed blood at the cross, and sealed by the work of the Holy Spirit in our regeneration.
One of the implications of the Trinity that we often miss is that this doctrine shows us that the true God is capable of love. Love must, by definition, have an object. Love is meaningless unless there is someone to be loved. If God were only a single person, then from eternity He would never have had anyone to love, and would be incapable of loving. Such is true of the Muslim false god, Allah, who is never described as loving anyone. But since the true God is a Trinity, then from eternity the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have enjoyed each other in the love that they have always shared with one another. And that guarantees that He is / they are / capable of loving us, which is why He has saved us!
When we examine the text of Heber’s hymn, we should be immediately impressed by the literary magnificence of the composition. In his first book of hymn studies (“40 Favorite Hymns on the Christian Life”), Leland Ryken says this about the text.
The high style of the poem is its most obvious formal quality. Among the features of this high style are exalted epithets for God and the piling up of adjectives, nouns, and verbs in patterns of two and three, creating an effect of irrepressible energy …. Under the unifying umbrella of God’s worthiness of praise, the poet constructs a mosaic of specific variations on the central theme of God’s holiness.
How exciting to make this our song of praise on a Lord’s Day morning!
Stanza One: what a sound! Our thrice-holy God is the first thing we sing about as we rise in the morning. One God in three persons, He is merciful toward us and powerful for us. Here we see how wonderful it is not only to know doctrine, but also to sing it!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!
Stanza Two: what a sight! Our thrice-holy God is at the center of heaven where the concentric circles of saints and angels adore Him. When we receive our crowns, we will cast them at His feet, and He will therefore be crowned with many crowns as we fall down before Him.
Holy! Holy! Holy! All the saints adore Thee,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.
Stanza Three: what a thought! Our thrice-holy God is invisible to unbelievers, hidden behind the darkness of their blind eyes. But He is there and beautifully visible to the eyes of His saints as we gaze, by faith, on His perfect power and love and purity.
Holy! Holy! Holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,
though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee
perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.
Stanza Four: what a God! Our thrice-holy God is almighty in His majestic sovereignty. Everything He has made, in earth and sky and sea, will bend the knee and confess that Jesus is Lord. And so we repeat the refrain that He is merciful and mighty, this blessed Trinity.
Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea.
Holy! Holy! Holy! Merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!
The tune for this hymn, Nicaea, was composed by John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876) for the first edition of “Hymns Ancient and Modern” in 1861. The tune name is a tribute to the First Council of Nicaea, held by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 325, which formalized the doctrine of the Trinity. Rarely separated from the lyrics since then, it has been noted as one of the composer’s finest. It is a good example of Victorian hymn tune writing, with solid harmonies and subtle chromaticism, and a very singable melodic line. It begins with an ascending major third, which can be seen as symbolizing the Trinity. Few leaps and many repeated consecutive notes lend it a chant-like character.
Although raised by evangelical parents and grandparents, Dykes became part of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford movement in high church Anglicanism. He wrote music for more than 300 hymns. We use his compositions as we sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” “The King of Love My Shepherd Is,” “Ride On, Ride On in Majesty,” “O Come and Mourn with Me Awhile,” “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say,” “Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove,” “O for a Closer Walk with God,” “Christian, Dost Thou See Them,” “Take My Life and Let It Be,” “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” and “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee.” He was an organist as well as a clergyman, serving as one of the priests at Durham Cathedral for 27 years until his death.
Here’s a video of this hymn as we sang it one Sunday morning at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale.