Our Popular Processional Hymn
The annual picnic in many of our American Sunday Schools has some features in common with the annual tea treat in the program of the village Sunday Schools in England. The latter, however, has some more spectacular features, such as the procession through the village streets headed, most likely, by a band as well as the minister and the superintendent. Whit-Monday is a favored time in many sections of the country for this eagerly anticipated event.
For such a day as this a young curate in Horbury, a Yorkshire village, was asked to select a hymn to be sung for the Whit-Monday occasion. He thought of a good marching tune, but he did not like the words. So he sat up late one night, composed his own song, and it was sung the next day for the first time. That was in 1864; and it was published in The Church Times (October 15) that same year as a “Hymn for Procession with Cross and Banners”:
“Onward, Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
Going on before.
Christ, the royal Master,
Leads against the foe;
Forward into battle,
See His banners go!”
This hymn rates high both in the United States and in England. St. Gertrude is ideally associated with the song. This tune came from Sir Arthur Sullivan; but someone has sagely remarked, “It took Baring-Gould to inspire Sir Arthur.” “As a hymn of inspiration it has no superior,” said Dr. E. S. Lorenz. More than half a century ago Dr. Charles S. Robinson made this illuminating comment: “It meets an American ideal, mechanically speaking, in that it is simple, rhythmical, lyric, and has a refrain at the end of each stanza.”
The little folks like to sing this song whenever they have the opportunity, and this is one of the hymns they often learn before they can read. “It is fundamentally a Sunday School song; but it has grown up and is now sung many more times in the congregation than in the Sunday school.”
Gloriously inspiring is it to hear a great company of people of all ages sing:
“Crown and thrones may perish,
Kingdoms rise and wane,
But the Church of Jesus
Constant will remain.”
Sabine Baring-Gould, the author (1834-1924) a graduate of Cambridge University, was a man of unusual versatility. Some of his experiences were exceptional. He had means at his disposal, and spent considerable time in his youth in France and Germany. Writing extensively, “it is said that he has more book titles listed in the literary catalogue of the British Museum than any other writer of his times.” Various parishes were served by him until 1881. He then exercised his rights “as squire of the estate in Lew Trenchard, Devon,” which he inherited from his father, and appointed himself as rector.
This historic incident has been preserved for us by Dr. E. S. Lorenz: “It had been carefully arranged by the Executive Committee of the World’s Sunday School Convention, held at Washington, D. C., in 1910, that the hymn ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,’ should be sung in Sunday Schools in every part of the world on Sunday, May 22, of that year. For this purpose the hymn was translated and printed in more than one hundred languages and dialects. What a magnificent illustration of the solidarity of the Christian Church in a progressive, aggressive attitude!”