Was dir zu schenken.
15.
Wenn so, Herr Jesu! dort vor deinem Throne
Wird stehn auf meinem Haupt die Ehrenkrone,
Da will ich dir, wenn Alles wohl wird klingen,
Lob und Dank singen.
Based on 1 Peter 3:18: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.”
Robert Bridges included this hymn in his Yattendon Hymnal, 1899, London, and later it became known to a wider public by its appearance in the English Hymnal, 1906, and in Songs of Praise, 1933.
Johann Heermann, a distinguished scholar and one of the greatest of German hymn writers, was a Lutheran minister and pastor, in Silesia. On account of ill health, he retired and devoted himself to literary work. This hymn, written during the miseries of the Thirty Years’ War, was composed for Passiontide and was entitled, “The Cause of the Bitter Sufferings of Jesus Christ and Consolations from His Love and Grace.” The author experienced much suffering himself. First came the death of his wife in 1617, then the failure of his own health, and then the war. His hymns are characterized by tenderness and depth of feeling, and illustrate the truth that real poets “learn in suffering what they teach in song.”
For comments on the translator, Robert Bridges, see [Hymn 32]. His first two stanzas are translations of 1 and 2 of the original; while stanzas 3 and 4 contain suggestions, only, of 6 and 7 and the rest of Heermann’s poem.