Glory to Jesus, risen, conquering Son

To judge from the regularity of its choice in current hymnals and church services, this marriage of text and tune is one of the success stories among 20th-c hymns. It is usually highly placed in popularity polls of recent (?) writing. But from the 1980s, the different ways of singing A toi la gloire, O Ressuscité, à toi la victoire … , in English, began to vary. Neither ‘Yours be the glory’ nor the (apparently original) ‘Thine is the glory’ sounded very convincing, even when rewritten in Alan Gaunt’s closer translation from 1988, revised 1991, Yours is the glory, resurrected One. Then during a meeting of the Praise! committee c1998, David Preston suggested a new 1st line which is adopted here; this was shared with the Jubilate group preparing Sing Glory which in the event was the first book to use it, though wrongly copyrighted in its first edn. In other respects this is a conservative revision of the original translation, retaining (unlike Alan Gaunt) the rare reference to the folded grave-clothes. While AG prefers the original language of ‘victory’, most versions include the repeated ‘conquering’ (line 1 and refrain) followed by ‘more than conquerors’ in stz 3—see below.

But to step back a century or so: a German hymn for Advent, written for this tune by F H Ranke, may have suggested the better-known French words. Edmond (or Edmund) Budry’s hymn probably dates from 1884, though some give the year as 1896 following the death of his first wife; it has been sung at countless funerals since then, often as the final words of the service. It was ‘reportedly’ published in 1885, and certainly in the YMCA Hymn Book (Lausanne 1904). In 1923 the English baptist Richard Birch Hoyle, possibly familiar with this original through his YMCA work, provided his version. The multi-lingual Cantate Domino included it in 1924, and its popularity accelerated with the 1928 Jerusalem Conference and the 1933 Methodist Hymn Book (which had ‘Thine be …’ and adopted minor changes). It then became very widely known and featured in many hymnals, mainly among Free Churches until the Anglican Hymn Book in 1965. For an illuminating consideration of the text, see the Companion to Rejoice and Sing, which among much else defends the use of ‘ressuscité’ as meaning far more than the English ‘resuscitated’; see also Arthur Temple’s Hymns We Love, 1954.

The tune MACCABAEUS, from Handel’s 1747 oratorio Joshua, was subsequently added to his work of a year earlier, Judas Maccabaeus; with which it is now more often associated. The composer introduced his own variations. It has been used as a hymn tune since Harmonia Sacra, edited by the Methodist Thomas Butts c1753, and is often referred to as such in the published journals of John Wesley, though known elsewhere as ABINGTON. The word ‘conquering’ in the English text probably arises from an association with Handel’s chorus See the conquering hero comes, since it has no equivalent in the French. The present words are invariably sung to this tune, which is newly arranged for Praise! by Linda Mawson.

b Vevey, Switzerland 1854; d Vevey 1932. Educated at Lausanne, he became a licentiate in theology and philosophy in the Swiss Evangelical Free Ch (Église Évangélique libre du Canton de Vaud), a breakaway from the National Reformed Ch., now reunited. He was ministered at Cully and St Croix from 1886 to 1889, and was Pastor of the Free Congregational Ch in his home town of Vevey, 1889–1924. He continued to write in his retirement, producing several hymns and much other verse; his Chants évangélique was published in 1885. Many of his translations were made by request, and some 60 texts have been included in French hymn-books. No.460.

b Cloughfold, Lancs 1875, d Wimbledon, Surrey 1939. Born into a Methodist family, he became a Baptist, training at Regents Park Coll, London. He served in the ministry from 1900 to 1926, concluding at Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey. From 1934 to 1936 he was guest Prof at the Western Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, USA. He was a gifted linguist who in spite of the limited hearing which he struggled with as a pastor was conversant with 12 languages. For 5 years he edited the YMCA journal Red Triangle, and translated in all some 30 French hymns. No.460.