Christ be my leader

with
SLANE
[Baughen]
TRISAGION
BONNIE GEORGE CAMPBELL
SHEPHERD’S STAR

I. Origins

“Christ be my leader by night as by day” was the first of Timothy Dudley-Smith’s texts to be written specifically as a hymn for congregational singing rather than as a poem for reading. He had penned “Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord” as a poem in May 1961, in response to the publication of the New English Bible. Soon after writing the poem, the editors of the forthcoming Anglican Hymn Book asked if he had written any hymns. He at first demurred, then sent them “Tell out, my soul.” The poem was accepted for the hymnal, and in July 1961, he wrote and sent to the editors “Christ be my leader,” which, though “unsought” by them, was “on a favourite text of Scripture” of Dudley-Smith’s; this second hymn was also accepted. He was then invited to “try my hand at a hymn-text on the theme of ‘home.’”[1] The result of this invitation was “Lord, who left the highest heaven.”

All three of these texts were first published in the Anglican Hymn Book (1965). In this source, the first word in line 3:3 of “Christ be my leader” was “Not” rather than “Nor,” the hymn was headed with the Scripture reference John 8:12, “He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life,” and it was dated 1961 (Fig. 1). Dudley-Smith’s hymn was presented as an alternate text for “Be thou my vision” and its tune, SLANE, as harmonized by Erik Routley (1917–1982).

 

Fig. 1. Anglican Hymn Book (London: Church Book Room, 1965), excerpts.

 

When the three hymns were republished the following year in Youth Praise (1966), Dudley-Smith made a slight revision to “Christ be my leader,” changing 1:3 to “Fears for the future I trust to his care,” a reading that was followed in 1971 by Renewal Songbook. The author subsequently discontinued the revision, “since it loses the immediate thought of ‘following’ Christ the Way, paralleled by trusting him as the Truth in verse 2.”[2] The tune given in Youth Praise (Fig. 2) was written for it by Michael Baughen (who at the time was Dudley-Smith’s colleague at the Church Pastoral Aid Society), dated 1964.

 

Fig. 2. Youth Praise (London: Falcon Books, 1966), excerpt.

 

“Christ be my leader” appeared in three editions of Dudley-Smith’s hymns, with commentary: A Collection of Hymns 1961–1981 (1981), Lift Every Heart (1984), and A House of Praise (2003).[3] The hymn has been one of the most widely disseminated of Dudley-Smith’s texts. In A House of Praise, he listed more than twenty hymnals in which it had appeared to that point, and it has been printed in both hymnals and anthem versions since that time.

II. Textual Analysis

Dudley-Smith himself noted the basis of this text in John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (ESV), which he said “was a text much in my mind” at the time he was writing the hymn.[3] In truth, however, this verse from the gospel of John has been an inspiration throughout his career, with more than a dozen hymns making use of the way-truth-life triad in various forms.[4] He points to the similarly-structured “Thou art the Way” by George W. Doane (1799–1859) as a hymn whose economy he particularly admires.

Several other biblical references in addition to John 14:6 are suggested by the text. The first line is reminiscent of Exodus 13:21–22, which describes the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that guided the Israelites in the wilderness, while the phrase “Christ be my teacher” (2:1) recalls the New Testament stories of Jesus teaching (for example, Matt. 5:2 and 13:54), and “shifting as sand” (2:3) hints at Jesus’ parable of the man who built his house upon the sand (Matt. 7:26–27). Other allusions and reminiscences include Psalm 56:13, 94:18, and 139:12; Mark 11:22–23; John 11:25–26; Romans 8:38-39; 1 Corinthians 15:54; Hebrews 3:14 and 10:23; James 1:5–7 and 17; 1 Peter 2:21 and 5:7; and 1 John 1:5.[5]

The three stanzas of “Christ be my leader” are nicely balanced: each begins with the same three words, “Christ be my,” after which they are structured primarily around the way-truth-life trio. Several other significant groups of three are incorporated into the text: leader-teacher-Saviour, night/day-age/youth-calm/strife (note the antitheses), darkness-doubt-death, and follow-trust-salvation.

As is common with Dudley-Smith, alliteration features prominently in the text, especially “d” and “s” sounds: “Gladly I follow, my future his care,” “darkness is daylight,” “drifting or doubting,” “shifting as sand,” “doubt cannot daunt,” “Christ be my Saviour in calm as in strife,” “Nor darkness nor doubting nor sin and its stain.” The last quoted line is also an example of polysyndeton, the repeated use of a conjunction (in this case, “nor”) to connect words in a phrase. A paradox occurs in the phrase “darkness is daylight.”

In describing “Lord, who left the highest heaven,” written shortly after “Christ be my leader,” Dudley-Smith observed, “At that stage I was so inexperienced [in writing hymns] that it did not occur to me to see whether each verse would fit a single tune.”[6] This “inexperience” perhaps accounts for the presence of an extra syllable in lines three and four of the third stanza of “Christ be my leader,” making them eleven-syllable rather than ten-syllable lines and requiring adjustments in the melody or word underlay. Some hymnals avoid the extra syllable in the third line by simply leaving off the first “nor.”

“Christ be my leader” is a prayer for guidance, understanding, and salvation from death, darkness, doubting, and sin. The hymn ends with words of assurance for the believer: nothing “can touch my salvation” because “with Jesus I reign.”

III. Additional Tunes

1. TRISAGION

Although the SLANE tune is by far the most common musical setting, the editors of the Methodist Hymns and Psalms (1983) chose TRISAGION by Henry Smart (1813–1879) for this text. TRISAGION first appeared in Hymns Ancient and Modern with Appendix (1868), no. 321, as an accompaniment for “Stars of the morning, so gloriously bright,” a translation from Greek by John Mason Neale (1818–1866) of a text by the ninth-century Eastern Orthodox monk St. Joseph the Hymnographer (Fig. 3). The name of the tune was derived from the use of the word “Trisagion” (thrice-holy) in stanza one, line four of Neale’s translation (“Raise the ‘Trisagion’ ever and aye”).

Fig. 3. Hymns Ancient & Modern (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1868).

TRISAGION illustrates what Peter Horton called some of the “typical” characteristics of Smart’s hymn tunes: “wide-ranging, frequently triadic melodies, largely diatonic harmony, and a firm sense of shape.”[7] A few “modest rhythmic and harmonic alterations add needed variety without being distracting from the text.”[8]

2. BONNIE GEORGE CAMPBELL

The hymn has also been linked with the traditional Scottish melody BONNIE GEORGE CAMPBELL, especially in Australian hymnals, such as Sing Alleluia (1987) and Together in Song (1999). This tune appeared in volume 5 of R.A. Smith’s The Scotish Minstrel: A Selection from the Vocal Melodies of Scotland Ancient and Modern (Edinburgh, ca. 1822), set to the text “Hie upon Hielands, and laigh upon Tay, / Bonnie George Campbell rode out on a day,” and labeled “Very Old” (Fig. 4). According to Alfred Moffatt, the original ballad “is supposed to be a Lament for one of the adherents of the house of Argyle, who was killed in the battle of Glenlivat, 3rd October, 1594.”[9] The tune, which “is clearly related to other Scottish melodies,”[10] also appears under the names BONNIE JAMES [or JIMMIE] CAMBELL and BONNIE WILLIE CAMPBELL.

 

Fig. 4. The Scotish Minstrel (Edinburgh, ca. 1822).

 

3. SHEPHERD’S STAR

SHEPHERD’S STAR is an arrangement of an Ionian-mode shape-note folk hymn tune, first printed in the third edition of Ananias Davisson’s A Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony (1826) under the title STAR IN THE EAST (Fig. 5). The tune was set to Reginald Heber’s text “Hail the blest morn when the great mediator” and attributed to “R. Herron.” The pairing of this tune with “Christ be my leader” first happened in Songs for the People of God (1994).

Fig. 5. A Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony, 3rd ed. (Harrisonburg, VA: Davisson, 1826).

In the 1854 (last) edition of William Walker’s The Southern Harmony, the tune was renamed THE SHEPHERD’S STAR (Fig. 6) to avoid confusion with another melody titled STAR IN THE EAST, an Aeolian-mode folk hymn (likewise associated with Heber’s text), which had appeared in all editions of The Southern Harmony since the first (1835).[11]

Fig. 6. The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: E.W. Miller, 1854).

by DAVID W. MUSIC
for Hymnology Archive
25 April 2022

Footnotes:

  1. Timothy Dudley-Smith, Lift Every Heart: Collected Hymns 1961–1983 and Some Early Poems (Carol Stream, IL: Hope, 1984), p. 13. See also Scotty Gray and David W. Music, A Noble Theme, a Skillful Writer: Timothy Dudley-Smith and Christian Hymnody (Carol Stream, IL: Hope, 2021), p. 43.

  2. Lift Every Heart (1984), p. 207. Dudley-Smith’s note on “Christ be my leader” is repeated almost verbatim in A House of Praise: Collected Hymns 1961–2001 (2003), p. 444.

  3. A House of Praise (2003), p. 444.

  4. See, for example, “Affirm anew the threefold Name” (1996), “He comes, the Way that all may tread” (2000), and “O Christ, our Life, our Truth, our Way” (2014).

  5. Wesley Milgate and D’Arcy Wood, A Companion to Together in Song: Australian Hymn Book II (Sydney: Australian Hymn Book Pty, 2006), p. 450. Joseph Herl, Peter C. Reske, and Jon D. Vieker, eds., Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 2019), vol. 1, p. 1333. Richard Watson and Kenneth Trickett, eds., Companion to Hymns & Psalms (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 1988), p. 402.

  6. Lift Every Heart (1984), p. 237.

  7. Peter Horton, “Henry Thomas Smart,” The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology (Canterbury Press): http://www.hymnology.co.uk/h/henry-thomas-smart

  8. Scotty Gray & David W. Music, A Noble Theme, a Skillful Writer (2021), p. 50.

  9. Alfred Moffat, The Minstrelsy of Scotland, 4th ed. (London: Augener, ca. 1896 [the date is that of the preface to the 2nd ed.]), p. 68. See also Milgate and Wood, A Companion to Together in Song, p. 450.

  10. Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, vol. 3 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 290.

  11. Marion J. Hatchett, A Companion to The New Harp of Columbia (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), p. 257.

Available for Purchase:

 
 

Related Resources:

William Spark, Henry Smart: His Life and Works (London: William Reeves, 1881): Archive.org

Richard Watson & Kenneth Trickett, eds., “Christ be my leader,” Companion to Hymns & Psalms (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 1988), p. 402.

Fred L. Precht, “Christ be my leader,” Lutheran Worship Hymnal Companion (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), p. 384.

Wesley Milgate & D’Arcy Wood, “Christ be my leader,” A Companion to Together in Song: Australian Hymn Book II (Sydney: Australian Hymn Book Pty, 2006), p. 450.

Stephen P. Starke & Joe Herl, “Christ be my leader,” Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia, 2019), pp. 1333–1334.

“Christ be my leader by night as by day,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/christ_be_my_leader_by_night_as_by_day