The hope-filled anticipation of Jesus’ coming is one of the great sources of joy that dominates the Christian’s faith and worship. While we struggle to endure with patience the hardships of this life, we have the sure promise of God that the Redeemer will come. That sustained the saints of the Old Testament for centuries, frequently bolstered by prophecies of His coming to Bethlehem and Calvary. And that same hope sustains the saints today, amid the many-faceted turmoil of our age, as we anticipate His return.
Our Advent hymns generally have a slightly different character than our Christmas carols. In the first, there is that sense of longing that in some instances will musically and poetically be characterized by a somewhat somber tone. We hear examples of that in “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.” In the second, there is usually a much more joyful sound that celebrates the Savior’s having come. And we hear examples of that in “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.”
But even in our longing, there is joy, because we believe God’s promise and know that the Savior will come again. We find that in the Advent hymn “Hark, the Glad Sound.” Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) wrote this hymn on December 28, 1735 with the title, “Christ’s message from Luke 4:18-19.” It was a seven stanza hymn to be sung with his Christmas sermon on that Gospel text. As such, it was not really an Advent hymn, as we use it today, but a musical celebration of Jesus’ having fulfilled Old Testament prophecy as He preached in the synagogue at Nazareth, His hometown. In His sermon from Isaiah 61:1, He was telling the people, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke’s Gospel reports that the sermon nearly got Jesus killed, as the people were so offended by His clearly Messianic claim that “they rose up and drove Him out of the town to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, so that they could throw Him down the cliff. But passing though their midst, He went away” (Luke 4:29-30).
Doddridge composed more than 400 hymns in all. Most of his music wasn’t published during his lifetime, but was created for and intended for his own congregation, generally to accompany his sermons. As was typical in those days, his congregation didn’t use hymnals, but instead had someone sing the hymn line-by-line from the pulpit with the congregation repeating each line in turn. After his death (he died of tuberculosis while in Lisbon, Portugal), his hymns were published by his friend, Job Orton, in 1755.
Doddridge was born in London on June 26, 1702, the youngest of 20 children, the last child born to an oil and pickle dealer and his wife. He was thought to have been still-born, and his tiny, blue body was set aside for burial, but as the midwife tended to the exhausted, grieving mother, she noticed a slight movement and soon got the lifeless child to coughing and crying. Sadly, both of his parents died in 1715 and he was taken in by Samuel Clark, the Pastor of St. Albans of Hertfordshire. Philip’s uncle introduced him to the Dowager Duchess of Bedford. She felt such pity for the young man that she offered to pay for his education leading to ordination in the Church of England, but he declined it.
On his mother’s side there had been a history of schisms with the Anglican Church, and Philip ended up entering Mr. Jennings’s non-conformist seminary at Kibworth instead. He preached his first sermon at Hinckley, where Mr. Jennings had moved his academy. In 1723 Phillip was chosen pastor at Kibworth. In 1725 he changed his residence to Market Harborough, still ministering at Kibworth. The settled work of his life as a preceptor and divine began in 1729, with his appointment to the Castle Hill Meeting at Northampton, and continued till his death. This was a school that existed largely to train men for the dissenting ministry of the Non-conformist group, though it did train people for other professions as well. Two hundred pupils in all, gathered from England, Scotland and Holland, were prepared in his seminary. The wide range of subjects, including daily readings in Hebrew and Greek, Algebra, Trigonometry, Watts’ Logic, outline of Philosophy, and copious Divinity, is itself a proof of Doddridge’s learning. In 1730 he married Miss Mercy Maris and they had nine children in the course of their married life. 1735 saw Philip earn the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Aberdeen.
In 1751 Philip attended the funeral of his old Pastor, the Rev. Samuel Clark, and there contracted a cold which later became tuberculosis. Lady Huntingdon devoted significant financial aid to evangelical ministers and ministries. As one of Doddridge’s patrons, in an attempt to find a more reasonable place to heal, she offered to finance a trip for him to set sail for Lisbon. Shortly after his arrival there, he died on October 26, 1751. He is reputed to have said, “I can as well go to heaven from Lisbon as from Northampton.” Doddridge wrote some four hundred hymn texts, generally to accompany his sermons. These hymns were published posthumously in 1755 in “Hymns, Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures.” The hymns by Doddridge which have attained the greatest popularity include “Awake, My Soul, Stretch Every Nerve,” “Do Not I Love Thee, O My Lord?” “Grace ‘tis a Charming Sound,” “O Happy Day, that Fixed My Choice,” “O God of Jacob, by Whose Hand,” and “See Israel’s Gentle Shepherd Stand.”
Today, Doddridge is best-remembered for his book, “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.” It was influential in the life of former slave-trader John Newton, and was read half a century later by a British politician named William Wilberforce, who credited Doddridge’s work with his own conversion to Christianity. As a member of Parliament and member of Newton’s congregation in London, Wilberforce was the leader of the coalition that eventually succeeded in outlawing the British Empire’s participation in slave-trading in 1807.
Doddridge’s hymn “Hark, the Glad Sound” was given the heading “Luke 4:18–19,” as he preached that Sunday on this text, which is part of the story of Christ reading the scroll in Nazareth. As He did so, He cited Isaiah 61:1–2.
And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as was His custom, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to Him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because He has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Doddridge’s hymn was inspired by another poem (or eclogue), “Messiah” by Alexander Pope (1688–1744), published in “The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope” (London: W. Boyer, 1717), most notably lines 29–40.
Hark! A glad voice the lonely desert chears;
Prepare the way! a God, a God appears:
A God, a God! the vocal hills reply,
The rocks proclaim th’ approaching Deity.
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies!
Sink down ye mountains, and ye valleys rise:
With heads declin’d, ye cedars, homage pay;
Be smooth ye rocks, ye rapid floods give way!
The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretold;
Hear him ye deaf, and all ye blind behold!
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eye-ball pour the day.
Pope’s hymn, in the first two lines, recalls Isaiah 40, and by extension the ministry of John the Baptist in the New Testament. Similarly, Pope alluded to the deaf and blind, annotated in the 1717 text by Isaiah 42:18. Doddridge carried these ideas into his own hymn, but less deliberately. The reference in Doddridge’s stanza 6 to the Year of Jubilee is a nod to Leviticus 25 and perhaps also to the second coming of Christ marked by the seventh trumpet in Revelation 18:15–19. The image of Christ’s coming is extended to allude to Him. All of these arrivals, first as a child, then greeted with palms, then returning in the clouds, are part of a sense of anticipation appropriate for the season of Advent. These images are reflected in stanza 5, with the good news for the poor, in stanza 6, declaring liberty and the year of Jubilee, and in stanza 4 with the restoration of the blind. The song uses the present tense to look at the coming of Christ when it happened as the fulfilment of prophecy.
As with so many of our great hymns, we can find biblical quotations and/or allusions in almost every phrase.
Stanza 1 centers on the promise that makes us glad. Jesus came to save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). He had long ago promised that a Savior would come (Genesis 3:15). Every heart needs to prepare Him a throne because His kingdom is within us (Luke 17:21).
Hark, the glad sound! the Savior comes,
The Savior promised long!
Let ev’ry heart prepare a throne
And ev’ry voice a song.
Stanza 2 centers on the Spirit who empowered Jesus for His earthly ministry. The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus at His baptism (Luke 4:18). The Spirit exerted “His sacred fire,” as demonstrated by Christ’s zeal (John 2:13-17). As a result, Christ was possessed with supernatural wisdom and might (Matthew 13:54).
On Him the Spirit largely poured,
Exerts His sacred fire;
Wisdom and might, and zeal and love,
His holy breast inspire.
Stanza 3 centers on the freedom we now have as the result of Jesus’ liberating work. Jesus Christ came for that very purpose: to make man free (Galatians 5:1). This is not political or economic freedom, but freedom from Satan’s bondage, which is sin (Romans 6:18-19). The bursting of brass gates and yielding of iron fetters symbolize that fact that His truth will make us free indeed (John 8:32).
He comes the pris’ners to release,
In Satan’s bondage held;
The gates of brass before him burst,
The iron fetters yield.
Stanza 4 centers on Jesus’ healing ministry, both spiritual (vice) and physical (eyeballs). This stanza is usually omitted today because it sounds more like a passage in Pope’s “Messiah” than it does Scripture. And yet this does resemble the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ compassion for the demon possessed and the blind.
He comes from thickest films of vice
To clear the mental ray,
And on the eyeballs of the blind
To pour celestial day.
Stanza 5 centers on healing with more direct Biblical connections. Jesus came to bind the broken heart by bringing it back to God (Hebrews 10:22). He came to cure the bleeding soul by making it possible to have salvation from sin (1 Peter 1:9). He came to enrich the humble poor by preaching the gospel to them (Luke 4:18).
He comes the broken heart to bind,
The bleeding soul to cure,
And with the treasures of his grace,
T’enrich the humble poor.
Stanza 6 centers on joy. Jesus came to publish loud the good tidings just as the silver trumpets were used among the people of Israel (Numbers 10:2). In so doing, He brings joy to mankind just as the year of jubilee brought joy to the oppressed in Israel (Lev. 25:8-12). As the debts of the Israelites were remitted every fifty years, so the Lord has promised to forgive our debts to Him through Christ (Matthew 6:12).
His silver trumpets publish loud
The Lord’s high jubilee;
Our debts are all remitted now,
Our heritage is free.
Stanza 7 enters on Jesus’ second coming. Those who saw firsthand the works of Christ hailed Him, saying “Hosanna in the highest” (Matthew 21:8-9). One reason for this is that He came as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Therefore, heaven’s eternal arches will ring with His name as the one in whom salvation is found (Acts 4:12).
Our glad hosannas, Prince of Peace,
Your welcome shall proclaim,
And Heav’n’s eternal arches ring
With Your beloved name.
The tune RICHMOND (also known as CHESTERFIELD) is a florid tune originally written by Thomas Haweis (pronounced Haws, to rhyme with “pause”) and published in his collection “Carmina Christo” (1792). Samuel Webbe, Jr., adapted and shortened the tune and published it in his “Collection of Psalm Tunes” (1808). It was reprinted in 1853 in “Webbe’s Psalmody.” Webbe named the tune after Rev. Leigh Richmond, a friend of Haweis’s. The CHESTERFIELD name comes from Lord Chesterfield, a statesman who frequently visited Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, for whom Haweis worked as a chaplain.
Like his father Samuel, Sr. Samuel Webbe, Jr. (b. London, 1770; d. London, 1843), was very active in both sacred and secular music. Together they published “A Collection of Motets and Antiphons”(1792). He was active as organist in Liverpool and London at both Unitarian and Roman Catholic churches.
Thomas Haweis (c.1734–1820) was born in Redruth, Cornwall, on 1 January 1734, where he was baptized on 20 February 1734. As a Church of England minister cleric he was one of the leading figures of the 18th century evangelical revival (famous in part through the ministries of men like George Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley, and Augustus Toplady) and a key figure in the histories of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, the Free Church of England, and the London Missionary Society. He was the son of a solicitor, who was able to have him educated at Truro Grammar School, but, after his father’s death, his mother was too poor to send him to university and so, after an apprenticeship, he practiced for some time as an apothecary and physician. Guided by George Conon, the master of Truro Grammar School, Haweis was introduced to the doctrines of the evangelical revival.
Sponsored by the Reverend Joseph Jane of St. Mary Magdalene Parish Church in Oxford, in 1748 he entered Christ’s College. There he organized a prayer group often seen as a successor to the Wesleys’ “Holy Club.” After graduation, he was ordained in the Church of England by the Bishop of Oxford in 1757 to serve as curate to Joseph Jane. In 1762, he was appointed to the Lock Hospital, London, under the guidance of the chaplain, Martin Mada. It was at this time that he met Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, and preached in many of her chapels. Although offered an incumbency in Philadelphia by George Whitefield, he opted instead to become rector in Northamptonshire of All Saints’ Church, Aldwincle, in 1764, retaining the living until his death in 1820.
In 1774 he was appointed chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon. He insisted that no one other than a Church of England cleric be allowed to preach in any chapel where he ministered. However, once the chapels forming the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connection were forced to register as dissenting chapels, Haweis withdrew from her service. By her will, the Countess of Huntingdon left management of the Connexion to four trustees. The principal trustee appointed was, most unexpectedly, Thomas Haweis, who continued to preside over the Connexion, comprising at that time about 120 chapels, even though he continued as a Church of England priest. He made every effort to ensure the Connexion kept as close to the Church of England as was possible and that only the Book of Common Prayer was used. Many of these chapels became part of the Free Church of England in 1863. Haweis was also one of the founding fathers of the Missionary Society. It was after her death that Haweis began writing. His most notable works were “A History of the Church,” “A Translation of the New Testament,” and “A Commentary on the Holy Bible.” Though he did write several hymns, their quality was not exceptional, so many have been lost.
The opening line of the tune RICHMOND has what one writer has described as a ‘rocket’ motif radiating a sense of confidence. With its various revisions the melody has lost its original florid character, but the modern harmonization (from “Hymns Ancient and Modern Revised,” 1950) provides strength and vigor, and the descant by Craig S. Lang in some hymnals introduces another florid line for festive singing.
Here is a link to the hymn to hear the hymn sung in worship.