The Bible makes it clear that what the Lord most wants from us is neither slavish obedience to His laws (though a rightly-motivated embracing of His laws is an essential part of biblical religion) nor casual engagement with worship rituals (though He has made plain in His Word those elements of worship – like reading Scripture, preaching, singing, praying, etc. – which He desires). Jesus was very direct in His criticism of the Pharisees for following details of the law as proud works of self-righteousness (Matthew 23:23), and He called out the people of His time for their failure by thinking they were worshiping God when their hearts were “far from Him” (Matthew 15:7-9).
When Jesus was asked about the first and greatest commandment, He didn’t respond with something new and previously unknown. No, He quoted from what was in His day one of the best-known verses from the Old Testament, a virtual Jewish John 3:16! Known as “The Great Shema” (because of the opening words in Hebrew: “Shema, Israel”), it was Deuteronomy 6:5. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
When Paul wrote his second letter to the church at Corinth, he addressed the issue of their progress toward spiritual maturity. In 2 Corinthians 12:14, he identified what he most wanted from them. It is the same thing the Lord desires of us in our daily lives as well as in our worship. The Apostle wrote, “for I seek not what is yours but you.” There it is; what God wants from us is … us! Our whole selves! It is the same theme about which Paul wrote in Romans 12:1-2, where we read, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
How shall we express this concept in our singing? The answer will be that we look for hymns about whole-hearted consecration, and we will find numerous great hymns, many which a pastor might choose as a concluding focus in worship following his sermon. One excellent example is the hymn “Take Thou Our Minds, Dear Lord,” written in 1918 by William Hiram Foulkes (1877-1961) when he was 41 years old. He was born in Quincy, Michigan. After attending the College of Emporia in Kansas and Kansas Wesleyan University, he went on to McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. He received the Bernadine Orme Smith Fellowship, and studied for a year at New College in Edinburgh, Scotland. He later pastored at Presbyterian churches in Elmira, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; New York City; Cleveland, Ohio; and Newark, New Jersey. He had many ancestors who were Presbyterian preachers. He served as General Secretary of the Board of Ministerial Relief and Sustentation (1913-18), as chairman of the New Era Movement, on the General Council of the (northern) Presbyterian Church, and as moderator of the General Assembly (1937). He published many volumes of poetry, including “Living Bread from the Fourth Gospel”in 1914, and “Sunset by the Wayside” in 1917.
“Take Thou Our Minds, Dear Lord” was the result of events with a conference group which met at Emporia College, Kansas, in the summer of 1918, attended by the composer, Calvin Weiss Laufer (1874-1938). It is one of those rare instances where the tune was written first, and the lyrics at a later time. Morning prayers were conducted in the dining room, and they were unusually impressive. However, the young people felt that they wanted a prayer hymn that they could call peculiarly their own, and requested Laufer to produce one. He succeeded in composing the tune HALL, (Stoneybrook or Hall), but got no further. A few weeks later Laufer, who was also a Presbyterian minister and a friend of Foulkes, chanced to meet Foulkes at a railway station platform in Stony Brook on Long Island, New York. Both men were on their way to a conference similar to that held at Emporia College. Laufer divulged his dilemma with the hymn to Foulkes, who evinced great interest, and requested to see the tune. Showing great enthusiasm for the music, he begged to have it for a day or two. “Perhaps,” said he, “the proper hymn may come to me, if not to you.”
The next day Foulkes carried the manuscript in his pocket to New York City. The words of the hymn came to him en route, so he set three stanzas down on an envelope while riding the train. On his return that afternoon to Stony Brook, he and Laufer went over the new production, and were so well pleased with the result that duplicates were made and the hymn was sung for the first time the next day at morning prayers. The fourth stanza was finished some time later at a youth conference in Blairstown, New Jersey. The entire hymn was first published in 1918. In 1935 Foulkes helped to compile the “Handbook to the Presbyterian Hymnal,” and the following year published “Homespun: Along Friendly Road.” After retiring in 1941, he died on December 9, 1961, at Smithtown, New York. The only pictures of him on the internet are with other individuals, including this one where he is pictured on the right, holding some pages of either notes or sheet music.
It is surprising that the hymn has not been included in more hymnals in the twentieth century. It was included in the 1933 and again in the 2013 hymnals of the (northern) Presbyterian Church in the USA (both with the original tune HALL) and in the (1961 and rev. 1990) “Trinity Hymnal” of the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, though in these with the 1876 tune SURSUM CORDA.
The text is very well-designed as a description of giving our entire being to the Lord. It is impressive in that the words came to Foulkes so quickly. Each stanza successively offers to the Lord another dimension of our being, moving from our minds (stanza 1) to our hearts (stanza 2) and to our wills (stanza 3), before concluding in stanza 4 with our whole selves. This matches what Bible teachers often identify as the three parts of both repentance and faith. Repentance involves our minds (believing the fact that we are sinners), then our hearts (feeling the sorrow of having offended the Lord), and finally our wills (actually choosing to turn from sin). Similarly faith involves our minds (believing the facts about Jesus’ person and work), then our hearts (responding with joy to what this means for us), and finally our wills (actually turning to trust and obey Him).
And so in stanza 1, we must give our minds to Christ. Each stanza is reminiscent of biblical passages. Christian faith involves the intellect, embracing as true the doctrinal and historical truths the Holy Spirit shows us in Scripture. We give our minds to Christ by letting His mind dwell in us (Philippians 2:5). In order to do this, we must first know the truth of Christ that sets us free (John 8:32). The result will be that in all our thoughts we will honor Christ (Philippians 4:8).
Take Thou our minds, dear Lord, we humbly pray,
Give us the mind of Christ each passing day;
Teach us to know the truth that sets us free;
Grant us in all our thoughts to honor Thee.
In stanza 2, we must also give our hearts to Christ. God wants us to love Him with all our heart and soul (Matthew 22:37). When we do this, the love of God will be shed abroad in our hearts (Romans 5:5). The result is that we shall make the earth like heaven above in that we shall always be striving to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).
Take Thou our hearts, O Christ, they are Thine own;
Come Thou within our souls and claim Thy throne;
Help us to shed abroad Thy deathless love;
Use us to make the earth like heav’n above.
In stanza 3, we must then give our wills to Christ. Christianity is more than intellectual and emotional. It is also volitional. Like Jesus, we need to have the attitude that God’s will, not ours, be done (Luke 22:42). Thus, we should seek the Lord’s help to guard each sacred hour from selfish ease (Philippians 2:1-4). The result will be that our lives will be ordered as God pleases in obedience to His will (1 John 3:22).
Take Thou our wills, Most High! Hold Thou full sway;
Have in our inmost souls Thy perfect way;
Guard Thou each sacred hour from selfish ease;
Guide Thou our ordered lives as Thou dost please.
In stanza 4, we must give our selves to Christ. They are blessed who first give themselves to the Lord (2 Corinthians 8:5). Giving ourselves means yielding everything – time, talents, all – to the Lord in seeking first His kingdom and righteousness (Matthew 6:33). The result will be that we shall always strive to hear and heed His sovereign call to us in the gospel (2 Thessalonians 2:14).
Take Thou our selves, O Lord, heart, mind, and will;
Through our surrendered souls Thy plans fulfill.
We yield ourselves to Thee—time, talents, all;
We hear, and henceforth heed, Thy sovereign call.
In the “Trinity Hymnal,” the tune used for Foulkes’ hymn is SURSUM CORDA (which means “Lift up your hearts,” a liturgical phrase frequently incorporated in a brief leader/congregation response in worship). That music was written in 1876 by George Lomas (1834-1884). He was born in Birch Hall, Bolton, Lancashire and died in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, both in England. A student of William Sterndale Bennet and Charles Steggall, Lomas received his Bachelor of Music degree from New College, Oxford. He played the organ at Didsbury Parish Church, and at Emmanuel Church, Barlow Moor, Manchester (1858-1884).
A better choice of music is the HALL tune, which was written specifically for this text in 1918 by Presbyterian minister and hymnologist Calvin Weiss Laufer (1874-1938). Born in Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania, he was the son of Nathan Laufer and Angelia Weiss, and husband of Ellen Florinda Metzger. After attending Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, he graduated from New York’s Union Theological Seminary in 1900. Ordained then as a Presbyterian minister, he held pastorates at the Steinway Reformed Church, Long Island City, New York (1900-1905) and at the First Presbyterian Church, Hoboken, New Jersey (1905-1915). He then served as a field representative for the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sunday School Work (1914-1924) and the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education (1925-1938). His first two books, “Key-Notes of Optimism” (1911) and “The Incomparable Christ” (1914) were noted as expressing a cheerful outlook on his Christian life. A review of the first book spoke of the “crisp and stirring note in these sermonettes which is well calculated to rouse the minds of readers and banish dejection.” Coming at a time of old-school liberalism and optimism before World War I, the books were popular for a time, but were later seen as “somewhat superficial.”
During the time of his work with the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, he became its editor of musical publications, producing books such as “The Junior Church School Hymnal” (1927), “The Church School Hymnal for Youth”(1928) and “When the Little Child Wants to Sing”(1935). He was also the associate editor of the “Presbyterian Hymnal of 1933,” a very popular book which was used in many churches for more than fifty years, and is still to be found in the hymnal racks of many congregations.
In 1932, his book “Hymn Lore” was published, which contained the stories of fifty hymns from “The Church School Hymnal for Youth,” with information about their writers and composers (much like this article). He chose a broad range of hymns, some quite modern and others well-known and loved for centuries. Several of them were by his mentor and friend Louis F. Benson, who had edited the “Presbyterian Hymnal of 1895” and its 1911 revision, and also wrote “The Best Church Hymns.” (Benson was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 22, 1855, and educated at the University of Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the Bar in 1877, and practiced until 1884. After a course of theological studies he was ordained by the Presbytery of Philadelphia North in 1888. His pastorate of the Church of the Redeemer, Germantown, Philadelphia, extended from his ordination in 1888 to 1894, when he resigned and devoted himself to literary and Church work at Philadelphia. He edited the series of Hymnals authorized for use by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. His collection of more than 9000 hymnals is housed as a special collection in the library of Princeton Theological Seminary.) In the preface to “Hymn Lore,” Laufer wrote: “To live with hymns and to make them one’s own is the only sure way of appreciating their literary beauty and spiritual power …. That the reading and singing of hymns may become less mechanical, more thoughtful and intelligent, and emotionally more effective, this volume is released to the public.” Laufer’s tune for this hymn was originally called STONY BROOK, but he changed it to HALL to honor a friend, William Ralph Hall.
Here is a link to the singing of the hymn by a quartet, with minor changes in the text.