Nearer, My God: The Unitarian, Anglican & Lutheran Versions

 First published in 1840, "Nearer My God to Thee" quickly became a beloved hymn on both sides of the Atlantic -- and in the middle as well, if those stories about the Titanic are true.

The hymn has an interesting backstory. Its author, Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (1805-48) was a daughter of the genteel school of English leftists. Her father was a printer and editor who served time for insulting a bishop, but he was also the nephew of the wealthy and connected bankers Richard and William Fuller. Adams herself moved in circles that included the the young Browning and, far more significantly, the influential preacher William Johnson Fox.  It was an environment marked by concern for such progressive causes as opposition to Napoleon, rights for women, and concern for the working class. (After Fox left his wife for a younger model, he also became an advocate for easier divorce). 

In matters of religion, Adams was a lifelong Unitarian, although she remained attached to Fox, who was expelled from Unitarianism and wound up as what we would call today a post-Christian public intellectual. Her hymns first appeared in the hymnal of Fox's own congregation; by the 1870s, "Nearer" could be found in something like 70% of the hymnals surveyed by Hymnary.com.

Perhaps it was the aroma of Unitarianism that disquieted some more traditionally-minded churchmen to write their own versions of this popular hymn, in the same meter.

The first was by William Walsham How (1823-97), a greatly admired Anglican bishop and the author of "For All the Saints."  His version of "Nearer" appeared, placed immediately after Adams', in Godfrey Thring's 1880 A Church of England Hymn Book.  It subsequently enjoyed modest popularity; Hymnary.com finds it in some 44 hymnals all told, as opposed to a colossal 2505 for the original.

The second, of more interest to Lutherans, is by Henry Eyster Jacobs (1844-1932). If you do not know Jacobs, you really should; he is an important figure in our history, specifically as a part of the General Council Brain Trust.  The son of a Gettysburg College professor, Jacobs went on to teach at Thiel and Gettysburg before moving to the seminary at Mt Airy (LTSP, as it was; ULS/Philadelphia, as it is). He taught systematic theology and served as dean and then president, and edited several journals as well as the still-valuable Lutheran Cyclopedia of 1899, which is not to be confused with the later LCMS volume of the same title. He was a member of the Joint Committee on the Common Service. His 1905 Summary of the Christian Faith is, in his own words, an "attempt to restate the doctrines of the Christian faith upon the basis of the Lutheran Confessions" -- and a fairly approachable one at that.

Among many other things, Jacobs also taught the first course at a Lutheran seminary in the US devoted to the history and theology of worship.  It was an elective offered to especially gifted seniors.  Years ago, Gordon Lathrop described looking through Jacob's papers from that period, and coming across a note that the worship students did not seem especially gifted, save that "...young Reed shows some real promise."  One must say that Jacobs was an excellent judge of promise.

Jacobs' "Nearer" was apparently written in 1880 or thereabouts, but first published (so far as we can tell) in an 1898 hymnal, Christian Hymns: for Church, School and Home, prepared by the Norwegian Synod. It appears there, as How's does in the Thring collection, after the original, and is apparently intended as an alternative. It also appears in the 1917 Common Service Book, which you probably have sitting on a shelf in your office right now.  And that is nearly it -- in contrast even to How's 44, the Jacobs "Nearer" appears in a pitiful 12 hymnals, the last of these in 1926.

The historicals thus introduced, we come to the big question:  Why was an alternative to Adams ever felt to be needed?

This chart (if you can make it out) shows the three hymns in question:

The Adams hymn is Biblical, a reference to Jacob's dream in Genesis 28, but not deeply or narrowly so.  The narrator desires to be like one of the angels on the ladder, alternately stepping or flying toward heaven.  A cross has been inserted, perhaps as a the reality of which the ladder was a type.  We can charitably assume that this is the Cross of Christ, rather than a metaphor for the narrator's own difficulties. The details of how the narrator will draw near to God are left vague, but the desire comes through strongly. It is hard to discern anything especially Unitarian about it, nor for that matter any hint of the author's social concern.  It is rather a fine example of the hymnody that seeks in God a path out of suffering and darkness.

How brings to this same search some more explicit ideas, albeit not original ones.  The "cross" in question is the one borne by a disciple (Mark 8:34 etc), and while bearing it we are called to pray, to follow Jesus through suffering, and to await his eventual return and a place in his eternal mansions.   One struggles to find any distinctively Anglican doctrine here, but where doctrine is concerned that is in itself a distinctively Anglican characteristic.  While the language is lovely, we will say that the sentiment seems a bit trite, basically the old and rightly-mocked depiction of God's promise as "pie in the sky when you die."

Unsurprisingly, Jacobs is by far the most explicitly doctrinal of the poets.  His opening thesis is that nearness to God is achieved through "word and sacrament," familiar Lutheran language for the ministry of the Church, identified here with divine grace and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  This is rooted in God's eternal love, which predates the Creation, and in Christ's Incarnation, which is God's entrance into the created world. There is a nod to one particular atonement theory, and an invitation to the Trinity itself to make a home among the People of God.  The final stanza argues that the assurance of salvation obviates any fear of death, a questionable idea without which the hymn would have been better.

To answer our own question, it is hard to say just why How felt a need to reconsider the Adams original.  Perhaps he felt it was insufficiently clear about how "nearness to God" could be achieved, and wanted to make an argument for discipleship. 

The case is easier with Jacobs:  the professor of systematic theology seems to have wanted a hymn that approached "nearness" in a ... systematic fashion. Some readers may find this a trifle stale, but we don't think it harms the poetry.  On the contrary, it turns the image of "nearness to God" into a story, which is quite a good thing in a hymn.  And  unlike either of the others, Jacobs' version makes it clear that this nearness is achieved not by human effort, but by God's own work in Christ.

We weren't sure when we started this post, but now we are:  the Henry Eyster Jacobs "Neaer, My God to Thee" is a solid hymn, that deserves to be used from time to time in Lutheran churches.