As with gladness men of old 

William Chatterton Dix (1837-1898;  so named because his father admired the 18th-century writer and suicide Thomas Chatterton) wrote this epiphany hymn when he was 21 years old. He published it in Hymns of Love and Joy (1859).  In the same year it was in the trial version of A&M, and in the following year, in Hymns for the Services of the Church, and for Private Devotion, published by the Rector of St Raphael’s Church in Bristol, an Anglo-Catholic church which opened in 1859; Dix may have sung in the choir there.  His other hymns include ‘What child is this,” [which we sang last week,] “Alleluia, sing to Jesus” and “I heard the voice of Jesus say.” Some of his hymns are metrical versions of the translations by Richard Littledale of the office hymns of the Eastern Church and by John Rodwell of hymns of the Abyssinian (Ethiopian) Church.  Dix published four volumes of hymns and religious poems. He suffered periods of an unidentified debilitating disease during much of his early adulthood.  This hymn may have been written during such a time.  In 1895 he wrote to a friend, “It is a somewhat curious fact that most of my best-known hymns were written when I was suffering from some bodily ailment.”

 

The hymn’s first three stanzas recount the journey of the magi and link it to the modern Christian singer’s journey, using the structure “As … so.”  The fourth stanza then concentrates solely on the modern journey, and the last stanza prayerfully describes the destination.  The text of the hymn was slightly altered in the first edition of A&M and was further altered in the 1875  edition:  Dix wrote “manger bed” in the second line of stanza two; the editors changed that in order to conform to the passage in Matthew which clearly indicates that the holy family were no longer in a stable, but in a house. Dix initially objected to the change but later approved it.  The Revised English Hymnal reverts to Dix’s text here, but keeps other, minor changes.

 

It is usually said that Dix managed a Marine Insurance firm, spending most of his working life in Glasgow.   He probably spent some time in Glasgow, but all of his 8 children seem to have been brought up in Bristol.  (The documents recording their birthplaces are massively confused.)  Dix retired to Cheddar, in Somerset, where he died, aged 61. 

 

The tune “Dix” is so called because it was paired with Dix’s epiphany hymn in the first edition with music of Hymns Ancient and Modern.  It was an adaptation by William Monk of a tune written before 1838 by the German organist and composer Conrad Kocher (1786-1872).  Kocher founded the Stuttgart School of Sacred Music and became director of music at the Evangelical Collegiate Church in Stuttgart from 1827 to 1865.   He published the tune in his collection Stimmen aus den Reiche Gottes of 1838, paired with “Treuer Heiland, wir sind hier” (Faithful Savior, We are Here).  Monk shortened the tune by cutting out two measures and a portion of another in order to match Dix’s 6-line stanza.  Dix did not like the tune, nor was he pleased at having his name attached to it.   He wrote to a colleague, Duncan Campbell, “I dislike it, but now nothing will displace it. I did not christen it.”