John Samuel Bewley Monsell (1811-1875), who wrote this hymn, was an Irish priest, born in Derry and educated in Trinity College, Dublin.  Ordained to the priesthood in 1835, he held several positions in Ireland before transferring to England, first to Surrey and then to St Nicholas, Guildford, where he died in a freak accident.  Inspecting the rebuilding work being carried out on St Nicholas, he climbed onto a boulder for a better view.  But the boulder moved under him and he fell, suffering various injuries; he died a few days later at the rectory, presumably from infected wounds.  Monsell published 11 volumes of verse, as well as prose works, and he wrote 300 hymns (including “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”).  He first published “Fight the good fight” in his compilation of Hymns of Love and Praise for the Church’s Year (1866), but it first appeared in a hymnal in the SPCK’s Church Hymns (1871) and Church Hymns with Tunes (1874), edited by Arthur Sullivan.  Then it entered A&M in 1904 and The English Hymnal in 1906.  

 

Monsell uses lines from New Testament epistles as the structure of the hymn.  The first line is a quotation from 1 Timothy:6-12, “Fight the good fight of faith,”  and the third line carries on with the epistle’s “lay hold on eternal life.”  The second verse quotes the opening of chapter 12 of the Epistle to the Hebrews: “let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus . . . .”   Both the third and the fourth verses use a sentence from the first epistle of Peter 5:6-7:  “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, . . . casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you.”  And the final verse echoes the epistle to the Colossians 3:11: “Christ is all and in all.”  The words are not about warfare, but about steadfastness and fidelity to Christian life

 

This hymn is widely sung to the tune “Duke Street,” attributed to John Hatton (1710-1793).  Henry Ley, Precentor of Eton College Chapel, wrote the infrequently-used tune “Rushford” for these words.   At St George’s we normally sing the tune “Pentecost,” composed by William Boyd (1847-1928).  Boyd, born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, to Scottish parents, went to school at Hurstpierpoint in Sussex, where one of his teachers was the young Sabine Baring-Gould.  According to Boyd, he composed “Pentecost” at the request of Baring-Gould as the setting for “Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire” for a meeting of Yorkshire colliers.  Boyd went on to Worcester College, Oxford, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1877.  His tune was attached to “Fight the good fight,” by Sullivan in Church Hymns with Tunes (1874). The use of “Pentecost” at St George’s reflects the long relationship between the Cathedral and the Royal Military College, where that is the traditional tune for this hymn.