In the cross of Christ I glory 

This hymn starts from St Paul’s letter to the Galatians (6:14),  “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The author, (later Sir) John Bowring (1792-1872), was born into a Unitarian family in Exeter and educated in a Unitarian school.  At first a businessman in foreign trade, he later became a politician and civil servant.  In Parliament he argued for free trade and, with partial success, for currency decimalization.  After leaving Parliament he was a British Consul in China and later Governor of Hong Kong (when he was knighted), an emissary to Siam (Thailand) and to the kingdom of Italy.   Bowring wrote for, and later served as editor of, Jeremy Bentham’s Westminster Review.  He wrote numerous works.  A prodigious learner of languages, Bowring published translations of poetry from Russian, Polish, Serbian, Hungarian, Old Dutch and medieval Spanish.  He wrote more than 80 hymns, some of which he published privately in 1825; later he published hymns and other religious poems in Matins and Vespers with Hymns and Occasional Devotional Pieces (1827). 

 

This hymn has been paired with more than a dozen tunes.  The earliest is “Rathbun,” composed by Ithamar D. Conkey (1815-1867) in 1849.  Conkey was the organist of the Central Baptist Church in Norwich, Connecticutt, where, on a Sunday in Lent, he left the church depressed because only one soprano had shown up for the service.  But the following Sunday the sermon was about the words of this hymn; Conkey was inspired to write a new tune for the hymn, and he named it for the loyal soprano, Mrs Beriah S. Rathbun.  The tune was first printed by Henry Greatorex in A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, Chants, Anthems, and Sentences (Boston, 1851), setting not Bowring’s words, but “Savior who thy flock art feeding.”  The English Hymnal pairs Bowring’s hymn with “Wychbold,” composed by Walter G. Whinfield (Magdalen College, Ox­ford, BA 1889, BMus 1890).  The tune is named for a village near Dodford in Worcestershire, a village founded by the Chartist Movement where Whinfield was the first Vicar.  Whinfield published a collection of his hymns in 1902.  

 

We sing the tune “Cross of Jesus,” composed by Sir John Stainer in 1887 for his Passion Oratorio The Crucifixion.  Stainer, who had been the organist of Magdalen College, Oxford from 1860, became the titular of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1871.  He completed the oratorio the year before he retired from St Paul’s.