Take up thy cross, the Saviour said 

Written by Charles W. Everest (1814-1877), this hymn was called “Vision of Death” when it was published in the U.S. in The Episcopal Watchman in 1833.  It was published the following year in Britain in the evangelical Tract Magazine; or Christian Miscellany without attribution.  Everest was born in Connecticut; he attended Washington College (now Trinity College) in Hartford, graduating in 1838.  In 1842 he was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church and appointed rector of Grace Church (now Grace and St John’s after two mergers) in Hamden, Connecticut, where he remained until 1873.   Everest published a long poem entitled Vision of Death in 1837 (not Visions, as is often said) and in 1845 he published a volume with the same title containing that poem and others, including this hymn, now called “Take up thy Cross” and accompanied by the text of Matthew 16:24 (Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.).

 

The text appeared as a hymn in the U.S. in Union Sabbath-School Hymns (Philadelphia: the American Sunday School Union, 1835).  In Britain it was in the SPCK Hymns for Public Worship (1852) and Horatio Bolton Nelson’s Salisbury Hymn-Book (1857).  The editors of of A&M (1861) picked it up from one of those collections and, following their usual practice, made some changes to Everest’s text and added the doxology.  Modern hymn books have sometimes changed second-person pronouns to “you” and “yours,” and have made changes for language inclusivity. 

 

[Horatio Bolton was the great nephew of Vice-Admiral Nelson; he assumed the name Nelson on the death of his father, who had assumed it on inheriting the title Earl Nelson from his uncle, the 1st Earl Nelson.]

 

The tune Breslau is by a unknown composer; it may have started as a Polish folk tune.  It was first printed in As Hymnodus Sacer (Sacred Hymnody) a set of 12 hymns with 8 tunes published in Leipzig in 1625, where it set “Herr Jesu Christ, mein’s Lebens Licht” (Lord Jesu Christ, my life’s light) by Martin Behm.  A variant of the tune is in a mid-15th century collection of religious and secular songs made in Nuremberg under the direction of the blind organist Conrad Paumann.  Mendelssohn arranged the tune for the chorus and chorale O Jesu Christe, wahres Licht (O Jesu Christ, true light) in the Oratorio St Paul.  We sing the arrangement composed by W. H. Monk for A&M (1861).  Breslau is Wrocław in Poland.