Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is an older one than most in this book, “I will sing the wondrous story” by Francis Rowley, set to a traditional Welsh hymn tune, Hyfrydol.
The ‘story’ of the title is the Gospel message, of how Christ left heaven to be incarnate on earth and die for our sins (verse 1), continuing to this day to find and rescue sinners (verse 2), and eventually lead us back to heaven (verse 3). In the outer verses the second half is the same, where the song will be sung ‘with his saints in glory’. ‘Singing the story’ could be interpreted either as a celebration of the tradition of hymn singing in churches, or as the joy that we should find in talking about Jesus’ saving works.
This is one of those hymns which has much Biblical and Christian symbolism. Phrases such as ‘realms of glory’ and ‘crystal sea’ for heaven, lost sheep as a metaphor for sinful humans, a presumed reference to Psalm 23 in both the lost sheep and the days of darkness, and crossing a river as a symbol of death and resurrection, are familiar to lifelong Christians but need explanation for anyone who is new to the faith. When we tell the ‘wondrous story’ whether in song or by other means, we need to use language that people will understand.
This hymn is a firm favourite of mine, for the reasons Stephen gives.
I long suspected that the second half of verse 1 “Yes I’ll sing …” was originally intended as a chorus line to come after every half-verse: the way it recapitulates v1 as well as the way it is repeated at the end suggests this – and sure enough, the on-line “CyberHymnal” sets it out as 4-line stanzas with a refrain (with more verses too). But I haven’t managed to discover authoritatively which version is the original.
I think perhaps in my haste I neglected to comment on some of Stephen’s other points. Yes, the hymn does couch the story of salvation in phraseology which will be familiar to readers of the bible but not so much to newcomers, and yes we do also need to find ways of expressing ourselves which aren’t just jargon or “the language of Zion”. I guess the reason the compilers included this hymn in the book is because it is strangely missing from several mainstream hymn books (“Ancient & Modern Revised”, “A&M New Standard” etc.) and with the advent of more cross-denominational appreciation of hymns, a book like this which markets itself as a supplement to the church’s main hymnal should include items like this. It’s not a modern addition to the repertoire, but it is still an addition.