January 26, 2005

Christ For the World We Sing

Samuel Wolcott, 1813-1886

      Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age. Matthew 28:19, 20.

    Samuel Wolcott attended Yale College (AB 1833) and Andover Theological Seminary, and served as a missionary in Syria (1841-1842). He returned to America and pastored in Belchertown, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Chicago, Illinois; and at the Plymouth Congregational Church, Cleveland, Ohio. Later, he was secretary to the Ohio Home Missionary Society. Over 200 hymns are attributed to him.
    Samuel Wolcott wrote this song in 1869. He tells of writing the hymn while he was a minister at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Cleveland, Ohio:

The Young Men’s Christian Association of Ohio met in one of our churches with their motto in evergreen letters over the pulpit: “Christ for the World, and the World for Christ.” This suggested the hymn “Christ for the world we sing.” It was on my way home from this service in 1869, walking alone through the streets, that I put together the four stanzas of the hymn.

    Some other hymns written by Samuel Wolcott are:

Christ for the world we sing,
The world to Christ we bring, with loving zeal,
The poor and them that mourn, the faint and overborne,
Sin sick and sorrow worn, whom Christ doth heal.

Christ for the world we sing,
The world to Christ we bring, with fervent prayer;
The wayward and the lost, by restless passions tossed,
Redeemed at countless cost, from dark despair.

Christ for the world we sing,
The world to Christ we bring, with one accord;
With us the work to share, with us reproach to dare,
With us the cross to bear, for Christ our Lord.

Christ for the world we sing,
The world to Christ we bring, with joyful song;
The newborn souls, whose days, reclaimed from error’s ways,
Inspired with hope and praise, to Christ belong.