From sleep and from damnation

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), poet, broadcaster, journalist and lay theologian, most famous now for his Father Brown stories, was accepted into the Catholic church in 1922. But he was an enthusiastic Anglican when he wrote the hymn "O God of earth and altar" and saw it published in the first edition of the English Hymnal in 1906. Vaughan Williams set it to his new arrangement of the folk melody King’s Lynn. 

Given current events, it’s interesting to reflect that there was also a General Election that year, 1906. This was the famous ‘Liberal Landslide’, toppling an unpopular Conservative and Unionist government at a time of growing concern over social inequality. Suffragette protests were becoming more militant and the Labour Party was gaining ground.

Chesterton himself saw himself as a socialist, and said “not being a Socialist was a perfectly ghastly thing. It meant being a small-headed and sneering snob, who grumbled at the rates and the working-classes.”

His words in the hymn are densely scathing, and don’t sound like a normal hymn at all, so it’s perhaps surprising it was included in the new hymn book. But they must have struck a chord in 1906, as they do now. I’m sure we can all think of recent examples of “easy speeches that comfort cruel men”. But Chesterton is not critical only of the pride of earthly rulers. He directs the hymn to “us all” who are in danger of drifting and sleeping. For me, this hymn says that humility, like charity, begins at home, and complacency is just another form of pride.

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.