On Jordan's Bank the Baptist's Cry

Lyrics

On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry
announces that the Lord is nigh;
awake and hearken, for he brings
glad tidings of the King of kings!

Then cleansed be every life from sin;
make straight the way for God within,
and let us all our hearts prepare
for Christ to come and enter there.

We hail you as our Savior, Lord,
our refuge and our great reward;
without your grace we waste away
like flowers that wither and decay.

Stretch forth your hand; our health restore,
and make us rise to fall no more.
O let your face upon us shine
and fill the world with love divine.

All praise to you, eternal Son,
whose advent has our freedom won,
whom with the Father we adore,
and Holy Spirit, evermore.

History

Charles Coffin (1676-1749), a French scholar who became Rector of the University of Paris, wrote the Latin original, "Jordanis oras praevia," for the 1736 Paris Breviary, a revised liturgical collection of psalms, hymns and prayers used in the churches of Paris. Coffin was one of several scholars invited to contribute new Latin hymns for that revision, and this text on the preaching of John the Baptist became one of his best-known contributions.

A century later the English clergyman John Chandler (1806-1876), vicar of Witley in Surrey, translated the hymn as "On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry" for his 1837 collection Hymns of the Primitive Church, part of a wider nineteenth-century movement to bring ancient and patristic-era Latin hymnody into English worship. Chandler's translation proved to be one of his most enduring: of the thirty or forty of his renderings that entered lasting use, this is among the most widely sung, appearing in well over two hundred hymnals. Its call to "make straight the way" for the coming Lord has made it a standard hymn for Advent, and it is also used for the feast of St John the Baptist.

The tune most closely associated with the text, WINCHESTER NEW, originated in the German collection Musikalisches Handbuch (Hamburg, 1690) and was harmonised for English use by William Henry Havergal in his Old Church Psalmody (1864), subsequently appearing in Hymns Ancient and Modern. Its steady long-metre (8.8.8.8) tread suits the hymn's plain, processional call to repentance and preparation, and the Coffin/Chandler-WINCHESTER NEW pairing remains the form in which the hymn is most commonly printed today, alongside an alternative setting to the tune PUER NOBIS.

Performance

This recording (YouTube video BQhQ97iIVQI), titled "On Jordan's Bank the Baptist's Cry - Traditional Hymn | Charles Coffin," runs 2 minutes 28 seconds and was published to its host channel in 2024. The title credits the hymn's original author but does not name a performer, choir, or ensemble, so no performer attribution is given here.

Sources: hymnary.org · hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com · my.hymnary.org · s3.amazonaws.com