Thine Be the Glory

Lyrics

Thine be the glory, risen conquering son;
endless is the victory thou o'er death hast won.
Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away,
kept the folded grave clothes where thy body lay.
Thine be the glory, risen conquering son:
endless is the victory, thou o'er death hast won.

Lo! Jesus meets us, risen from the tomb;
lovingly he greets us, scatters fear and gloom.
Let his church with gladness, hymns of triumph sing;
for her Lord now liveth, death hath lost its sting.
Thine be the glory, risen conquering son:
endless is the victory, thou o'er death hast won.

No more we doubt thee, glorious prince of life!
Life is nought without thee; aid us in our strife;
make us more than conquerors, through thy deathless love:
Bring us safe through Jordan to thy home above.
Thine be the glory, risen conquering son:
Endless is the victory, thou o'er death hast won.

History

'Thine be the glory' is an English version of the French Easter hymn 'À toi la gloire, ô Ressuscité'. Its author, Edmond Louis Budry, was born in Vevey on 30 August 1854 and died there on 12 November 1932. He studied theology in Lausanne, served as a pastor at Cully and Sainte-Croix from 1881 to 1889, and then for 35 years as pastor of the Free Church in Vevey, retiring in 1923. Sources differ on the date: some give 1884 as the year he wrote the hymn, with first publication in the collection Chants Évangéliques (Lausanne, 1885); another dates the text to 1904, a year in which the hymn was reprinted in a Lausanne YMCA handbook. One account suggests Budry may have been prompted by an Advent hymn, 'Tochter Zion, freue dich', which uses the same tune; another popular account links the words to the death of his first wife, though sources present that as tradition rather than documented fact.

The melody is by George Frideric Handel. It comes from the chorus 'See, the conquering hero comes', which Handel composed in 1747 for his oratorio Joshua and, probably in 1751, added to Judas Maccabaeus, an oratorio he had composed in 1746. The tune is known as MACCABAEUS (or JUDAS MACCABEUS) and has been used as a hymn tune since the eighteenth century; Beethoven also wrote twelve variations on it for cello and piano in 1796. Budry's words were set to Handel's melody from the first.

The English text is by Richard Birch Hoyle, born in Cloughfold, Lancashire, on 8 March 1875, and died in Wimbledon on 14 December 1939. A Baptist minister who edited the YMCA's Red Triangle magazine, he made the translation in the 1920s for Cantate Domino, an ecumenical hymnbook of the World Student Christian Federation. The translation, with the Handel tune, was included in The Methodist Hymn Book (1933), and other major hymnals followed. Hoyle's translation has appeared in well over a hundred hymnals.

Performance

This recording is by St Martin's Voices and runs about 3 minutes 5 seconds. It sings three verses, each followed by the refrain.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · hymnary.org · stgeorgescathedral.ca · St Martin's Voices recording and Words book