The closing hymn in worship this morning was “God of Grace and God of Glory“, the words written by Harry Emerson Fosdick, a Baptist minister who served a Presbyterian congregation for a while.  This is one of my favorite hymns and Fosdick’s words speak powerfully to me, about crowning the Church’s story, facing evil, and about being “Rich in things and poor in soul.” (O how I love “things.”)

It always intrigues me how hymns that come out of certain traditions become classics transcending the different publishing streams.  This hymn, written by one of the great progressive ministers of the 20th century who preached against fundamentalism, is found in many hymnals published by evangelical publishing houses.  In a like manner, Augustus Toplady‘s famous hymn “Rock of Ages” appears in Methodist hymnals despite Toplady’s very strong theological disagreements with John Wesley and the contention that the hymn was penned as a rebuke to Wesleyan theology.

But another aspect of “God of Grace and God of Glory” that has gotten me thinking is to see which verses a given hymnal includes.  Modern hymnals seem to prefer printing only four verses of any hymn so they make an editorial decision to cut one of the verses of this song.  (To the credit of the current Presbyterian Hymnal they include all five verses but their changes to make the hymn gender neutral, while well intentioned and subtle, do change the meaning of verse four slightly and are awkward with the meter.)  The hymnals generally all use the first three verses. (God of grace and God of glory…, Lo! the hosts of evil round us…, Cure thy children’s warring madness…)  The 1970 Presbyterian hymnal The Worshipbook skips the fourth verse but has the fifth:

The elimination of the fourth verse removes the problem of making it gender neutral and the fifth verse may be favored here for it’s slightly more socially conscious words.

On the other hand, today our congregation used the version of the hymn from Word Music’s Hymnal for Worship and Celebration.  (They have made editorial changes to numerous hymns that I have problems with, but that is another post.) In that hymnal the song concludes with the fourth verse:

While this too has a slightly social righteous edge, to me it clearly reflects a more triumphant evangelical tone and I can see why a publishing house like Word would prefer it to the fifth verse.  But ending with “That we fail not man nor thee” is just not a particularly satisfying ending to me.

To me the hymn is a complete package and I am disappointed when one of the verses is left out, whether it be “That we fail not man nor thee” or “Serving God whom we adore.”