A Hymn composed by Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847)
With a commentay by Chad Demyen
Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave, and follow Thee;
Destitute, despised, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shalt be.
Perish every fond ambition,
All I’ve sought and hoped and known;
Yet how rich is my condition!
God and Heaven are still my own.
Let the world despise and leave me,
They have left my Saviour too;
Human hearts and looks deceive me;
Thou art not, like them, untrue:
And, while Thou shalt smile upon me,
God of wisdom, love, and might,
Foes may hate, and friends may shun me;
Show Thy face, and all is bright.
Man may trouble and distress me,
It will drive me to Thy breast;
Life with trials hard may press me,
Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.
There is not a grief can harm me,
While I feel Thy love to me;
There is not a joy can charm me,
If it is apart from Thee.
Take, my soul, this full salvation;
Rise o’er sin and fear and care:
Find in every situation
Joy and peace − and service there;
Think what Spirit dwells within me,
What a Father’s smile is mine,
What a Saviour died to win me:
Child of Heaven, can I repine?
Haste then on from grace to glory,
Armed by faith, and winged by prayer;
Heaven’s eternal day’s before me;
God’s own hand shall guide me there.
Soon shall close my earthly mission,
Swift shall pass my pilgrim days:
Hope soon change to glad fruition,
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.
Henry Francis Lyte was one of God’s saints upon the earth. He lived between the years 1793 and 1847. As a young man his father left the family, and sent Henry to Dublin to go to school. His mother and brother went to London instead, and there they both died, leaving Henry without an earthly family. The headmaster of the school where Henry was attending paid his way through school and brought him into his home when school was out, for Henry would have lived in residence when in school, but had nowhere to live when school was out. After this he went to Trinity College in Dublin, he earned three times the prize for English poem; and after considering medicine as a profession he settled on theology. With very little training in the ministry, he took Anglican ‘holy orders’ at the youthful age of 23.
As many who grow up under the Christian influence, it would seem as though the young man was not entirely convicted under the weight of Christian conviction;
So, joining the Anglican Church in Britain, much like today, was like any other profession — a profession that offers help to the fallen condition of man, and at the same time was a respectable profession that offered a reasonable living. In this sense Anglican clergy and the medical profession are certainly relatives; one ministers the soul and the other the body. So, for a young man with an internal desire to help man, either profession would be good. God decreed that Henry would be a minister in the Church, and Henry’s talent as an English poet was used of God for His glory.
But, whatever his motives were in choosing theology over medicine, there was an experience in the first years of Henry’s pastorate that marked a very distinct change in young Henry. He was tending to a fellow clergyman as he was dying, and on his deathbed his friend said to him that they were both wrong in not taking the epistles of the apostle Paul in their ‘plain and literal sense’. The implication here, is that the Scriptures, and especially the Gospel, never had a place of real and personal meaning in the heart of these two men. Though when faced with the reality of facing the eternal state beyond this life, God’s revelation became personal to Henry’s dying friend. In witnessing this, Lyte records this of his friend, “He died happy under the belief that though he had deeply erred, there was One whose death and sufferings would atone for his delinquencies, and be accepted for all that he had incurred”. As a result of God working in his soul through this very experience of witnessing a dying mans conversion, the young Mr. Lyte thus stated, ”I was greatly affected by the whole matter, and brought to look at life and its issue with a different eye than before; and I began to study my Bible, and preach in another manner than I had previously done”. It is certain that Mr. Lyte was converted by the Spirit of God, and like all Christians, was forced to look at the end of life in the body and to embrace the fact that the eternal kingdom of God awaits all of those in Christ on the other side of the river Jordan. This is captured so eloquently in the last verse of this very hymn of which we now enjoy.
It is certainly significant that Henry Lyte’s earthly body also perished, as so many others in those days, of tuberculosis. A disease that is slow and, as its medical term ‘consumption’ describes, consuming in its overthrow of the lungs with the waters of death. Henry wrote of death so peaceably, and this is something that so many of the greatest Hymnodists were known for, namely, “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”(Phil.4:7)
This hymn reflects both the young and the mature Christian, one who has learned and one who now knows. We read of one who has seen that he has a cross to bear, and one who knows that he needs a Saviour; and especially, one who knows who that Saviour is, and why.
It is also so very indicative of a Christian who, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, sees that the Lord’s words in Matthew chapter 10 in a real and personal manner.
“The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?”(verse 24,25), “And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. 39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”(vs.38,39)
These stanzas of Henry’s hymn show us that the Christian life is one of living in the Spirit, not the world, where “Human hearts and looks deceive”. The man who wrote this hymn is a man who is more than familiar with the trials that come with the Christian life, and a man who knows that “our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;”(2 Cor. 4:17)
There is a very immediate realization that God is not like this world; that this world is not true, it is fallen; and all that a Christian can hope for is already accomplished for him upon the cross. That we look “for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”(Heb.11:10) And, as the apostle Paul puts it, “I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:” This hymn reminds Christian people that we are here for a very short time compared to the eternal life we shall have, and that we are pilgrims passing through towards our home — a better place. And our Father awaits our arrival with a smile!
Scripture Alone 