I love thy kingdom, Lord

with
BEALOTH
ST. THOMAS

I. Text: Origins

Psalm 137 has been problematic for many Christians because of its messages of despair and revenge. This challenge is even more the case when it comes to song: who wants to sing about weeping over a lost city, your tongue cleaving to the roof of your mouth, or dashing children against stones? Thus, when Isaac Watts (1674–1748) published The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719), Psalm 137 was one of twelve psalms he chose not to paraphrase, because they “fill the Mind with overwhelming Sorrows, or sharp Resentment; neither of which are so well suited to the Spirit of the Gospel” (p. 149).[1]

Nevertheless, Psalm 137 is a part of canonical Scripture, and in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, some denominational groups wanted to continue singing the entire book of Psalms. One of these bodies was the General (Presbyterian) Association of Connecticut. In 1797, the Association asked Timothy Dwight (1752–1817), president of Yale College (now Yale University), to prepare a revision of Watts’s book that would include the omitted psalms. In the following year, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States expressed a similar desire. When informed that Dwight was at work on such a book, the General Assembly decided to wait and see the results of his effort, and in 1800 a committee composed of members of the two groups examined and approved it.

The book was published in 1801 as The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, and Applied to the Christian Use and Worship by I. Watts, D.D. A New Edition (Hartford, CT: Hudson and Goodwin), often nicknamed “Dwight’s Watts.” The advertisement (preface) for the volume expressed three goals the bodies had called for in its publication: 1) to alter references deemed to be “local, and inapplicable to our own circumstances” (i.e., references to Great Britain), 2) to “versify the Psalms, omitted by Doctor Watts,” and 3) to supplement Watts’s proper-meter versions of some psalms with others in the more common meters to prevent “a too frequent repetition of them in our worship” and to add some hymns “to complete a system of public Psalmody.” The result was a collection of all the psalms—including Dwight’s versions of the twelve psalms omitted by Watts, as well as alternate versions of some others—and 263 hymns.[2]

Dwight’s adaptation of Psalm 137 follows the pattern of many of Watts’s paraphrases in being in multiple parts. Part 1, titled “The sorrows of Israel in the Babylonish Captivity,” is a more-or-less literal rendering of the psalm, though it omits the last verse and adds two stanzas about the restoration of the Jews to the land of Israel. The second part is titled “The Church’s Complaint,” and it moves the text more in the direction of a “Christianized” psalm. Both of these parts are in long meter. Part 3, “Love to the Church,” is the text of “I love thy kingdom, Lord,” which is laid out in eight short-meter stanzas (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament. A New Edition (Hartford, CT: Hudson and Goodwin, 1801).

All three of Dwight’s versions of Psalm 137 were reprinted in full in later editions of his arrangement of Watts and in John H. Livingston’s The Psalms and Hymns, with the Catechism, Confession of Faith, and Liturgy of the Reformed Dutch Church in North America (New Brunswick: Deare & Terhune, 1814), pp. 246–247. Asahel Nettleton’s Village Hymns for Social Worship (Hartford, CT: Goodwin & Co., 1824), no. 297, was apparently the first collection to eliminate parts 1 and 2 of the text and print only “I love thy kingdom, Lord” as a separate hymn. Nettleton also shortened the text, using only the original strophes 1 and 3–5 (Fig. 2).

A six-stanza recension of the hymn (sts. 1–2, 5–8) was printed in Lowell Mason and David Green’s Church Psalmody: A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, Adapted to Public Worship (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1831), no. 137. A five-stanza version, drawing on stanzas 1–2, 5–6, and 8, appeared as early as S.B. Swain’s Sacred Melodies (Worcester, MA: W. Lazell, 1843), no. 166. The five- or six-stanza versions are the ones most commonly used today. The text has undergone modifications in some recent collections, replacing “thy” and “thine” with “your,” occasionally altering “I” to “We,” and making various other changes.

II. Text: Analysis

“I love thy kingdom, Lord” is “Christianized” to such an extent that little association is immediately apparent between the hymn and Psalm 137. Nevertheless, careful analysis reveals a distinct connection between the two. It also shows how the lack of obvious relationship is partly because the hymn draws upon a kaleidoscope of other scriptural allusions, mostly from other psalms, as can be seen in the following comparisons (bold type clarifies the borrowing of some words or phrases).

Furthermore, Dwight did not use all of Psalm 137 (only vv. 1–6); he employed a single verse for non-consecutive stanzas (v. 6, in sts. 3–4 and 6), and he reordered some of the biblical references (the tears of v. 1 appear in st. 5 after a paraphrase of vv. 5–6 in sts. 3–4). These procedures are very much like those utilized by Isaac Watts in such psalm paraphrases as “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” (Ps. 72) and “Joy to the world” (Ps. 98). In Dwight, as in Watts, it is often only a short phrase or a single key word or two that links a stanza to the psalm passage, and these are often combined and ordered in different ways. Thus, stanza 3 picks up the phrase “let my right hand forget her cunning” from verse 5 (“These hands let useful skill forsake”) and the phrase “let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth” from verse 6 (“This voice in silence die”). Stanza 4 then uses the word “forget” from verse 5 (a synonym for “not remember” in v. 6) and “joy” from verse 6.

Dwight’s hymn uses a typological reading often found in interpretations of the Old Testament, in which Jerusalem becomes the Church. Literary scholar Leland Ryken noted Dwight’s use of imagery in the context of describing the Church:

[E]ven though the poem praises a spiritual entity, it employs the imagery of a physical building and a surrounding city. While the imagery is intended to be metaphorical or symbolic, it gives the Church a palpable quality that spares it from becoming an ethereal abstraction.[3]

The hymn takes an eschatological turn in the last stanza, where Zion is compared indirectly to the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21:2. The text is further Christianized by its reference in stanza 1 to the Church being saved by the precious blood of the Redeemer, as well as its mention of the name of Jesus in stanza 7.

Dwight used several rhetorical figures to make the text more vivid and memorable. Stanzas 1 and 2 begin with the same words, “I love thy,” as do stanzas 3 and 4 (“If e’er”).

Stanza 5 features several poetic devices: anaphora (repeating words at the beginning of successive lines, “For her my”), antithesis (a statement of opposites, “fall” and “ascend”), and antistrophe (the reversing of a phrase, “cares and toils” / “toils and cares”). Stanza 8 uses a device called polyptoton, in which the same word is used in different forms to change its focus (“brightest,” “brighter”). As is true of any good hymn, these figures do not call undue attention to themselves but enhance the meaning and memorability of the text.

In writing about this hymn, Albert Edward Bailey claimed that Dwight “was bitterly opposed to the democratic theories of [Thomas] Jefferson which would give equal rights to saints and sinners, college presidents and longshoremen.” As proof, he quoted from a 7 July 1801, oration by Dwight: “The great object of democracy is to destroy every trace of civilization in the world and force mankind back into a savage state.” Bailey went on to suggest, “This passionate belief in the supremacy of the Church over the State lies back of this hymn and must be read into it.”[4] However, Bailey’s citation is wrong on two counts. First, the writing was not by Timothy Dwight but by the similarly named lawyer, Federalist leader, and later member of Congress Theodore Dwight (1764–1846). Second, Bailey misquoted the passage, which actually reads, “The great object of Jacobinism, both in its political, and moral revolutions, is to destroy every trace of civilization in the world, and to force mankind back to a savage state.”[5] Timothy Dwight was certainly a Federalist, was no fan of Thomas Jefferson (or James Madison),[6] and lived in a state (Connecticut) that maintained an established church (a stance he supported) until the year after his death (1818). There is also no question that he was suspicious of untrammeled democracy as demonstrated by the excesses of the French Revolution (and the hazard that they might be imported to the United States), the increase of infidelity associated with the Enlightenment, and the low esteem in which the church was held in some parts of the country. As one commentator noted, Dwight believed that “the Church was under attack, and in some places, it had already fallen to Enlightenment forces and was being held captive”; consequently, “One cannot help but draw a parallel with the Church of Dwight’s day, with the ‘Lord’s song’ from Psalm 137:4 (the Gospel) being sung in a foreign land (the godless Babylon of the Enlightenment).”[7] 

Perhaps Dwight’s greatest feat in this text was taking one of the most melancholy, grief-stricken, and heart-wrenching texts in the entire Bible and turning it into a positive, joyful affirmation of love for God’s Church and of the Friend who is also Savior and King. The Church has responded by making this text one of the earliest American hymn lyrics still in common use.

III. Tunes

Dwight’s hymn was not set to music, nor did the book make suggestions for tunes to be used with the texts. A wide variety of melodies were set to or proposed for “I love thy kingdom, Lord” during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Asahel Nettleton’s Village Hymns (1824) recommended two tunes: SHIRLAND by Samuel Stanley and WATCHMAN by James Leach (see Fig. 2). WATCHMAN appears to have been little used with this text, but SHIRLAND became fairly common as a setting for it in the nineteenth century.[8]

Several tunes by Lowell Mason were often employed with the hymn in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including BOYLSTON, LABAN, and especially BEALOTH. The last-named piece seems to have first appeared in The American Tune Book (Boston: Oliver Ditson & Company, 1869), p. 233, where it was printed anonymously (Fig. 3); it was credited to Mason in the published bibliography of his works by his grandson.[9] Other tunes frequently used with the text have been Jonathan C. Woodman’s STATE STREET, Ralph Harrison’s CAMBRIDGE, Hans G. Naegeli’s DENNIS, and Thomas Hastings’s LUTHER.

The pairing of Dwight’s text with Aaron Williams’ tune ST. THOMAS appeared at least as early as 1851 in Songs of Zion: A Manual of the Best and Most Popular Hymns and Tunes, for Social and Private Devotion (New York & Boston: American Tract Society), p. 159 (Fig. 4; see “Come, we that love the Lord” for the origin of ST. THOMAS). Beginning about 1925, ST. THOMAS gradually became the tune of choice for Dwight’s hymn, such that by the end of the century this text and tune were almost inextricably linked; this combination has continued into the twenty-first century.

by DAVID W. MUSIC
for Hymnology Archive
2 August 2024

Footnotes:

1. Watts did include a long meter version of Psalm 137 in his Reliquiæ Juveniles: Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose and Verse (London: Richard Ford and Richard Hett, 1734), pp. 73–75, though it was not intended for singing. He commented, “This particular Psalm could not well be converted into Christianity, and therefore it appears here in its Jewish Form: The Vengeance denounced against Babylon, in the Close of it, shall be executed (said a great Divine) upon Antichristian Rome; but he was persuaded the Turks must do it, for Protestant Hearts, said he, have too much Compassion in them to embrue their Hands in such a bloody and terrible Execution” (the “great Divine” has not been identified).

2. According to the article on Dwight by F.M. Bird in John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology, rev. ed. (London: John Murray, 1907), pp. 316–317, the book included thirty-three items by Dwight. Rochelle A. Stackhouse, “American Revisions of Watts’ Psalter: liturgical change in the early Republic” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1994), pp. 220–264, lists thirty-two psalm paraphrases (counting each part of a paraphrase as a separate hymn), plus one version (Ps. 60) in which Dwight inserted a new stanza into Watts’s text. See also the published version of her dissertation, The Language of the Psalms in Worship: American Revisions of Watts’ Psalter (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997).

3. Leland Ryken, “I love thy kingdom, Lord,” 40 Favorite Hymns for the Christian Year (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2020), p. 91.

4. Albert Edward Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns: Backgrounds and Interpretations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), p. 481.

5. Theodore Dwight, An Oration, Delivered at New-Haven on the 7th of July, A.D. 1801, Before the Society of the Cincinnati, for the State of Connecticut, Assembled to Celebrate the Anniversary of American Independence (Hartford, CT: Hudson and Goodwin, 1801), p. 20. Jacobinism represented the most radical wing of the French Revolution.

6. See his anonymously-published Remarks on the Review of Inchiquin’s Letters, Published in the Quarterly Review; Addressed to the Right Honourable George Canning, Esquire. By an Inhabitant of New-England (Boston: Samuel T. Armstrong, 1815), pp. 14–15.

7. Jacob Sutton, “I love Your kingdom, Lord,” in Joseph Herl, Peter C. Reske, and John D. Vieker, eds., Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2019), p. 823. For fuller discussions of Dwight’s “anti-democratic” stance see Stephen E. Berk, Calvinism Versus Democracy: Timothy Dwight and the Origins of American Evangelical Orthodoxy (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1974).

8. One collection that did use WATCHMAN was Harriet Reynolds Krauth, ed., Church Book: for the Use of Evangelical Lutheran Congregations (Philadelphia: J. K. Shryock, 1890), p. 340, where the first line of the text read “I love Thy Zion, Lord.”

9. Henry L. Mason, Hymn-tunes of Lowell Mason: A Bibliography (Cambridge, MA: University Press, 1944), p. 13. Some hymnals credited the tune to Asa Brooks Everett and others printed it anonymously.

Related Resources:

Albert Edward Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns (NY: Charles Scribners Sons, 1950), pp. 480–482.

Marilyn Kay Stulken, Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), p. 416.

Jere V. Adams, ed., Handbook to the Baptist Hymnal (Nashville: Convention Press, 1992), pp. 152–153.

Richard J. Stanislaw and Donald P. Hustad, Companion to the Worshiping Church (Carol Stream, IL: Hope Publishing Company, 1993), p. 78.

Carlton R. Young, Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), pp. 416–417.

Raymond F. Glover, ed., The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1994), pp. 978–979.

Forrest M. McCann, Hymns and History: An Annotated Survey of Sources (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1997), pp. 151–152.

Kristen L. Forman, ed., The New Century Hymnal Companion: A Guide to the Hymns (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1998), p. 367 (“We Love Your Realm, O God”).

Carl P. Daw, Jr. Glory to God: A Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), pp. 312–313.

Joseph Herl, Peter C. Reske, and John D. Vieker, eds., Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2019), pp. 823–824.

J.R. Watson, “I love thy kingdom, Lord,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: http://www.hymnology.co.uk/i/i-love-thy-kingdom,-lord

“I love thy kingdom, Lord,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/i_love_thy_kingdom_lord