The voice of free grace cries escape to the mountain

with
FREE GRACE (Holyoke)
FREE GRACE (Ingalls)
SCOTLAND

I. Text: Earliest Sources

This hymn originally appeared in the 1797 memoir of English Wesleyan minister Richard Burdsall (1735–1824). The book describes Burdsall’s life and work with specific attention to the early Methodist movement, in which he played a central role. Strong themes of redemption connect the stories throughout the memoir. This hymn was appended to the main body of the autobiographical text, given in three stanzas of six lines, beginning “Now Christ he is risen, the Serpent’s head is bruised,” signed “R.B.” The first stanza and structure of the hymn differ significantly from later adaptations.

That same year, a portion of Burdsall’s memoir was included in a short pamphlet titled The Hypocrite Described: An Extract from the Life of Richard Burdsall (Leeds: A. Newsome, 1797). The small publication included four essays by various authors, centering on conversion and Christian discipline, and it included an altered version of Burdsall’s hymn, this time beginning “The voice of free grace cries escape to the mountain,” restructured as five stanzas of four lines, the last four stanzas being entirely new, plus a two-line refrain, which was repurposed from the last two lines of Burdsall’s first stanza. The hymn encapsulated the central themes of the compilation.

Another version of the hymn, more consistent with Burdsall’s publication, appeared in an anonymous, undated booklet, Divine Hymns, Chiefly Intended to Be Sung Before and After Charity Sermons (Penrith: Ann Bell). In the second stanza, the last two lines convey a trinitarian doxology, while the third stanza shares lines with both 1797 printings above. Unfortunately, without a stated or known publication date, there is no way to determine a chain of succession between this copy and the others above and below.

One other early printing worth noting is the hymn’s appearance in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of Christians of all Denominations, 4th ed. (Leeds: E. Baines, 1799), which like the 1797 compilation was printed in Leeds, and it contains an identical text.

II. Text: Publication in the United States

The first published instance of the hymn in the United States was in Richard Allen’s A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns (1801). At the time, Allen was founder and pastor of the Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and he would later become founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination in 1816. “The voice of free grace” appeared as the first hymn in this volume, a potential indication of its popularity among free and enslaved Black Christians. Allen’s version contained a number of alterations, and the third and fourth stanzas from the Leeds version had been condensed into one stanza, making four total. In Allen’s collection, this refrain was treated like a wandering refrain, also appearing with the hymn “From the regions of Love, lo! an Angel descended.” His alteration from the original “seal’d us a Pardon” in Burdsall’s third stanza to “purchas’d our pardon” makes a possible reference to the purchase of freedom—a process with which Allen and many other African Americans were well acquainted.

Allen’s version was repeated in John W. Scott’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the use of Christians (Philadelphia, 1803). The following year, when this text appeared in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of Christians (1804), editor/compiler Elias Smith used Allen’s four stanzas but added two more, beginning “Then let us march on, in the strength of our Saviour,” “And thus by his strength having crossed the river.” These stanzas have been repeated in other collections.

Another version of the hymn was presented by John Dobell in A New Selection of Seven Hundred Evangelical Hymns (London: Williams & Smith, 1806; American 1810 ed. shown below). In this case, Dobell credited the Leeds collection (see Fig. 4 above), and he used the same five stanzas, although some lines had been tweaked, and others replaced entirely, as in 2.1–2. Dobell’s textual alterations emphasize a salvation available to all, strengthening the Arminian theology the hymn tends to project.

The hymn was extremely popular in the nineteenth century, printed approximately 400 times, but it fell out of favor in the early decades of the twentieth. For additional textual variants, see the tune publications in section IV below.

III. Text: Analysis

Richard Burdsall’s original poem focuses on the ascension of Christ upon the Mount of Olives (Acts 1:1–12). The three stanzas included in this text emphasize the Arminian doctrine of free grace—salvation available to all, which stands against the Calvinistic idea of predestination—and offer thanks to God for Jesus, who “seal’d us a Pardon.” Bursdall’s text follows Wesleyan theology and poetic conventions closely and emphasizes a broad “Christ-centered picture of redemption.”[1] Subsequent arrangements retained these fundamental themes even while they revised Burdsall’s text heavily and added new stanzas. The new material added by other hymnwriters highlights popular religious themes in early nineteenth-century Protestant thought. For example, many final stanzas describe the communion of saints in heaven, using the aforementioned Jordan River as a symbol of Christians crossing into eternal reward. Other lines, such as those added in 1810 by John Dobell, are mission-oriented and address the unconverted. Dobell’s second stanza asks the question: “Now he calls you in mercy—and can you forbear?” Analyzing the text of “The voice of free grace” in any detail requires acknowledging the accumulative process the hymn underwent throughout the first several decades of its circulation in American hymnbooks.

IV. Tunes

1. FREE GRACE (Holyoke)

The first publication in which a tune was printed alongside “The voice of free grace” was in The Christian Harmonist (1804), edited by Samuel Holyoke. The tune was called FREE GRACE, uncredited, metered in cut time, melody in the top voice. This tune was not reprinted in other nineteenth-century tunebooks or hymnals. The first three lines of text are consistent with what Allen had printed in 1801 (Fig. 5), plus the last line from Allen’s second stanza.

2. FREE GRACE (Ingalls)

The following year, the text was printed with a different tune named FREE GRACE, this time by Jeremiah Ingalls, music director of the First Congregational Church in Westminster, Massachusetts, in his Christian Harmony (Exeter, NH: Henry Ranlet, 1805). This arrangement was in written in duple time—even though it feels like triple—and the melody is in the middle voice. This text, given in four stanzas, is mostly consistent with Allen’s text (Fig. 5), but some of the alterations, such as at 2.1, are unique to Ingalls’ collection. This tune was reprinted in some other collections, including new editions of Ingalls’ tunebook and in Joseph Hillman’s The Revivalist (1868).

An undated recording of this arrangement, made by the Jeremiah Ingalls Society, has been made available on ReverbNation, here.

James Peck published “The voice of free grace” alongside a variant of Ingalls’ tune in Peck’s Miscellaneous Collection of Sacred Music, Volume Three (1810). This is the first record of the hymn’s publication with music in England. The melody was altered slightly, and Peck provided a different harmonization, which included figured bass notation. The meter was also altered (arguably corrected) and rebarred as 3/4, which reduced the number of ties across measures in the score. For the text, Peck used an altered version of the first stanza and three new stanzas for 2–4.

3. SCOTLAND

The most popular tune to be paired with “The voice of free grace” is SCOTLAND. The earliest known printing in a hymnal was in Joshua Leavitt’s The Christian Lyre (1830), a popular collection of American and British hymns and folk tunes. There it appeared in two parts, melody and bass, with four stanzas of text. Leavitt’s text was similar to Ingalls’ (Fig. 9).

In short order, this same pairing was included in Spiritual Songs (1831), probably vol. 3, and its combined successor, Spiritual Songs for Social Worship (1832), edited by Thomas Hastings and Lowell Mason. This collection introduced the first known appearance of a popular textual variant, “Ye souls that are wounded, O flee to the Saviour! / He calls you in mercy; ’tis infinite favor.”

This example includes the interesting note, “This tune has, in some respects, a secular origin; but having been written as a song of wailing for the dead, the association will be found sufficiently in character.” In Lowell Mason’s collection Carmina Sacra (1841), the tune was credited to Dr. John Clarke. This is John Clarke-Whitfield (1770–1836), an English organist, composer, and editor. According to English tune scholar Nicholas Temperley, “In his songs and glees he showed understanding of the romantic poets, especially Scott and Byron, with whom he was acquainted. A few of his songs (such as Here’s the vow she falsely swore, One struggle more, and What voice is this?) rise well above the mediocrity of the contemporary English ballad,” and with regard to his church music, “He was one of the most respected cathedral musicians of his generation, but none of his music has survived in common use today.”[2] The tune known as SCOTLAND is from his ballad “The Coronach, or Funeral Song from The Lady of the Lake” (ca. 1810), using a text by Walter Scott. The images below are from a New York edition held by the University of Michigan.

by CHASE CASTLE
with CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
15 February 2023

Footnotes:

1. Mark A. Noll, “Evangelicalism at Its Best,” Where Shall My Wond’ring Soul Begin?: The Landscape of Evangelical Piety and Thought, ed. Mark A. Noll and Ronald F. Thiemann (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), p. 11.

2. Nicholas Temperley, “John Clarke-Whitfield,” Grove Music Online (16 Oct. 2013): https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.05883

Related Resources:

Hymn Tune Index: https://hymntune.library.uiuc.edu/

Hymnary: https://hymnary.org/text/the_voice_of_free_grace_cries_escape_to