Once to Every Man and Nation

I remember singing this hymn one time when I was a kid growing up in the Baptist Church, and I was just amazed. We had never sung anything like this before! I didn't even know it was in the hymnal! And to be sure, it's not in many hymnals any more at all.

From the first dirge-like tones coming from the organ, I was captivated. (For those of you with a working understanding of hymn melodies, it goes to the tune called Ebenezer.) Reflecting on it now, I imagine it would sound terrific with pounding 6/8 drums, and power chords on the electric guitar.

But it was the words that gripped me. I found out much later that they came from a much longer poem written by James Russell Lowell around the time of the Civil War, but the four verses I had access to were infused with a timeless quality that piqued my adolescent curiosity so long ago, and stir me still. Here they are:

Once to every man and nation
comes the moment to decide,
in the strife of Truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side.
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
offering each the bloom or blight,
and the choice goes by forever
'twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with Truth is noble,
when we share her wretched crust,
ere her cause bring fame and profit
and 'tis prosperous to be just.
Then it is the brave man chooses
while the coward stands aside,
'til the multitude make virtue
of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs,
Christ, thy bleeding feet we track,
toiling up new Calvaries ever
with the cross that turns not back.
New occasions teach new duties--
time makes ancient good uncouth.
They must upward still and onward
who would keep abreast of Truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
yet the Truth alone is strong,
though her portion be the scaffold,
and upon the throne be wrong.
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
and behind the dim unknown,
standeth God within the shadow,
keeping watch above His own.

While these words were originally written as part of a poem supporting the abolition of slavery, I can clearly see their application to our present American culture, as well as the potential trials of the immediate future.

The day has arrived, and will undoubtedly intensify, when the "ancient good"--morality, decency, the Gospel itself--has become uncouth in our society. The "new Messiah" of materialism offers the bloom of hedonistic pleasure if you embrace it, and the blight of society's stern disapproval should you reject it.

It'll get worse.

I often wonder how those in the present-day American church will fare when faced with the scaffold, whatever that will eventually mean to us. We do love our prosperity.

May God grant us the grace to be like those who embraced His promises and "confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.... But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them" (Hebrews 11:13-14, 16 NKJV).

Happy New Year.