SIMPLY TOLD

A monthly post on a hymn of the faith.

How do you describe for young children the awful scene and awesome truths of Christ’s crucifixion? An Irish minister’s wife, Cecil Frances (Humphries) Alexander, looked to her native land’s verdant hills and began:

There is a green hill far away/Outside a city wall,

Where the dear Lord was crucified/who died to save us all.

What’s believed today to be Jerusalem’s Golgotha—a scrubby hill with features resembling a skull—became a gentler scene as Mrs. Alexander sought to explain to little children why Jesus died for their sins. That hymn was part of her quest to present, via songs, the Apostle’s Creed and other Christian doctrines to children of her husband’s parish. Many of these youngsters lived in poverty and were illiterate, but she explained the faith’s great truths in ways they could understand and remember.

Born in 1823, even as a child she was writing poetry. In 1850, she married a minister who later became the Anglican primate (chief bishop) of Ireland. In their early parish in an impoverished area of Ireland, she especially reached out to the disadvantaged of her community, daily visiting the sick and poor and taking them food, warm clothes, and medical supplies.  Her husband wrote: “From one poor home to another she went. Christ was ever with her, and in her, and all felt her influence.”

Believing that basic Christian truths could be taught through hymns, she distilled major doctrines to songs with simple words that children could understand and easily memorize.  One major project was hymns based on the Apostles’ Creed. “All Things Bright and Beautiful” taught about God the creator, maker of heaven and earth. “Once in David’s Royal City” told the nativity story. “There is a Green Hill Far Away” described at a child’s level the story of Christ’s death for our sins.

She also composed hymns for adults, like “Jesus Calls Us,” written at her husband’s request for his sermon on Jesus calling Andrew to become a fisher of men. 

More than 400 hymn texts would carry her byline. Gathered into books, they included the 1848 “Hymns for Little Children,” one of history’s most successful hymn-publishing ventures with more than 100 editions. She turned her publishing success back into ministry, using royalties to help build a school for the deaf, support a ministry for at-risk women (“Derry Home for Fallen Women”), and back a district nurses service.

She died in 1895 at 77; her husband would die in 1911. St. Columb’s Cathedral in Derry, Northern Ireland, has a trio of stained-glass windows built in her honor. They depict three of her hymns: “Once in Royal David’s City,” “There is a Green Hill Far Away,” and “The Golden Gates are Lifted up.”

This YouTube video of a choir singing Mrs. Alexander’s hymn features scenes from her homeland.

There Is A Green Hill Far Away hymn with on-screen LYRICS - Bing video