Your Hand, O Lord, Has Guided CWB I 868

This is the last song from the hymn section of CWB I that I haven’t already covered elsewhere. As usual there were far more songs to cover than I had thought possible and with a lot of them being of a traditional nature, I was somewhat out of my comfort zone. There weren’t as many Australian hymns as I expected, but I suppose it gives an idea about what Australian Catholics were recommended to sing forty years ago in 1985.

Happily, my blind spot is Chris Wroblewski’s passion. His site Liturgyshare continues to give great assistance in the area of more traditional Catholic hymnody and he tells me he has renovated the indexes to make things work better and you will find sheet music and texts where legal and melody lines for use in overheads, which is a very thoughtful and pastoral activity.

Getting back to this hymn – it has a text by Edward Hayes Plumptre set to THORBURY by Basil Harwood.

The commentary from the Psalter Hymnal Handbook (via Hymnary) says:

Edward H. Plumptre (PHH 363) wrote this text entitled “Church Defence” and published it in Plumptre’s Lazarus and Other Poems (1865). Republished in the 1889 Supplement to Hymns Ancient and Modern, the text has gained much popularity in England …

The text affirms God’s faithful hand of guidance and blessing on the church (st. 1), a church that has continually proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom (st. 2), and that, by God’s power, will ultimately be victorious in its mission (st. 3). Each stanza leads directly into the powerful refrain line taken from Ephesians 4:4-5: “There is one body [the church of Christ] . . . one Lord, one faith. . . .”

Liturgical Use:
Festivals of the church; church anniversaries; mission services; Reformation celebrations; ordination/ commissioning services.

It’s another somewhat triumphalist anthem from a past age that sounds very Anglican.

The editors have altered Plumptre’s text and may have actually improved it.

I once again found the chords in Together in Song – indispensable.

Your hand, O God, has guid­ed
Your flock from age to age;
Your faithfulness is writ­ten,
On hist’ry’s open page;
Our fa­thers knew your good­ness,
And we their deeds re­cord:
And both of this bear wit­ness,
One church, one faith, one Lord.

Your her­alds brought the Gospel,
To great­est, and to least;
They summoned men to hast­en
To share the great King’s feast.
And this was all their teach­ing,
In ev­ery deed and word,
To all alike pro­claim­ing,
One church, one faith, one Lord.

Through ma­ny days of dark­ness,
Through ma­ny scenes of strife,
The faith­ful few fought brave­ly,
To guard the Christian life.
Their Gos­pel of re­demp­tion,
Sin par­doned, man re­stored,
Was all in this en­fold­ed,
One church, one faith, one Lord.

And we, shall we be faith­less?
Shall hearts fail, hands hang down?
Shall we evade the con­flict,
And throw away our crown?
Not so! In God’s deep coun­sels
Some bet­ter thing is stored:
We will main­tain, un­flinch­ing,
One church, one faith, one Lord.

Your mer­cy will not fail us,
Nor leave your work un­done;
With your right hand to help us,
The vic­to­ry shall be won.
And then by men and heaven
Your name shall be adored,
And this shall be their an­them,
One church, one faith, one Lord.