Because of the many countries served by SDAH, the committee decided not to include the specific patriotic hymns of each, but rather to have a few hymns that could be sung with fervor in any country. This one is unique in that the first stanza pledges loyalty to an earthly country and the second gives allegiance to the kingdom of God we all look forward to. Sir Valentine Chirol wrote a Memoir of Spring-Rice, in which appears this account of the origin of these lines: “Written on January 12, 1918, by Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, His Majesty’s ambassador to the United States, on the eve of his final departure from Washington. The vow recorded in them had been kept long before he put it into words, for he had served his country for a quarter of a century with the ‘love that never falters’; and, though he knew it not, he was already a dying man.” He died the very next night, January 13, 1918, in Ottawa, Canada.

After the announcement that he was leaving Washington, Spring-Rice received a letter from William Jennings Bryan, whom he very much admired. In his answer he said: “I have been reading your ‘Heart to Heart Appeals’ with great profit and satisfaction, and they have inspired me with some lines which I venture to enclose-as a sort of spontaneous outpouring. These two stanzas follow. As a hymn, it was included in several British hymnals, but to our knowledge this is the first time it has been used in the United States.

Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice was born February 27, 1859, in London, educated at Eton and Balliol, and was a secretary and clerk in the War and Foreign offices. He was knighted in 1908. He held posts as a diplomat in Brussels, Teheran, Cairo, St. Petersburg, and Sweden. From 1912 to 1918 he was ambassador to the United States. Of him Theodore Roosevelt said: “Only a man of rare unselfishness, a man completely lacking in the vulgar ambition to keep in the public eye, could in this crisis have rendered the literally invaluable service that his country-and my country, too-needed, and that Cecil rendered” (Stephen Gwynn, Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, 1929). Poems, a book of his works, was published in 1920 after his death.

THAXTED, named for a village in Essex that boasts a seventeenth- century guild hall and a famous church, was composed by Gustav Holst (1874-1934; see SDAH 224). It is an arrangement from the melody of the Jupiter section of his major orchestral suite, The Planets. It has been characterized by Archibald Jacob in Songs of Praise Discussed, 1933, as a tune with an “Irish” flavor. One note has been altered-the final note at the end of the second score in the original goes down to a low F.

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.