Onward Christian Soldiers

You will not need to fight in this battle.

Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, Who is with you...

2 Corinthians 20:17

Sabine Baring-Gould was born in Exeter in 1834. His father, an officer with the East India Company, had a disabling carriage accident and decided that if he couldn't work, he would at least travel. As a result, little Sabine was dragged from one end of Europe to the other, year after year. It gave him an unsettled childhood, spotty schooling, and a wanderlust he never outgrew. He later managed to scrape through Cambridge, but for the most part he is remembered as a brilliant, self-taught scholar. That helps explain why he developed certain eccentric habits. When he taught school, for example, he kept a pet bat on his shoulder.

From Sabrine's original mind flowed an endless number of books, articles, poems, hymns, and tracts. This particular hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers," was written on a Whitsunday's evening in the mid-1860s.

It was this day in 1865, in the little town of Horbury, England, that Sabrine stayed up late searching through hymnbooks for a martial-type hymn for children. The next day, Monday, all the village children were marching to the neighboring town for a Sunday School rally. Sabine wanted to give them a "marching song" for the trip. Searching his hymnals and finding nothing, he began scribbling on a piece of paper, playing with words, dashing off lines until he had written a hymn of his own just for the occasion:

Onward,Christian soldiers, Marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus going on before.

"It was written in great haste," he later said, "and I am afraid some of the rhymes are faulty. Certainly, nothing has surprised me more than its popularity."

Perhaps you've noticed that several of our greatest hymns were originally written or translated for children. See, for example, the stories behind "All Creatures of Our God and King," "I Sing the Mighty power of God," "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say," and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Add "Onward Christian Soldiers" to that list, and visualize this eccentric preacher, singing in step, marching alongside the children-perhaps with a pet bat on his shoulder.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul