According to Thy Gracious Word
- Words
- James Montgomery
- Tune
- MARTYRDOM, the usual tune (Hugh Wilson, 1824)
- Year
- 1825
- Recording
- AI-generated with ElevenLabs
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According to Thy gracious word, in meek humility, this will I do, my dying Lord: I will remember Thee.
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Thy body, broken for my sake, my bread from heaven shall be; Thy testamental cup I take, and thus remember Thee.
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When to the cross I turn mine eyes and rest on Calvary, O Lamb of God, my sacrifice, I must remember Thee.
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Remember Thee and all Thy pains and all Thy love to me; yea, while a breath, a pulse remains, will I remember Thee.
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And when these failing lips grow dumb and mind and mem’ry flee, when Thou shalt in Thy kingdom come, Jesus, remember me!
The story behind the hymn
James Montgomery first published this hymn in 1825, in a collection of his hymns called The Christian Psalmist. It is a hymn for the Lord’s Supper, and it carries the words of Jesus from Luke 22:19 as its heading: “This do in remembrance of me.”
Remembering is the whole point of the hymn. Almost every stanza ends on the word “remember.” The hymn begins at the table, with the bread and the cup. It then moves to the cross, to the “Lamb of God,” and to the singer’s own last breath.
The very last line turns the hymn around. Until then the singer has been promising to remember Christ. Now the singer asks to be remembered. “Jesus, remember me” echoes the plea of the criminal who was crucified beside Jesus, in Luke 23:42.
Montgomery printed the hymn in six stanzas. This five-stanza form is the one many hymnals use, and the wording differs a little from book to book. It is usually sung to MARTYRDOM, a Scottish tune by Hugh Wilson from 1824, a year before the hymn appeared. Some books pair it with other tunes, such as Bangor or Dundee.
About James Montgomery
James Montgomery was born on 4 November 1771 in Irvine, in Ayrshire, Scotland. His father was a minister in the Moravian Church, and his parents later went as missionaries to the West Indies, where they died. James grew up in a Moravian school at Fulneck, in Yorkshire.
As a young man he moved to Sheffield and worked on a radical newspaper there. He took the paper over, renamed it the Sheffield Iris, and edited it for about thirty years. His outspoken editing cost him dearly. He was imprisoned twice in York Castle for printing material that the authorities called libel, for three months in 1795 and for six months in 1796. In prison he wrote his first book of poems, Prison Amusements.
Outside of newspapers he spoke up against the slave trade and against child labour, and he supported foreign missions and the Bible Society. He wrote around four hundred hymns, and more than a hundred are still sung. The best known include “Angels from the Realms of Glory” and “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed.”
In 1833 he was granted a royal pension of two hundred pounds a year. He died in his sleep at his home in Sheffield on 30 April 1854, and was given a public funeral.
Sources: Hymnary.org on this hymn and Hymn-writers of the Church, on James Montgomery. Accounts differ on some dates and details, such as exactly when he took over the newspaper.