Religious hymns are a core part of Christian worship – and have been since at least the Ancient Greek era. Very occasionally, a single composer will write a hymn's words and music. More often, one person's text is set to another's melody. But what are the greatest hymns of them all?
Here, we suggest our greatest hymns filled with our favourite combinations of fine words and equally magnificent music…
The best hymns of all time
1. Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer
Prince William and Catherine Middleton chose this hymn to begin their wedding in April 2011. Few hymns set such an uplifting tone as this Welsh masterpiece – and few are as enjoyable to sing. Usually accompanying the words by Welsh Methodist William Williams (1717-1791) is John Hughes’s magnificent ‘Cwm Rhondda’ tune from 1905, named after the valley in South Wales.
To many, the hymn is better known as ‘Bread of Heaven’, due to those famous repeated words in the first verse. The following ‘Feed me till I want no more’ traditionally divides the congregation between those who stick with the high note in the tune and those who prefer to dip down to sing the upwardly accompanying ‘Want no moooooore!’ with appropriate gusto. The choice is yours.
'Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer', one of the most famous Welsh hymns of all time, is also a popular rugby song for the Welsh fans. Welsh music lovers consider the song to be their second national anthem (behind ’Land of My Fathers’).
2. Jerusalem
Another favourite at weddings, and a regular at patriotic sing-alongs such as the Last Night of the Proms, Jerusalem is also something of an enigma. What exactly was William Blake referring to in his 1804 poem? Was ‘And did those feet in ancient time’ really eulogising England, or did the ‘dark Satanic mills’ imply a more ominous vision of the future?
Hubert Parry wrote his famous tune in 1916 – but the story is somewhat controversial. When the Gloucestershire composer was reluctant for it to be used to support of the patriotic Fight for Right campaign (for which it had been commissioned), it was taken up instead by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
Unusually, Parry’s setting has a four-bar intro on the organ before each verse. It's at this point that everyone joins in together in glorious, boisterous unison. The word 'belter' springs to mind. Unquestionably, one of the best hymns of all time.
3. Be Thou My Vision
Next, we head over to Ireland. Saint Dálian is perhaps the master behind the words to this uniquely evocative hymn. The Irish poet later met a sticky end at the hands of pirates in the early seventh century.
They may well date from later than that, however. They are commonly sung to the folk-derived hymn tune ‘Slane’. Named after a village in County Meath, the tune was first found in Patrick Joyce’s Old Irish Folk Music and Songs in 1909. ‘Be Thou My Vision’ doesn’t have the beautiful chant-like phrases of 'Slane' all to itself, however. The tune is also used for the hymn ‘Lord of all hopefulness’.
4. Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
Long before he penned Jerusalem, Hubert Parry also wrote an oratorio called Judith. The piece tells the gruesome story of the eponymous Old Testament heroine. Despite its gory subject matter, it features a rather lovely aria you might be familiar with. In it, Queen Meshullemeth tells the children about how their ancestors arrived in Israel.
Six years after Parry's death in 1918, the aria’s tune was taken by George Gilbert Stocks, a music teacher at Repton School in Derbyshire. He adapted the tune to fit ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’. This hymn's words were originally found in the poem The brewing of Soma by the US quaker John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92).
To make the ‘Repton’ tune to work, however, the last line of each verse needs to be repeated. And it's that last line that provides the real magic of this hymn though. In the final verse, we follow the climax of ‘earthquake, wind, and fire’ by descending to a hush for the ‘still, small voice of calm’.
We named 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind' one of the best hymns for funerals.
5. Amazing Grace
Few hymns tell such a personal story as Amazing Grace. The hymn's author John Newton (1725-1807) was a former slave trader who converted to Christianity after surviving a shipwreck off County Donegal. He went on to become a committed abolitionist. The words ‘That sav’d a wretch like me!’ could refer to both his physical escape and his spiritual conversion. The text is usually set to the tune 'New Britain'.
The hymn is a pentatonic melody originating from American music. A pentatonic melody is one that pianists can play using just the instrument's black notes. The immense popularity of 'Amazing Grace' has spread well beyond the church. Famous recordings have been made of it by the likes of Elvis Presley, soprano Jessye Norman and Johnny Cash.
Best hymns of all time: our final six
6. The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended
Even the great Ralph Vaughan Williams didn’t do everything right. For some reason, the eminent British composer and hymn editor loathed ‘St Clement’, the gorgeously arching tune for this hymn. Sorry, Ralph, but millions of us would beg to differ. It's sung so movingly at the funeral or memorial of a loved one. Though specifically an evening hymn, its words naturally lend it to this other purpose.
- See where Vaughan Williams featured in our ranking of the 25 greatest British composers
BBC’s Songs of Praise voted 'The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended' third in a poll of the best hymns of all time in 2005. Other fans of the hymn include Queen Victoria, who included it in her diamond jubilee service in 1897, and Rick Wakeman, who featured the tune on his 1973 album The Six Wives of Henry VIII.
7. Eternal Father, Strong to Save (For Those in Peril on the Sea)
Rose DeWitt Bukater (played by Kate Winslet) doesn’t seem too enamoured with ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’ when she and fellow passengers sing it at a service on board Titanic in James Cameron’s 1997 film. That said, her gloomy demeanour is more down to the company she is required to keep rather than the hymn itself, which is an absolute corker.
Whether it was actually sung on the RMS Titanic in real life is not known but, with the first three verses all ending with the words ‘For those in peril in the sea’, William Whiting’s 1860 words have inevitably become associated with all things maritime – Whiting, a schoolteacher, is said to have been inspired to write them by a student who was nervous about taking journey across the Atlantic to the US.
Those words are invariably sung to the tune ‘Melita’ (the Latin name for Malta), composed by the prolific hymn tune composer JB Dykes the following year.
- Musicians of the Titanic: the doomed ship's musical heroes who played until the end
- Seven works inspired by the Titanic
8. There is a Green Hill Far Away
This is the hymn that for many years had generations of schoolchildren scratching their heads as to why a green hill should need a city wall – only when later editions of Cecil Frances Alexander’s 1848 words changed ‘There is a green hill far away without a city wall’ to ‘outside a city wall’ did things become a little clearer.
Reflecting on Christ’s crucifixion, the hymn is usually sung at Passiontide, making it one of Alexander’s two guaranteed fixtures in the ecclesiastical calendar – the Irish hymnwriter and poet also wrote the words to ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ (plus the year-round favourite ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’). If you sing it in the United Kingdom, the chances are that it will be to the 1844 tune ‘Horsley’ by the English composer and organist (and friend of Mendelssohn) William Horsley, whose son John is said to have designed the first ever Christmas card. In the US, however, other tunes are often used.
9. Lord of the Dance
You know a hymn has widespread popularity when you hear its tune being sung on at football grounds (usually with unrepeatable words…).
Unlike many of the most popular hymns, 'Lord of the Dance’s' words were written with the melody specifically in mind. Said tune is the American Shaker song ‘Simple Gifts’ (also famously adopted by American composer Aaron Copland in his 1944 ballet Appalachian Spring), to which the English poet and folk musician Sydney Carter crafted five narrative verses plus chorus in 1963.
Set in the first person, the verses present Jesus Christ telling us of his journey (plus ordeals) from birth to death, followed in each instance by the rousing ‘Dance, then, wherever you may be’ chorus. Carter himself worried that people would not like his efforts, but the hymn’s rapid adoption in churches and schools across the country quickly dispelled his fears. And then, soon after, football fans decided they rather liked it too…
10. I Vow to Thee, My Country
When Sir Cecil Spring Rice first wrote his poem Urbs Dei (City of God) at some point between 1908 and 1912, the second stanza was very different to how it appears today – talking of ‘the dying of the dead’, ‘the noise of battle’ and ‘the thunder of her guns’, its bellicose outlook foreshadowed the horrifying events that were soon to unfold.
Towards the end of World War I, Rice – who, in the meantime, had served as British ambassador to the US – markedly changed the tone, tellingly altering the final line to ‘And her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace’. That alteration would doubtless have been welcomed by the pacifist Gustav Holst, who was given the task of setting Rice’s words to music in the mid-1920s.
Conveniently, Holst had a tune that already fitted, saving the overworked composer from having to write a brand new one. The glorious, sweeping central melody from ‘Jupiter’ of The Planets did the job perfectly, needing only to be neatly harmonised for choral purposes.
11. Praise, My Soul, The King of Heaven
The New English Hymnal is very clear how the four verses of this perennial favourite are to be sung: together in unison, with organ (Verse 1); four-part harmony a cappella (Verse 2); trebles only, with organ (Verse 3); and then, altogether now, back to unison with organ, ideally with descant (Verse 4). The overall result is one of the most uplifting hymns in the book.
Part of the credit for this must go to the Scottish poet Henry Francis Lyte who, in 1834, ignored the pressure on hymnwriters to stick closely to the scriptures and, using Psalm 103 as his starting point, expressed his faith in his own words. The tune – called ‘Lauda Anima’ – was composed in 1868 by John Goss, organist of St Paul’s Cathedral and a professor at the Royal Academy of Music.
Among the many fans of Lyte’s words and Goss’s music were Elizabeth II, who chose 'Praise, My Soul, The King of Heaven' for her wedding to Prince Philip in 1947, and Charles III and Camilla, at whose Coronation it was sung in 2023.
We have lots more lyrics to your favourite hymns on our website.
