The song is controversial, but it is in Christian hymnals across the land, especially those more "traditional" in their content. It's controversial, but the orthodox sing it anyway, often; especially in its U.S. homeland.
Something, though, is incongruent about the hymn's inclusion in these particular collections of churchly lyrics. Perhaps that's because James Russell Lowell wrote "Once to Every Man and Nation" in 1845, and the acceptability that takes over something that's traveled long through time, has a way of bewitchingly sweetening the kind of strong medicine that's at the heart of this poem's indisputable message.
Take the second verse, for instance:
Then [at the advent of some fresh unveiling of truth that God brings to life] to side with truth is noble, When we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, And 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, While the coward stands aside, Till the multitude make virtue Of the faith they had denied.
There are momentous times in which God initiates the bursting forth of new truth; even truth that seems contradictory to that which has come before it. To embrace just such truth while it is still considered "wretched" is by no means easy. One has to be truly noble and veritably courageous to do it.
For at first these new movements of truth seem contemptible to the majority. They seem dangerous, disunifying, and unsettling.
But with time, and passing through many hands, what at first was a living truth, direct from the heart of God, is subtly massaged into something popular and politically correct. As such it loses its nourishing consistency and evolves into a pablum that even the most cowardly can swallow. Indeed, it becomes "prosperous" to swallow it, not just financially, but socially, politically, and ecclesiastically.
In verse three Lowell says that, "New occasions teach new duties," and "Time makes ancient good uncouth." That is, new situations mentor us, even demanding that we fashion new approaches, new ideas, new paradigms; while the traditional, time-tested ways, even the old truths, become "uncouth."
For those of us who are committed to one form or another of "conservatism," this reality is hardest to accept. Most damaging is the fact that in rejecting it we tend to neglect and even to resist the critically important affiliated task of "climbing up new Calvaries ever."2
But the poet doesn't stop. Coming to what's perhaps his most pointed challenge, Lowell calls the world and the church to take up a potent position: "They must upward still and onward, Who would keep abreast of truth."
As a faith movement loses its divine elemental vision and evolves into an elaborately structured fraternity, that which once gripped its collective soul, plummeting it forward, becomes conservative, authoritarian, and creedal. It loses it's vertical dimension. It lives to subtly champion the horizontal itself.
Above all it ceases to look beyond. It believes it has the truth, and there's no more truth to be revealed. It ceases the upward toil. Perhaps most appalling of all, it comes to consider those who are climbing the "new Calvaries" and who are toiling upward, as dangerous as their spiritual ancestors did the One who actually took the greatest upward journey of all.
But are the words of the last verse of James Russell Lowell's poem a further warning, a statement of fact, a sublime encouragement, or all of the above?
Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet 'tis truth alone is strong; Though her port/on be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong; Yet that scaffold sways the future, And, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own.3
The bottom line? Minsters, pastors, teachers, leaders, administrators prophets and priests in this great hymn, all of us are called by God to remain eternally vigilant, consistently humble, and perpetually in prayer. Vigilant not so much to the rumblings and ramblings of error, as to the cadences and rhythms of truth. Humble as we listen for the footsteps of God Himself walking, often in bewildering directions, amid His world and in His church; especially during this time of shift and eschatological showdown.
1 James Russell Lowell, "Once to Every Man and Nation," in Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1985), 606. (Lyrics written in 1845.)
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.