Easter 2025: 250th anniversary of a famous hymn

The River Ouse meanders peacefully behind the church of St Peter and St Paul in Olney, Buckinghamshire. It bids a pleasant walk along its river banks as swans glide gracefully by while a watchful heron keeps an eye on a troop of Canada geese on the opposite side of the bank. This tranquil scene was the refuge of the local minister, newly ordained, who fled there in a state of panic.

Before coming to Olney the Reverend John Newton had published six sermons. He had just preached from the last one! A friend explained many years later, "he thought he had told them his whole stock, and was considerably depressed."

Newton himself recalled: "I was walking one afternoon by the side of the River Ouse. I asked myself, How long has this river run? Many hundred years before I was born, and will certainly run many years after I am gone. Who supplies the fountain from whence this river comes? God. Is not the fund for my sermons equally inexhaustible?—the word of God. Yes, surely. I have never been afraid of running out since that time."

This never-failing stream brings to mind one of Newton’s most famous hymns:

Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion city of our God.
Who can faint while such a river ever flows their thirst to assuage?
Grace which like the Lord the Giver, never fails from age to age.

This hymn was written some ten years later in 1775. Newton had just spent a fortnight visiting friends in and around Leicester. On the way back to Olney he stopped off at Northampton to speak at his adopted daughter’s school. "Just as I began I found myself a little indisposed and feverish."

Back in Olney he awoke on Sunday morning "still feverish", but preached three times, including riding cross-country over difficult terrain to preach in a village church. His cold and fever continued all week, increased by a sore throat and a fresh cold, with his symptoms persisting still further into the following week. On Friday 14 April his diary reads: "Had a pain in my head in the forenoon, but was helped to preach twice as usual on Good Friday".

Come Easter Day, 16 April 1775, "Felt something of a sore throat in the morning – but speaking was so far from hurting me, that I found myself quite well at night. I have much to be thankful to the Lord for in the course of the last week – preventing illness, and supplying me for services. Hymn at night: Zion No. 200. I was helped to speak from it with liberty, and the Great House was exceedingly full. O for a blessing! And O for a heart to desire a blessing more earnestly."

Hymn No. 200 in Newton’s manuscript notebook is entitled ‘The City of God’. It begins: Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, City of our God!

For the next three Sunday mornings Newton preached a sermon series from 2 Samuel 23:5 on God’s everlasting covenant. Although the text he had linked to the hymn (Isaiah 33:20,21) differed from this one, many of the themes clearly lingered on in his mind. He preached about "A fullness of grace, treasured up in this blessed covenant, and in a way wonderfully suited for the encouragement and consolation of unworthy sinners."

Grace, which like the Lord, the giver, Never fails from age to age.

This "covenant of grace was established with and in our Lord Jesus Christ, making atonement for transgression with his own blood."

Blest inhabitants of Zion, Washed in the Redeemer's blood!

Believers have many afflictions, "but they have a sure refuge and strong consolations provided in the covenant of grace. This secures them so that their enemies have no reason to rejoice over them."

With salvation's walls surrounded thou may'st smile at all thy foes.

Believers can rejoice in this covenant: "Walk about this Zion, consider her foundations and all the towers thereof and mark well the bulwark. See how it is fixed upon an immoveable rock, guarded by almighty power, encompassed with infinite love". (Psalm 48:12,13)

Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God!
He, whose word cannot be broken, Formed thee for his own abode:
On the rock of ages founded, What can shake thy sure repose?

The covenant is everlasting: "from everlasting… to everlasting... It has been the refuge of the people of God in all ages… It will be still the same to eternity."

Solid joys and lasting treasure, None but Zion’s children know.

Rich in scriptural truths and application, Newton’s hymn has encouraged many through the ages and still ministers reassurance and cause for thanksgiving to us today, 250 years since that Easter Day in Olney for which it was written.

As a postscript on anniversaries, there is a fitting link with ‘Austria’, the tune most commonly used for Glorious things of thee are spoken. Franz Haydn composed it for the Austrian Emperor’s birthday, 12 February 1797 – which would have been the 47th anniversary of the marriage of John and Mary Newton.

See www.johnnewton.org/gloriousthings for the hymn, diary extracts, and links to the hymn in Newton’s own handwriting and to his sermon series on 2 Samuel 23:5.