"'How Great Thou Art'" is a Christian hymn based on a Swedish hymn entitled "" (eng: "Oh Great God") written in 1885 by Swedish poet and minister Carl Boberg. The English version of the hymn and its title are a loose translation from 1949 by English missionary Stuart K. Hine. The hymn was popularised by George Beverly Shea and Cliff Barrows during Billy Graham's crusades.Kurian, G. T. (2001). Nelson's new Christian dictionary: The authoritative resource on the Christian world. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. It was voted the British public's favourite hymn by BBC's Songs of Praise.. "How Great Thou Art" was ranked second (after "Amazing Grace") on a list of the favourite hymns of all time in a survey by Christianity Today magazine in 2001 and in a nationwide poll by Songs Of Praise in 2019..
Origin
Boberg wrote the poem "" ("O Great God") with nine stanzas. It was first published in 1886.
Inspiration The inspiration for the poem came when Boberg was walking home from church near Kronobäck, Sweden, and listening to church bells. A sudden storm got Boberg's attention, and then just as suddenly as it had made its appearance, it subsided to a peaceful calm, which Boberg observed over Mönsterås Bay.. According to J. Irving Erickson:
According to Boberg's great-nephew, Bud Boberg, "My dad's story of its origin was that it was a paraphrase of Psalm 8 and was used in the 'underground church' in Sweden in the late 1800s when the Baptists and Mission Friends were persecuted." The author, Carl Boberg, gave the following information about the inspiration behind his poem:
Publication and music
Boberg first published "" in the (Mönsterås News) on 13 March 1886.
The poem became matched to an old Swedish folk tune and sung in public for the first-known occasion in a church in the Swedish province of Värmland in 1888. Eight verses appeared with the music in the 1890 hymnal .
In 1890, Boberg became the editor of (Witness to the Truth). The words and music were published for the first time in the 16 April 1891 edition of . Instrumentation for both piano and guitar was provided by Adolph Edgren (born 1858; died 1921 in Washington, DC), a music teacher and organist, who later migrated to the United States.
Boberg later sold the rights to the Svenska Missionsförbundet (Mission Covenant Church of Sweden). In 1891, all nine verses were published in the 1891 Covenant songbook, . These versions were all in time. In 1894, the . published "" in time, as it has been sung ever since).
In 1914, the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant of America published four verses of "" in their hymnal, . The Swedish version that appeared in this edition was: +1914 Swedish-American versionLiteral English translationStanza 1:
Refrain:Stanza 1: O great God, when I behold that world
You have created with your omnipotent word,
How your wisdom guides the threads of life,
And all beings are fed at your table:
Refrain:
Then my soul bursts forth into praise:
O great God, O great God!
Then my soul bursts forth into praise:
O great God, O great God!Stanza 2:
RefrainStanza 2: When I consider the high wonders of heaven,
Where golden vessels plow the ether blue,
And sun and moon measure the moments of time
And alternate, as two bells go:
RefrainStanza 3:
RefrainStanza 3: When I hear the voice of thunder in the storm roaring
And the blades of lightning run out of the sky,
When the cold, fresh winds of the rain whistle
And the bow of promise shines in my sight:
RefrainStanza 4:
RefrainStanza 4: When the summer wind blows over the fields,
When flowers scent the spring's shore,
When thrushes trill in the green tents
From the silent, dark edge of the pine forest:
Refrain
English translations
E. Gustav Johnson (1925) The first literal English translation of "" was written by E. Gustav Johnson (1893–1974), then a professor of North Park College, Illinois. His translation of verses 1, 2, and 7–9 was published in the United States in the Covenant Hymnal as "O Mighty God" in 1925.
The first three Covenant hymnals in English used Johnson's translation, with The Covenant Hymnal (1973) including all nine verses of Boberg's original poem. There was a desire to replace Johnson's version with the more popular version of British missionary Stuart K. Hine's "How Great Thou Art". Wiberg explains:
The version that appeared in the 1973 edition of The Covenant Hymnbook was:
In 1996, Johnson's translation was replaced in The Covenant Hymnal—A Worshipbook because "E Gustav Johnson’s version, while closer to the original, uses a more archaic language." However, according to Glen V. Wiberg:
Stuart K. Hine (1949 version) Plymouth Brethren missionary Stuart Wesley Keene Hine (25 July 1899 – 14 March 1989)Lindsay Terry, Heartwarming Hymn Stories (Sword of the Lord Publishers):41. was dedicated to Jesus Christ in The Salvation Army by his parents. Hine was led to Christ by Madame Annie Ryall on 22 February 1914, and was baptised shortly thereafter. Hine was influenced greatly by the teachings of British Baptist evangelist Charles Spurgeon.
Hine first heard the Russian translation of the German version of the song while on an evangelistic mission to the Carpathian Mountains, then of the Soviet's Ukrainian SSR, in 1931. Upon hearing it, Hine was inspired to create his English paraphrase known as "How Great Thou Art", including that phrase four times in the refrain. According to Michael Ireland, "Hine and his wife, Mercy, learned the Russian translation, and started using it in their evangelistic services. Hine also started re-writing some of the verses --- and writing new verses (all in Russian) --- as events inspired him."
Verse 3 One of the verses Hine added was the current third verse:
Michael Ireland explains the origin of this original verse written by Hine: It was typical of the Hines to ask if there were any Christians in the villages they visited. In one case, they found out that the only Christians that their host knew about were a man named Dmitri and his wife Lyudmila. Dmitri's wife knew how to read – evidently a fairly rare thing at that time and in that place. She taught herself how to read because a Russian soldier had left a Bible behind several years earlier, and she started slowly learning by reading that Bible. When the Hines arrived in the village and approached Dmitri's house, they heard a strange and wonderful sound: Dmitri's wife was reading from the gospel of John about the crucifixion of Christ to a houseful of guests, and those visitors were in the very act of repenting. In Ukraine (as I know first hand!), this act of repenting is done very much out loud. So the Hines heard people calling out to God, saying how unbelievable it was that Christ would die for their own sins, and praising Him for His love and mercy. They just couldn't barge in and disrupt this obvious work of the Holy Spirit, so they stayed outside and listened. Stuart wrote down the phrases he heard the Repenters use, and (even though this was all in Russian), it became the third verse that we know today: "And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in."
The Hines had to leave Ukraine during the Holodomor or Famine Genocide perpetrated on Ukraine by Joseph Stalin during the winter of 1932–1933, and they also left Eastern Europe at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, returning to Britain, where they settled in Somerset.Tel Asiado, "History of How Great Thou Art: 'Then Sings my Soul, My Savior God to Thee' a Top Christian Hymn" (25 September 2007). Hine continued his evangelistic ministry in Britain working among the displaced Polish refugee community.
Verse 4 The fourth verse was another innovation of Stuart Hine, which was added after the Second World War. His concern for the exiled Polish community in Britain, who were anxious to return home, provided part of the inspiration for Hine's final verse. In 1948, Hine and David Griffiths visited a camp in Sussex, England, where displaced Russians were being held, but where only two were professing Christians. The testimony of one of these refugees and his anticipation of the second coming of Christ inspired Hine to write the fourth stanza of his English version of the hymn. According to Ireland: One man to whom they were ministering told them an amazing story: he had been separated from his wife at the very end of the war, and had not seen her since. At the time they were separated, his wife was a Christian, but he was not, but he had since been converted. His deep desire was to find his wife so they could at last share their faith together. But he told the Hines that he did not think he would ever see his wife on earth again. Instead he was longing for the day when they would meet in heaven, and could share in the Life Eternal there. These words again inspired Hine, and they became the basis for his fourth and final verse to 'How Great Thou Art': "When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation to take me home, what joy shall fill my heart. Then we shall bow in humble adoration and there proclaim, My God How Great Thou Art!"
Optional verses by Hine In Hine's book, Not You, but God: A Testimony to God's Faithfulness,Stuart K. Hine, Not You, but God: A Testimony to God's Faithfulness 1st ed. (S.K. Hine, 1973). . Hine presents two additional, optional verses that he copyrighted in 1953 as a translation of the Russian version, that are generally omitted from hymnals published in the United States:
Subsequent history In 1948, Hine finished composing the final verse. Hine finalised his English translation in 1949,cited from Forrest Mason McCann & Jack Boyd, editors, (1986), Great Songs of the Church Revised (Abilene, Texas: ACU Press), Item 60. . and published the final four-verse version in his own Russian gospel magazine Grace and Peace that same year. As Grace and Peace was circulated among refugees in fifteen countries around the world, including North and South America, Hine's version of "" ("How Great Thou Art") became popular in each country it reached. British missionaries began to spread the song around the world to former British colonies in Africa and India in approximately its current English version.
According to Hine, James Caldwell, a missionary from Central Africa, introduced Hine's version to the United States when he sang it at a Bible conference of the Stony Brook Assembly in Stony Brook, New York, on Long Island in the summer of 1951.
Hine published hymns and evangelical literature in various languages, including Eastern Melodies & Hymns of other Lands (1956)S.K. Hine, composer & arranger, Eastern Melodies & Hymns of other Lands (S.K. Hine, 1956) and The Story of "How Great Thou art": How it came to be written ... With complete album of hymns of other lands ... Russian melodies, Eastern melodies, etc (1958).S.K. Hine, The Story of "How Great Thou art": How it came to be written ... With complete album of hymns of other lands ... Russian melodies, Eastern melodies, etc (S.K. Hine, 1958). Hine died on 14 March 1989, his last place of residence being Seagull Cottage, Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex. His memorial service was held at the Gospel Hall in that town on 23 March 1989.
Manna Music version (1955) A program note from a Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota, concert tells listeners that J. Edwin Orr (15 January 1912 – 22 April 1987) of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, discovered the song being sung in a small village near Deolali, India, by a choir of the Naga tribe from Assam near Burma. The tribesmen had arranged the harmony themselves, and a Mennonite missionary had transcribed it.