This hymn passed for over a century as an ancient relic of the early Church. When John Chandler translated it in 1837 for his collection Hymns of the Primitive Church, he believed Jordanis oras praevia to be genuinely early Christian; in fact Charles Coffin, rector of the University of Paris, had written it barely a hundred years before, publishing it in the 1736 Paris Breviary for the Advent weekday office of Lauds. Chandler’s translation covered the hymn’s first three stanzas; a fourth stanza and a new Advent doxology were added for the 1859 and 1861 editions of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and hymnals since have generally dropped Coffin’s original second stanza. The text pictures John crying out along the Jordan’s banks to announce the coming Christ, the same herald the day’s Gospel has shown wrestling with that very announcement from a prison cell. As the hymn that closes Gaudete, it sends the congregation out still listening for that voice in the wilderness, urging the way prepared for the Lord who has already come and is coming still.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025