Heinrich Held, a German lawyer and Lutheran poet, wrote this text amid the ruin of the Thirty Years’ War and titled it Von der Zukunfft Christi, “On the Coming of Christ.” It first appeared in print in Johann Niedling’s 1658 or 1659 hymnal under its German opening line, Gott sei Dank durch alle Welt, though earlier hymnologists had mistakenly traced it to Johann Crüger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica of the year before. Hymnologists read Held’s hymn as a free companion to St. Ambrose’s ancient Advent hymn Veni redemptor gentium, the very text Luther had rendered nearly word for word as “Savior of the Nations, Come” (LSB 332); Niedling’s hymnal in fact assigned Held’s freer verses to be sung to Luther’s own tune. One stanza confesses Christ as “Him of twofold race,” Catherine Winkworth’s 1863 rendering of Held’s German phrase for a champion of two origins, a single line holding together the mystery of the Child who is fully God and fully man. Sent out as the Closing hymn on the last Sunday before the Nativity, it carries Advent’s whole longing forward into the praise the coming Child alone deserves.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025