Luther did not write the first stanza of this hymn, and he said so in the strongest terms available to him: “The hymn ‘Come, Holy Spirit Lord and God’ was composed by the Holy Ghost himself, both words and music.” The stanza was already an old German folk verse by the fifteenth century, and rather than replace it he added two stanzas of his own in 1524 and left the original untouched. The melody comes from the plainsong of the Latin antiphon, originally melismatic, with long garlands of notes on one syllable; Reformation musicians squared it off so a whole congregation could carry it, and the sturdy version printed in the 1524 Erfurt Enchiridion is what we sing. It served as the German sequence hymn, sung just before the Gospel in place of the medieval Veni Sancte Spiritus. The English text is credited to Catherine Winkworth, which is generous to the point of inaccuracy: she supplied about three lines, Richard Massie roughly a third, and August Crull stitched the whole together for an 1879 school hymnal. “Spirit” became “Ghost” in the first line only in 1941. Sermon Hymn: “O God, Our Lord, Thy Holy Word” (see back cover) This chorale, O Herre Gott, dein göttlich Wort, first appeared in the Erfurt Enchiridion of 1527, and for centuries its author was known only by the initials A.H.Z.W. Hymnologists eventually decoded them: Anarg Heinrich zu Wildenfels, born around 1490, a nobleman and court administrator who helped bring the Reformation into Saxony and served as one of its principal supporters at the court of Elector John. The hymn is Reformation theology in miniature. It gives thanks that the Word, “long a hidden treasure” buried under human tradition, has been restored in full measure; it insists that salvation is free, through faith in Christ, and refuses to rest on human deeds or papal authority; and it grants plainly that foes will try to overthrow that Word with grim endeavor, while promising that the truth outlasts them all. The English text is a cento of four stanzas drawn from the original eight, made in 1939 by W. Gustave Polack, chairman of the committee that produced The Lutheran Hymnal. Bach set the eighth German stanza as the closing chorale of Cantata BWV 184.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026