Samuel J. Stone (1839–1900) wrote this hymn in 1866 specifically in response to a doctrinal controversy in the South African church—a crisis over the authority of Scripture and the Apostles’ Creed—making it a direct confessional statement in its own right. Paul’s architectural language provides the framework: themelion (foundation, 1 Corinthians 3:11) and akrogōniaios (cornerstone, Ephesians 2:20) establish that the Church rests on Christ alone. The relational language of the first stanza draws on the nuptial theology of Ephesians 5 and the Song of Songs: Christ as the heavenly Bridegroom who “sought her,” paid the blood-price, and washed her new in Baptism. The fourth stanza’s “mid toil and tribulation and tumult of her war” captures precisely the situation of the confessors at Augsburg, and the hymn’s final comfort—“one Lord, one faith, one birth”—is the very unity the Augsburg Confession confessed against all attempts to break it.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026