Christ Is Our Cornerstone — LSB 912

Dedication Anniversary primer, 2026

This hymn was written for the day we are keeping. It comes from an anonymous Latin poem of the eighth century or earlier, Urbs beata Hierusalem, “Jerusalem, blessed city,” which the medieval Church divided for the dedication of a church: the first half, on the heavenly Jerusalem, was sung in the evening, and the second half, which begins Angularis fundamentum, “Christ is sent as the cornerstone,” was sung the next morning. That second half produced two English hymns that look unrelated. John Mason Neale’s “Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation” keeps the Latin meter; this one, made by the Anglican John Chandler for his Hymns of the Primitive Church in 1837, recasts it entirely, and our hymnal prints Chandler’s words unaltered apart from the order of the stanzas. The tune has its own story. John Darwall, vicar of Walsall, wrote a tune for every one of the 150 psalms in the Tate and Brady psalter, and this is his Psalm 148. His grandson wrote in 1893 that in Walsall he had only ever heard two of the 150 sung, and this was one; he added that his grandfather’s original opening note gave it “a more festal character.”